Pixelation/visible lines on the Z70va LCD screen

Hi All,
Every review I read raves about the screen on the Z70VA. It is indeed bright, colours are good, and it is high resolution at 1680x1050. My notebook however has one of the most pixelated high resolution panels I have seen. I mean If I look at a reasonably close viewing distance, say as I am typing right now, I can notice faint visible horizontal lines around areas with gradual changes in tone and shade. This is very noticable on high res. photos with lots of flesh tone, and makes the screen almost unusable for basic photo editing. It is very distracting. My previous laptop was a vaio GR series w/ a 1400x1050 screen and I could place my nose on it without ever noticing a single line; absolutely solid picture.

So I wanted to find out if this was common or just a few machines since I have come to undestand that sometimes the same model is fitted with different LCD's from different manufacturers.

I have attached two pics, the first from my Vaio and the second from my Z70VA (non BT ver). These pics are very exaggerated but they illustrate my relative point. The Vaio's screen is much smoother.

 

I don't see it on mines.

But is yours the one with BT included? There has been quite a few issues on the ones ASUS sent out..

But if its not, then I'd contact my reseller, because that's not right.

Any pictures so I(or we) can see what you mean more accurately?

 

can you send a picture not a screen shot of the whole screen compared to the other notebook. Use a known website like this one or something. Looks like you got lower resolution or something that dont look right.

 

yeah, make sure you have both at native resolution and the picture at native resolution, then try taking the picture so that we can see a good comparison. the picutres you have do not make sense, since the z70va is a higher res screen, so the picture should be smaller (not the other way around).

 

The pictures I posted were manually captured with 3MP digicam at about 8" off the screen. This was manually done so they will not be the exact same size. I also manually cropped a section of each photo. Remember what you see is nothing close to what you'll see in person. The lens does not have the sensitivity of the human eye so the pictures show up pixelation much more vividly not to mention that they are magnified. For example the picture clearly shows pixels on my vaio screen when in fact I cannot see them. I can however see pixelation on the Z70VA. You will have to look closely at a high res. photo with lots shades like flesh tones. The average person will not notice. But if you are the type to notice DVD decoding artifacts or scan lines on a TV you may notice it. The lines appear as very fine horizontal lines and it takes some attention to detail to notice, but once you do they never go away. I will try to post more pics later.

 

Is it me or people are getting really picky about the Z70Va these days?

I hope you realize that not all LCD's are perfect. If your problem does not hinder the functionality of the laptop, then I think you are better off living with it rather than wasting time asking for a replacement and get stuck pixels afterwards.

 

How about a picture of your entire desktop...

 

Nobody said anything about perfect. Everyone has their own priorities when purchasing a product. Mine was keyboard, touchpad and screen, all the things that are most important for ones comfort and the only things you can't upgrade. I've had the opportunity to play with two identical models of the Vaio GR290 on which the screens appeared quite different on both laptops. It turned out that sony uses different LCD manufacturers for the exact same model. This may aslo be true with Asus. I just thought it unusual for me to notice lines on such a high res. screen. Maybe it's the coating or maybe it's just mine, but that's the purpose of this post. I will post a photo of the entire screen with bezel when I get the chance.

 

are u running at native resolution (1680x1050)? So many people complain about great LCD's having terrible quality picture only to find that they don't have it at native resolution. And although if you are infact experiencing horizontal lines (and not vertical) then there may be a problem; you could also have your "flicker" setting turned up (it should be all the way down). I don't know if ATI has this, but nVidia does (a useless feature except for on TV's).

There was once this guy that said he hated LCD's because he could see the pixels and that on CRT's he couldn't. I laughed, because the very fact that you can see pixels is indicative of how sharp the image is, which is a good thing. Of course, if your pixels have black lines around them (like it seems you're saying) then that's no good. But if you can look at text and actually see how they are composed, pixel by pixel, that is a good thing, not a bad (it also means you have excellent eyes if you can still see it at WSXGA+ or higher on a 15.4" screen!)

 

I believe that Stellar HAS to be running at native res... because if it was at lower res, things would be BLURRY rather than pixelated, no? At least that's from my understanding of notebook LCDs and their native resolutions...

 

I dunno the z70va screen looks no different to me then any other wsxga screen with a few minor differences. This does not add up. I think if you try this test on any other wsxga monitor you will get the same exact results given the same exact settings unless ofcourse you have a broken monitor or something.

 

nothing is perfect, but i would say it is VERY hard to find a notebook with the same quality, weight and preformance of the Z70VA, in fact I think the only one that can compare is an IBM and even then they are usually $500+ more. As far as the lines on the LCD I would think that it would have to do with the actual picture itself and not the LCD, maybe the way it was orginally modified for your vaio.

 

i got my z70va (it is not being replaced with another one cuz it died :| but anyway, i will explain it all and will probably do a short review on it when i get my new one... and since i have a z71v, i can tell you all the goods and bads (and yes the z70va has several bads compared to the z71v... i'm starting to feel there is not such thing as the "best" notebook)... also i'm hopeing that when i get my replacement, i have a better screen cuz the screen i got had the horizontal lines that Stellar described.

Sorry Stellar, you are right, they are totaly visible even at high resolution. It's almost like black between (above and below, resulting in horizontal lines) the pixels. Of course I'm very picky, and from a several feet back the screen looks VERY NICE, but when i sit at a standard distance (head about 2-3 feet away), medium colors (not black or bright colors, like white) especially if there is a gradience (like the taskbar, application window bar, AND PICTURES, as well as videos) really show this defect. I'm hoping this was a problem with the screen, cuz it would be aweful if all you z70va never noticed this! I don't have any red ghosting whatsoever, of course i didn't get hte BT version. I also have 20/10 vision (twice as good as 20/20), but still, people with 20/20 should see these horizontal lines!

Although hugely inconvenient, i'm sorta glad it died, cuz they better give me another brand new one because i don't know how long i would have lasted with that screen. The z70va screen did have a bit of sparkly effect (not as much as the z71v though) in solid reds and greens, but white was perfectly clear. As Stellar said, if you didn't notice it or weren't looking for it, it probably wouldn't bother you, but after a while, i could see them so well, it felt like looking into an interlaced screen (except it wasn't interlaced cuz it wasn't rows of dead pixels but just black space between them) and let me tell you, based on that, my z71v screen was MUCH better. Hopefully it was just a bad sample all around and my next one will be all good comments about the screen.

 

I dunno guys. I must be as blind as a bat with 20/20. Not seing it. I think extremely picky is an understatement.

 

I don't know if someone got a bad batch or what...... but sitting the Z70va next to my old W1..... I've got perfect vision and I also look for stuff like this on a constant basis... and they're indentical...... The Z71v's screen is certainly worse than this and doesn't get this much attention...... and yet the W1's screen after a year and a half is still regarded as the best 15.4" matte type WSXGA+ screen on the market.....

I'd also say that at this point there have to be over a 100 people on JUST this forum and notebookforums who have Z70va's from us and other dealers..... I'd think many more people would certainly have spoken up if this was a common feature of the unit that everyone had. You know how dirt flies online..

 

well hopefully this was just a bad machine. When I called Asus they said it sounded like the motherboard was shot (and I did every possible combination with hardware, different CPUs, RAM, with everything pulled out). Infact, I'm not sure, but I'm starting to wonder if it was possibly my doings. I was discovered all kinds of hidden ACPI stuff, like commands to turn on and off my LEDs on my z70va as well as dim the screen, turn the screen off, switch video, and the constants associated with play, stop, ff, fr, bluetooth button, etc. And maybe I inadvertantly found a security flaw with it and inadvertantly erased/corrupted the ACPI bios. It's a major long shot, but if this happened, it would explain why the machine would work fine, until its next restart. I'm not gonna repeat what I've done cuz I don't wanna kill another machine. But i hope i get a new machine since it's only a couple days old and I want a new screen to see if it was my particular computer or not.

I trust what you say Justin when you say you are picky and looked for this kind of thing. Eddie, I am picky, but not obsessed. As I said, my z71v screen didn't bother me, infact what bothered me was everyone's whining and complaining about it's sparkling, which really isn't that bad. And although the whites weren't perfect (and looked like some dust on the screen) and there was a bit of light leakage, the z70va screen I had had more light leakage and REALLY WAS BOTHERING ME with the horizontal lines. I just don't understand why there's so much varience. I also noticed my z70va had a slower refresh rate (I could see definitive motion blur, which was almost not noticable on the z71v).

Anyway, I'll let you know what happens when I get my new machine!

 

Cant argue with variance. There is plenty of that in the z70va screens. Agreen on the z71v. I saw nothing wrong with the screen it did its job very well. There is nothing wrong with light leekage. I see it more often then not on every carry in repair laptop.

 

Too much or what we argue about is subjective and now even though I hit one temps and noises.... and even did a repeatable photo montage on the W3 for angles brightness......... this is a hard one to repeat and although I'm sure people have the problem, unless we could all get together sometime and look at these side by side in a group at the same time.... we'll never truly get to the bottom of something like this.

 

Sorry I've been trying to record this phenomenon in a photo but it is too difficult. It is similar to what flaxx described, and yes I'm at native resolution. It appears as very fine horizontal lines that are not visible with very dark or very light colours. However middle tones like grays and especially colour gradients, like on some Windows buttons, show these lines more prominently. It is not terrible but it is visible once you notice it, and I just dont enjoy looking at my high res snapshots as much. It's like the pictures were created on some some kind of electonic printer. Again it might be the LCD coating thats at fault unless someone can confirm that the Z70VA uses more than one manufacturer for the LCDs.

I don't think that there would necessarily be many complaints either. Screen resolution is just not on the top of many peoples lists. Three years ago when I bought my Vaio high res 1400x1050 and 1600x1200 was being offered on many models from different companies. Now you're lucky if you can find a screen with over 1280x1024. Manufacturers realize that fitting an expensive screen on their product may go unoticed to the average consumer but will push up the cost. Its like listening to a great pair of headphones... you just never realized how bad yours were until you experienced the difference, but once you do you'll never be the same. Well a great number of consumers dont know how good a screen can be because they just haven't experienced it and thus are not looking for it.

 

i agree with you. i remember thinking (a long time ago) XGA was high res. Even when I got my 17" with 1280x1024 I thought it was a bit small when reading small HTML. But I guess my habits now (browsing 5-10 windows at a time, running visual studio .NET, messenger, winamp, outlook, etc all at the same time) require that I have a lot of space. SXGA is tolerable, but anything less, EVEN WXGA would drive me crazy! And it annoys me that manufacturers are all getting cheap and only offering one panel WXGA. At the very least they could offer WSXGA. The only wide screen panels that are high res are offered with 17" screens or special order PC's like Asus, Acer, Dell, etc.

I'm really amazed at how fast HDTV is catching on (I honestly thought it would become an old forgotten idea) and how many manufacturers support it. But I find it sad that most PCs don't even support this new TVs resolution (WUGA)! I think one of the goals of longhorn in having vector based icons and hardware rendered screens is not only for a more appealing visual effect, but also so that people can scale their screen to whatever size they want and run their screens at native resolution. This would push the high res market because the highest resolution screens would not only offer the best image quality, it would provide the most options in terms of scaling.

Anyway, I digress. Tomorrow I get my new machine. I'll let you know what happens.

 

Hope all goes well with your Z70Va endeavours, flaxx.

:asus:

 

Amen flaxx. Perhaps microsoft's new operating system will offer at least a bit more scalability so we can have the best image without worrying about silly things like text and icon size. You know I have been cracking my skull trying to think of an image to demonstrate this effect when it was right in front of me the whole time...PROPortable's user icon shows this effect very clearly. A grayscale image with a gradual change in shade. If you can't see the lines on that icon then you probably don't have this effect, but i can see them and they are quite defined.

Flaxx hopefully your new machine turns out fine so then I'll know it's only on certain machines. Besides this undisireable effect, the Z70VA has met and exceeded almost all my expectations. It is really a great machine... but we all have our priorities, and the screen is one of my biggest ones.

 

... I'm glad I'm good for something.... - Are you sure you're using 32bit and not 16 ? That almost sounds like the same thing that would happen in that case.

 

No... I take that back... it's more like what happens with you use a 64 dithered gif instead of 128...

 

Well I have my new baby! You can check out my signature for an update of my new machine. This screen is much better. Although I can still see the lines :| they are FAR finer. Infact, I don't see lines on the top taskbar anymore, but only on certain grey shades (haha, like proportables logo I can still see lines). But it's really to the point that it doesn't bother me if I don't try and focus on it. As I said, I have REALLY good eyes (20/10 to 20/8) and the guy at the computer store (they were just as anxious to get this machine going and there were a couple regional Asus reps there) couldn't see it until he brought his head literally 4 inches from the screen. I can see it up to 20 inches from the screen, but if i back off to about 24 inches from the screen, i can't see it anymore (which is much better than before, where i could see it up to 4 feet back). So for people with 20/20 vision, you can divide that at least by 2, haha. So for "normal eyes" unless you have your head 10 inches from the screen (which is like, resting your head on the touchpad, haha) you won't see it.

I can now officially say that the screen quality is better than my z71v (the screen on the other z70va that died was not better and i was really regreting my move to the z70va because the screen was worse).

Tommorow, I will provide a brief, but fairly thorough review of the z70va... but unlike the regular reviews, I will contrast this with the z71v (for those interested in one of these machines or any owner of a z70va or z71v wondering what the other is like).

 

Don't forget pretty pictures!

 

Everybody is talking about the screen, but hey stellar did you ever think maybe it was the quality of the picture itself and the source that took it?

I just bought my Z70Va and I haven't had much experience on LCD's before so when I was watching some videos I downloaded and pictures I thought my unit had a crapped out screen because it was either a bit blurry or dim or blah blah blah...

Then I watched a video that was encoded at a higher resolution and it looked GREAT~! So my tip to you is to double check the source of the picture to make sure it isn't the thing at fault.

goodluck with your unit, as it is a freakin' awesome lappy

Cheers,
Mike

 

Oops, should've read the whole thread hehe

Goodluck with your new unit flaxx and holy crap you have good eyes, I can only see the fine lines with my good left eye and my right eye closed and at like 7inches away from the screen. I"m glad I don't have such good eyes as you since those lines would drive me crazy~!~!~!

 

I'm looking at getting the Z70va and was wondering if anyone has had a problem with dead pixels. Has anyone had to take advantage of the ASUS Zero Bright Dot guarantee yet? Thanks.

 

I read on Egghead that you can't return an Asus unit unless it has over 7 dead pixels. That was a deal breaker for me. That plus paying to ship a failed or bad unit for repairs seemed too much deal with, even though the unit seems decent.

I'm still reading and trying to give it a shot, these threads sure help.

 

Only certain Ensemble series have the ZBD Guarantee (V6, W2, M6, W1)
Unfortunately, the Z70Va does NOT have ZBD Guarantee, so if it has a dead pixel you just might have to live with it ... unless your dealer is nice enough to give you an exchange. Some (reputable) dealers screen for dead pixels before shipping out to you, so you can often request for that.