Screen Sparkle

I was reading some reviews on the T60 and the reviewer mentioned that his review unit had some screen sparkle. I currently have an ASUS laptop whose screen (don't know how makes it) has VERY bad screen sparkle. I wondering if the T61s and maybe the later T60s have much or any screen sparkle? Do you notice it on your notebook? I wonder if sparkle is just a fact of matte screens? Though I've seen several good looking matte screens without. Unfortunately many reviewers either don't know or don't care enough to comment on it. For instance the new HP Santa Rosa laptops have it very prominently, but you wont find many reviews mentioning that.

 

I had the T61 and it did not suffer from this, in fact I've handled just about every new ThinkPad released so far and none of them had a screen sparkle issue.

 

Thanks, that's good to hear. If they did I might think twice about buying one.

 

So has anyone been able to find out what causes this sparkle?

 

I've been wondering that as well.

 

I've heard that it has something to do with the anti-glare coating (which matte and atleast some glossy's have) although I'm not quite sure. I remember reading about what happened, at least initially, with the WSXGA LCD's on D620's and how bad their grain/sparkle level was; people were really complaining and the photos some posted showed why.

I can only speak for my current T60 as far as display quality goes, but atleast on the LCD I received (LG) there is absolutely ZERO sparkle, one of the reasons I like this panel so much. I've seen Dell's, Apple's, Gateway's, HP's, etc that all had varying degrees of sparkle, and unfortunately it seems to be all too common to find these LCD's; although it *does* depend on what specific panel you get, as for all of those same brands I've also seen some that didn't have sparkle.

I'm not sure why some manufactures think "sparkly" panels are acceptable to be used in their notebooks. I know that a lot of people may not care or just don't know any better, but I've seen some pretty darned awful screens. Ultimately, it all comes down to what level of quality the manufacture specifies they want for the LCD's they order. Some companies listen to complaints and do something about it, but the majority just shrug it off and say "it still sells".

 

Some Asus models suffered from screen sparkle and it was fixed in a bios upgrade, so I can only assume that it's a software issue.

 

Just as an FYI, the issue with blocky colors on some ASUS notebooks and a few others (isolated to notebooks with the X1600 I believe) was separate from what has been described for "sparkly" LCD's. The blockiness was apparently solved by a change in the way the computer addresses the GPU on a low level, hence why a BIOS update was able to fix it.

Sparkle is caused by an actual physical coating/characteristic of certain panels.

 

I found a great post by Charlotte that I'll quote for you:

Grainy: pixelization of only certain colors, usually darker colors or grays. Can be fixed with a bios upgrade.

Sparkly: most obvious as an all over the screen problem on light colors, especially whites and light grays. It's part of the screen itself and can be described as an "oily" "grainy" or "dusty" looking surface due to the anti-glare coating. The Compal Hel80, Dell d820, MacBook Pro, Sony C and others have this problem. Some manufacturers seem to lay it on too thick.

Thing about it is this. About 75% of people seem not to notice this at all. 10% only notice it if pointed out and the other 15% can't stand it and want to sell their computers.

Compal hel80 screen was highly rated and after sending back the d820, I wanted a guaranteed great screen. I got the hel80 and I wanted to claw my eyes out I hated it so much. My husband could see the problem, but it didn't bother him that much. I sent it back and almost got an A8 til I read it had sparkle. I bought the G1 which is perfect.


Thanks Charlotte

 

Sparkle in its eyes? It may be in love with you!

 

lol

Extra filler here.

 

I worried about this before purchasing my T60p with an IPS flexview screen because I had heard that IPS screens had this perceived "sparkle" more than others. So I was primed to see it.... and did not. The coating does dim white tones a bit (white MS word screens always look a bit grayish) but now I'm being picky.... Overall, I'm very happy with the screen.

 

Yep, that describes it almost exactly.

I'm in that 15%.

 

What is exactly "screen sparkles" anyway? Is this some kind of screen glitches? Anyone have pictures beside the explanation above?

 

I'm staring at a white text box on a screen with heavy screen sparkle so I'll try to describe it. For a couple examples:

Imagine your screen buried under extremely fine transparent sand. While most of the image gets to your eye there is a noticeable graininess to it.

Imagine extremely fine dust particles on your screen. Except instead of seeing them in front of your screen imagine they're embedded into your screen.

Imagine running your finger over a very fine polished surface, leaving behind a fine and slight sparkle due to the light interacting with the oil from your skin.

I think out of those the dust example is best. It looks like smaller than usual dust particles sit between the backlight and panel causing. It causes a dusty look to appear on everything and especially whites. Taking a picture is very hard, but I know there was at least one review that had a decent pic. I just tried to take a couple but they didn't turn out well. Note that the sparkle is very slight. Unlike the name, it's more grainy than sparkely. It sparkles very slightly when you reposition your head.

It's a real problem and I hate it. Here's hoping my next laptop is as far away from sparkle as it gets. Otherwise I'm returning it and finding something else.

 

Thank you for further explaining. Is it possible to have sparkle to go away -or almost unnoticeable- by choosing the highest resolution screen? I think with the "smaller" dust the sparkle will almost invisible?

 

No. I have seen WUXGA screens with significant screen sparkle as well. If you want to check it out first hand, I was looking at the HP DV6500t and DV2500t and they both have it. It might have just been the screen on those two units I saw, not sure since screens vary. It seems to be much less prevalent on glossy screens though it's worth noting that the two HP machines I mentioned had it quite bad and they glossy.

 

Have you also tested out the 15.4" samsung wxga+ screen...how are they? Thanks

 

Haha you found my old thread on screen sparkle! Do you know the FRU of your LCD eyecon82? You might head over to the 15.4" 140M thread and check out my latest post.

 

my screen fru is 42T0329 [samsung =( ]....ill go check out ure other post

 

Check out my latest post in 15.4" 140M. Amitface had your same LCD. Ask him about it. He had the same concerns I raised in the other thread about it being an older T60 part. He could probably tell you what he thought. You might also look at the various threads he created about it.

 

I posted the same thing in another thread:

When I made that post, Parts Lookup said my FRU was 42T0329. Now I look at it, and it says 42T0328. Googles for both showed up and it seems like these were the same FRU's for the T60s. Not necessarily a bad thing, except..

My screen had terrible sparkle, and the dithering was exceptionally noticeable. (lowspeed talks about this in some threads. I had the same problem) I'm not telling you to expect the worst. It is very likely I had an unusual case.