Since that post I have already made 4 such exchanges. I do not plan on making anymore. The apple stores around me have been more than accommodating to say the least. The display I have now has no noticeable yellow tint and is uniform in color save for a blue hue under the camera. I have not tested the image retention but I don't think I will with this model. I am honestly quite exhausted from picking apart every display on the macbook pro. Thank you everyone for your helpful posts and suggestions.
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Yellow tint on Haswell rMBP 15"
- Thread starter zOlid
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Since that post I have already made 4 such exchanges. I do not plan on making anymore. The apple stores around me have been more than accommodating to say the least. The display I have now has no noticeable yellow tint and is uniform in color save for a blue hue under the camera. I have not tested the image retention but I don't think I will with this model. I am honestly quite exhausted from picking apart every display on the macbook pro. Thank you everyone for your helpful posts and suggestions.
Thought I'd post some info on what I've found about my display. I've compared it to an iP5, iP4s, iP5s, (only the 5s is mine if you're wondering), my Cinema Display, and my iPad 2. The rMBP display (Samsung) is way more yellow than any of these displays at matched brightness (close enough anyway, had to do it by eye). I have to assume that it's more likely that it's too warm than all of those being too cool. It's also much closer to 2.35 gamma than 2.2, but that's just how things work out for monitors and not hard to calibrate for.
I managed to find a decent balance at 6800K in the calibration utility. It's still a little warmer than those displays I listed, but I didn't want to push it any farther because changing the white point away from native will have a brightness impact. I explained it above but it was in kind of a long rambling post: Unlike a plasma or (theoretically) OLED panel, if you want more blue in the white you can't just increase blue output. You have to block some red and green to reduce yellow and produce a bluer white (if you don't believe this, watch the brightness fall off as you move the white temp in the calibration utility towards the extreme ends).
What I'm wondering is if the panels that are natively cooler are brighter, darker, or the same as the more yellow panels. Unfortunately the only way to really know this is with a meter, as it's very hard to properly subjectively assess brightness between two displays with different white temperatures. I'd love to know if the panels with more yellow are manufacturing defects or calibration errors (in which case the yellow panels would be slightly brighter than the cooler ones). If it's a manufacturing effect then the panel's should be similar in brightness or the cooler ones would be slightly brighter.
I'll add that even if IGZO doesn't improve white point accuracy it would at the very least provide more headroom for white point adjustment because of its significantly higher brightness, so that's something I suppose.
I managed to find a decent balance at 6800K in the calibration utility. It's still a little warmer than those displays I listed, but I didn't want to push it any farther because changing the white point away from native will have a brightness impact. I explained it above but it was in kind of a long rambling post: Unlike a plasma or (theoretically) OLED panel, if you want more blue in the white you can't just increase blue output. You have to block some red and green to reduce yellow and produce a bluer white (if you don't believe this, watch the brightness fall off as you move the white temp in the calibration utility towards the extreme ends).
What I'm wondering is if the panels that are natively cooler are brighter, darker, or the same as the more yellow panels. Unfortunately the only way to really know this is with a meter, as it's very hard to properly subjectively assess brightness between two displays with different white temperatures. I'd love to know if the panels with more yellow are manufacturing defects or calibration errors (in which case the yellow panels would be slightly brighter than the cooler ones). If it's a manufacturing effect then the panel's should be similar in brightness or the cooler ones would be slightly brighter.
I'll add that even if IGZO doesn't improve white point accuracy it would at the very least provide more headroom for white point adjustment because of its significantly higher brightness, so that's something I suppose.
I've heard that some of the yellow if its localised can go away over time because it is due to how the display is glued together. Any truth to this?
After coming home tonight I sat in a relatively dark room and calibrated my display again. It looks even better now, and basically all the yellow tint in the lower corners is now gone.
Calibrate your displays guys!
Calibrate your displays guys!
I tried this with mine, it doesn't work.
You cannot calibrate an uneven display. If one corner is yellow and the rest is white calibrating won't work because you can't use a gradient when calibrating it's all or nothing.
All you'll end up doing is changing White and Yellow for Light Blue and Dark Blue. Trying to get that yellow to shift to white just makes everything else too blue. Doing this will make the display useless for any professional work that needs colour grading and it just won't look natural.
Alright I'm heading to apple store in morning. I'm hoping my secret laptop is still in the back room. Lol
Wish me luck and I will be checking my screen. Than I will calibrate it because I always calibrate my monitors but I certainly will be checking for the yellow tint.
Fingers crossed I get a good one. Now I got a lot of stuff to sell to pay for it. Yuk
Wish me luck and I will be checking my screen. Than I will calibrate it because I always calibrate my monitors but I certainly will be checking for the yellow tint.
Fingers crossed I get a good one. Now I got a lot of stuff to sell to pay for it. Yuk
Good luck man! Also, do you have to buy a device to calibrate your display truly and correctly?
I use a I eye display pro made by X rite.
http://www.amazon.com/X-Rite-EODIS3...qid=1383365673&sr=8-1&keywords=i1+display+pro
These work really nice to get a color managed system for photographers. Does a very nice job
So what are you doing with your yellow Samsung display? Did you calibrate it? Can you return it? Is if defective? Is this yellowed display capable of showing colours accurately? Was your first display yellow or do you have a replacement display?
One other thing with this yellow tint you should let your display be on for about a half hour before you check it. Now that was with other displays not sure about these retinas.
This is my first rMBP, I haven't made an attempt to exchange yet. It's uniform, but too yellow. I'm taking a few days to consider my options as I'm still within my return period. If I take it in and don't feel confident that I can get a better panel from a replacement I may end up returning the machine and dealing with my old, heavy 17" until Apple releases an IGZO MBP. Aside from the actual white balance color quality is very good, though my gamma was also a bit off (closer to 2.4 than 2.2... I know this is desirable in the AV world, but 2.2 is the target for computers).
I've calibrated it to match the other high end Apple panels I have. They all match each other fairly well, causing me to draw the unscientific conclusion that they are accurate and the rMBP is too yellow.
I'm not happy with the loss in brightness I took to do this. The display lost just a bit less than 1 "click" worth of white output as a result of the temperature adjustment (and this is actually a contrast loss at any brightness, as it's a software white point adjustment and both black and white levels rise together as you increase backlight output).
Some variance in white temperature is expected, but you'd really rather see it on the slightly cool end if it's going to be there. A yellow screen is not aesthetically pleasing at all. Some of these Samsung panels are far enough off of white that I'd definitely call them defective. This shouldn't be confused with a well calibrated relatively warm panel, which will be warmer than the common cheap blue monitor but should not appear tobacco stain yellow when used.
First of all I would like to thank you for your elaborate, well-written, and constructive reply. I have made some attempts at your suggestion of changing the display temperature, but that did not really work along my preferences; if anything it made the colour shift more obvious because relatively nothing changed about the uniformity of my display; the top became brighter, so did the lower half, but it adds up by the same amount and the discrepancy is still present.
I am sort of at a loss when it comes to the point of exchanging it as well. Reality is, if I were to have it replaced I would have have to make the decision within a couple of days. Where I live there are no real Apple Stores around, so everything revolves around having it picked up and delivered. Above all, I have the feeling that Apple's return policy is less easy going in my country than in the US. I absolutely adore the machine, and the screen really isn't all that bad, and if I hadn't found out about these issues on this forum I probably wouldn't even have noticed them that easily. However (there's always a but), now I am certainly aware of the issue and the fact that my screen is not completely uniform. And the question is: am I going to settle with these issues on such an expensive machine?
It bums me out, really, because if I knew I would be getting a perfect, 100% white and uniform display, I would have it exchanged in a heartbeat. However, looking at some of the screens around: who knows what you're getting next? The ultimate solution would be to just ask for a refund and wait until Apple issues a screen improvement with the next year (maybe IGZO). But there's really no going back to my MBA now after having just tinkered around with this machine for two days. It is such a giant leap forward compared to the MBA in a variety of aspects.
Yes, the central issue is that we don't know what is normal for these screens. I would have never noticed the slight yellow in the bottom corners if it were not for this forum. I don't think apple makes these screens to be perfect. They make them to be good enough for 99% of their consumers. I very much doubt that we we within that 99%. So, I suspect the chance of getting display that we're going to be happy with after running all sorts of tests on it is low. But, I don't know for sure. I would need to look at a dozen or so displays at apple. I have no apple store near where I live though so it would be a big effort to do this.
I regret my former rMBP (early 2013 15-inch) which had the SAJ2 panel from LG. I can assure you that it was absolutely perfect. The white was pure and the black very deep. Backlighting was absolutely uniform, corners perfectly lit. No light bleeding, no IR, it simply was the best thing I ever laid eyes on. I work in Architecture and Design and can't stand the display I am looking at today. I am definitely returning this mess to wait it out. It's quite a shame if you ask me. Even from the previous rMBP, this is a real leap forward. The machine is way smoother, the battery outstanding, the SSD and dGPU speeds incredible but the display - which is THE selling point - fails me. Such a letdown. The sad part in all of that is that since MacBook Pros are bought primarily by people who don't even know what white point means, only a very small fraction of people are complaining - for most people, it's a non-issue. They just don't see. And that's probably why Apple isn't working harder to fix this non-sense. After all, if the return rate is .02%, that's acceptable. If only Pros were to use MacBook Pros and not every college kid around town, I guarantee you this would have been corrected a year ago. IR and yellow spots have been here since day 1.
I regret my former rMBP (early 2013 15-inch) which had the SAJ2 panel from LG. I can assure you that it was absolutely perfect. The white was pure and the black very deep. Backlighting was absolutely uniform, corners perfectly lit. No light bleeding, no IR, it simply was the best thing I ever laid eyes on. I work in Architecture and Design and can't stand the display I am looking at today. I am definitely returning this mess to wait it out. It's quite a shame if you ask me. Even from the previous rMBP, this is a real leap forward. The machine is way smoother, the battery outstanding, the SSD and dGPU speeds incredible but the display - which is THE selling point - fails me. Such a letdown. The sad part in all of that is that since MacBook Pros are bought primarily by people who don't even know what white point means, only a very small fraction of people are complaining - for most people, it's a non-issue. They just don't see. And that's probably why Apple isn't working harder to fix this non-sense. After all, if the return rate is .02%, that's acceptable. If only Pros were to use MacBook Pros and not every college kid around town, I guarantee you this would have been corrected a year ago. IR and yellow spots have been here since day 1.
Yea, but how many returns are we going to have to do to get a good screen? That's what I'm worried about. I can't take the stress. haha!
Oh trust me, I can't either. I'll just wait a couple months. I went through 5 different iPhone 5 because of a scratch out of the box, a faulty power button, a loose screen, another scratch out of the box and finally a blue-screen of death happening constantly. I also went through 2 Haswell Air after WWDC because of wi-fi issues with 802.11ac and problems with the iGPU displaying pixelated boxes all over my screen. I am about to die just thinking about going back and forth between the store and my house. And my foot is in a cast, I broke it 2 weeks ago. Nice cherry on top. I simply refuse to entertain this non-sense a second longer. They'll get their spotty yellow-screen back, give me my 2600 dollars and we'll re-assess in a month or so. I am seriously about to lose faith in their products and their quality standards.
How long have you been using Apple products? If it's a long time has it been getting better or worse?
Apple create great products but they manufacture crap. It's the sad reality this days. I'm a long time consumer and recently there's not a single product I did not have to exchange for some reason. I don't mind paying their ridiculous prices but I expect some quality or they prefer using some cheap compenents from cheap manufacturers (LG and the IR for exemple). I've lost faith in this brand, they'll die if they keep going that way it´s just a matter of years now.
It's been 15 years. It's getting worse. I am not gonna go into the Tim Cook vs. Steve Jobs because it has little to do with that. It's just that Apple is now more mainstream, they sell tons of iOS devices, demand for their products is immense so the quality is going down. That's how I see it. I never had one single hardware issue on a computer I owned before my iMac 27-inch. (In 15 years, I'd say I've had a dozen machines before the iMac.) For the last 4-5 years, it's going downhill at an incredible pace. I'm not saying the completion does better, I'd never buy the competition - Apple remains esthetically and functionally more pleasing. But that doesn't justify the premium anymore, especially when we're talking about lingering issues on the same product line for nearly 2 years. That's simply unacceptable. And most of their employees at the store (at least in LA) are just full of it. I actually avoid the stores here as much as I can. I've had really bad experiences with Genius Bar associates. I mentioned that in a post above. I am not gonna be taught by a 20 y.o. kid what my screen should look like. My panel is defective. End of story. Returning it tomorrow for a full refund.