XPS 7590 OLED screen banding issues

Hi romil7,

Thanks for posting and for providing your service tag information.  Apologies your system is not performing as expected.

In looking at your service tag information, I see that another member of our team is assisting you with a return and a refund.  Please continue working with that team, and I will be monitoring your issue.

Thanks for your reply. However, I am not happy the resolution that I am being given. Why else am I getting in touch here when another person is already in contact with me. I am being offered a refund. But I want to keep the laptop. Surely dell doesn't want to lose a customer either, I hope. 

All I want is Dell to just fix my screen. Is this so difficult that you would rather refund me, instead of fixing my screen?

The only thing I take from this is that you have NO quality control. All of your OLED panels are faulty, hence there is no point in replacing the screen... might as well just refund the customer...?

Unfortunately I'm in the same spot. It would be encouraging for someone from Dell to say that not all of the OLED panels have this issue....but it does feel like this might be the case. If I can't get a good panel, I'll have to return this otherwise-amazing machine, which is really unfortunate.

@JB1479 thanks for getting in touch. With regards to your OLED panel, panel banding does seem to a characteristic of the technology used and it's not just laptop LCD panels this affects, It's quite common on TV's too after carrying out an extensive google search.

It appears there is no way to completely eliminate vertical banding and on certain backgrounds and colours the banding will be more prominent. Each panel manufacturer will have a tolerance built in that the panel has to meet and as long as the panel is within those tolerances it's considered acceptable.

The issue comes with your acceptance of this level of tolerance. For some they can live with it, for others, they cant. It would also appear that the banding effect can reduce with extended time.

For your banding issue, can you see it at various brightness levels prominently or does the effect lessen depend on the level of brightness the panel is set to?

Does it make any difference what power source the system is running on?

Is it more prominent on particularly dark or grey backgrounds?

Can you see the same banding issue during the LCD BIST? (To run the LCD BIST, hold down the D key and power on the system. The screen will cycle through a series of colours and coloured bars)

Are you able to provide a video or pics of the banding issue?

I'll drop you a private message to get your tag details from you.

Alan

Thanks Alan, understood.

I figured this would be the response, and it's a fair one, but I've been using OLED phones for years and never experienced this kind of banding. It's extremely noticeable on dark grey colours in particular.

If in fact this is simply considered to be a tolerance thing for these Samsung panels, I will have to reflect on whether I can live with it or if I need to return the machine, which would be disappointing. The screen is beautiful other than this issue, but it really is quite noticeable for me.

If anyone does hear from Dell that later batches of panels are less prone to this issue, my ideal outcome would be to swap the panel for a better one, but if they're all going to be like this, I'll have to think about returning it, either to switch to the IPS or to get a refund. I know there are tech limits here, but a $2,500 laptop shouldn't have issues quite this noticeable.

I've responded to the DM you sent, and have already opened a ticket internally to see if anyone can find out if there are better OLED batches or not.

Thanks.

@JB1479 thanks for getting back to me. Having checked my direct messages, I don't have anything from you.

For your comparison with mobile phones, that is a valid response, what I will say is the larger the screen the more noticeable the issue will be.

So far, that laptop has only been on sale since June and there is only one part number. There are no alternatives and I believe the panel is on revision A00.

At present I can't say whether there are better batches than others. As mentioned previously, if they are in line with the manufacturer specifications and tolerances, I cant guarantee another panel would be better or worse in your eyes. This is very much a perception issue and from your response I can tell that it very much is an issue for you.

If you are outside of the EMEA (Europe, MIddle East and Africa) region I wouldn't be able to directly assist with a refund or exchange, but I can try and help get it arranged.

As you currently have an open ticket, I would continue to work with that local support agent. 

I hope this helps and I will leave that decision for you to make on how you feel is the best way to proceed.

Alan

@JB1479 have you decided how you want to proceed yet or are you able to help out engineering with a few more details?

Alan

@Bussty engineering have reached out to me to request more information about your issue. Have you claimed your refund yet or do you still have the system?

Alan

Hi Alan 

I have done a lot of research on this now and it seems for PC/Laptop environment, an environment where the display has static elements for long periods of time OLED screens will be prone to burn in, that alone made me want to not own an OLED laptop after viewing some of the terrible images of TV OLED burn in online. 

That aside the uneveness of a brand new OLED panel at 5-10% brightness was just not useable so the unit has gone back this morning and refund is being issued. I did ask Dell if they would consider replacing with an UHD LCD XPS 15 but they declined, it also seemed to be back up at pre sale prices on their website. So I have secured a Dell XPS 15 UHD LCD from a large format store and it arrived today.

I have run the laptop through the 0-100% brightness range (pretty much a series of jpegs created in photoshop ranging from 0 RBG to 100 RBG and the LCD panel is even in all of them, infinitely more consistent than the OLED. 

So I'm happy but for PC I don't think I will ever consider an OLED screen. It sounds like Micro LCD will be the OLED killer but who knows.

Thanks for reaching out.

Andrew Busst

@Bussty thanks for the reply. It's sad to hear that the OLED technology is not suitable for your requirements, however it's great to hear you have stayed with the brand. I shall pass your feedback onto engineering.

Should you have any issues with your new system you know where to find us.

Alan

Hi Alan,

While I'm happy to help with details I have decided to return the machine, in no small part because of the utter ineptitude of the support teams (other than yourself). My email thread is just a series of people sending bad advice about "fixing LCD monitor video problem" (It's not a video problem and this isn't an LCD). I've had to explain this to them 5 times and they're not even looking at what I send. It's beyond frustrating.

I've asked them to set up a return. If they do it right, I might consider the IPS version, otherwise I'll be looking at other options.

Thanks for your help. Let me know if there's anything I can send that would be of help, but it seems like these panels just aren't good enough. 

@JB1479 thanks for the update. I'm sorry to hear of the issues you are having with support.

If you can provide any pictures or videos of the banding that I could pass on to engineering it would be grateful.

Alan

No problem. Thanks for responding to the actual issue here. I know Samsung is cranking out tons of these things...can't help but wonder if they're all like this, or if different coating processes by the OEMs might be to blame. 

The below is simply a uniform grey image. As you can see, it's anything but. On my LCD monitor, my wife's Macbook Air, and my OLED Pixel 3, this appears completely solid, nothing like the banding below. The banding is most obvious with the screen brightness at moderate levels...set extremely low or high, the banding is less noticeable, but the panel at those levels is uncomfortable generally.

@JB1479 thanks for the image. I'll pass it on to engineering for further investigation?

Alan