Faulty LCD on PcTorque sager 9750?

I have a problem with bad light leakage on my new Sager 9750 and brightness inconsistency: its a shame because otherwise the screen would be very good as its sharp and vibrant and only 1 dead pixel on the lower section.

The following images are how the screen apears in a dark room. Naturally the effects are slightly counteracted by being in a light room but are still bad enough to annoy me when doing graphics work and of course watching DVD's in a dim room. I am sure that its more than what would be considered acceptable for a screen on a high spec laptop.

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The worst effect is the dark bar which apears at the bottom section of the screen just above the light leak: its very aparent when I am displaying solid colours as you can see from the photos. The most frequent situations are in photoshop, word and publishing software with solid backgrounds. The light leak even has an effect on white screens which is probably why that dark bar is there due to how the eye perceives the contrast, but my camera picks it up too...?

The next worst is the light leak itself which crops up mostly in DVD's when they are in letter-box mode, so it will blead up the bottom part of the screen and wash out colours.

THere are also two dark corners at the bottom of the screen where the windows taskbar would normally be by default. The whites also apear quite yellow which i was not able to correct with colour temperature in the photoshop screen manager or default NVIDIA control pannel.

All these things add up and make me wonder if my screen is faulty because so far I have heard nothing but good in reviews when they mention the screen. Maybe there has been a bad batch or they changed the LCD panel manufacturer? I am aware that there was a similar issue with the new Dell duel core notebooks (9400?).

This post is primarily a reference for Sager/PCTorque suport, but all are welcome who have anything to contribute. Do any other people have the same issue?

I didn't, but will do so tomorrow morning. What is your take on this, is it normal for this model? It just seems weird to me.

Also: do you know the viewing angle on these screens, the surface alters greatly when i move my head slightly. At a slight angle looking to the centre there is a strong green colouration across the screen. I'd thought the viewing ngle would be wider, if thats what is causing some of the discoloration?

Argh, the laptop is amazing - just can't beleive the screen! The build quality of the casing is fantastic, the speed is unreal, its quiet in comparison to what i expected and is just full of every feature you could care think of.

I contacted sager directly, it took a while to get a useful response bacause they only seem to e-mail and never phone back. Its not possible to call them directly without some darn computer automated call back system. Its a far cry from phoning PCTorque who are fast in all respects so far. Sager e-mailed me back every time but generally gave very vague badly typed answers and it took a few attempts to get a useful response.

The answer I eventually got was for me to wait for them to get their new batch in after the weekend, the week beginning monday the 10th. They will check the screens of the new batch to see if they are the same as the ones in my photo. That sounds fair. I'm a little frustrated as each day eats into my 30 day guarenty. If all the screens are like that I'll aim to get a refund because I really can't work with such a poor display! I can see it being alright for playing games but not graphics design! I am hoping that mine is indeed a bad screen because the laptop itself is bar none for excelence and has all the power i need for 3D rendering. Maybe theres a hole in the quality control system somewhere?

PS.. how wide is the viewing angle for that display: it seems very narrow to the extent that even head centred the screen is washy

Who is the screen LCD manufacturer, do they have more than one for the same 1920 * 1200 sisplay? It might explain how so many people have hyped about the display and how mine is really bad.

If sager proves not to be useful would PcTorque be able to step in and help. I'll give sager a little more time as my guarentee expires on the 28th of April...

Sagers Response.... bad then a little better

It took a week and a half or more, but they were waiting for new units to come in before they made their analysis (without seeing my ssytem). Sager told me it was normal (did they have to waid a week and a half to say that? ), but then the person whom was dealing with my case only really understood that I had a light leakage. He did not seem to understand my statement about the dark areas: dark band at the bottom quarter of the screen, dark band across the top and dark corners. All he ever mentioned was light leakage.

He decided after that long time that the screen looked normal after seeing the new 9750's. I really feel that can't be true, i refused to accept that response.

I checked out the screen of my friend's Toshiba with a similar screen (ours are samsung screens), it also has light leakage but nothing compared and the entire screen has less light variation, a littile from viewing angle but not much at all and was very acceptable.

Afterwards I sent a spree of e-mails to every department at Sager asking for them to actually phone me this time around so that I could actually negotiate this and get them to understand my situation properly.
They then called me back promptly after my (assertive, not flaming) e-mail (at bloody last!) and accepted my request to get the laptop sent back for analysis without further question which was at last: a good response.

It was infuriating to begin with but they have agreed to pay for the shipment of my system to them which is very helpful since it cost so much to begin with (its going to be a long time before I can meand that hole in my bank account)! they sent me a barcoded UPS label and RMA number yesterday and I am shipping it to them today. That was very kind on their part as they don't actually have to pay for shipping unless its dead on arrival. so my view of Sager is gradually improving.

Just last night after all of this nonsense I found a dead pixel dead centre of the screen so they are going to have to replace the screen now, no question. I also put a cover letter within the box on the laptop so describing the problems in detail, so I am now in hope that they will continue to repair my outlook on them and do their best to get nicely a working screen.

I had actually spoken on the phone to PCTorque tech support when Sager had earlier on told me the defect i found was normal. The guy at PcTorque after my description of the problem (and after telling me like the rest that light leakage was normal) said that the dark areas were NOT normal in his opinion. The problem is however that i have no idea if they understand exactly what I am talking about when I mention darker areas. I realise the light leakage is how the screen is and the photos exhaggerate it slightly (but not much!), but I have a feeling that it is worse than ususal on my laptop. I expect they will see what I am talking about when Sager has the laptop in their hands.

I will post back again when I receive the fixed system back. I am quite confident after my talk with Pctorque that this particular screen is indeed unusually poor.