Bought new iMac 20" Faded Screen

You probably need to calibrate your imac. It may not help enough (for my G5 i had to do a hardware calibration) but start by going to system prefs>displays>color>calibrate and set the Gamma to 2.2.

No, this has been a problem since the original G4 flat panel imac. Mine shipped with a gamma of 1.3! I don't know why they do this, but it's been going on a long time, only the problem is more obvious as the displays also increase in brightness.

I'm glad you were able to fix it.

Same thing with me; bottom of the display seemed washed out; icons in Dock were washed out; could not even hardly see the TextEdit icon in the Dock!

Did some digging, (um, not here), and tried the Expert mode in the Calibration settings. That seemed to have improved things, but may have made other things worse; now my eyes are messed up from starring at all those panels and I can't get it looking right;

I thought the display was frakked, (new machine, basically right off the line). Maybe I'll **** around with it a bit more; 'tis a shame they didn't come better set-up out of the box; Might have to make an appt with the Genius and get them to calibrate the thing for me;

Sort of glad to see it is not just me; I was going to post about it here to start a thread, but looks like I am not alone;

True. The old G5 17" iMac I had bought my folks 2 years ago was awfully bright out of the box, too. But, that isn't exactly the problem here. What you're probably experiencing is the result of the LCD film type Apple has decided to use on their new 20" iMac. If you look at the specs, it only has a viewing angle of 160 degrees which is even worse than the previous 20" model which had a 170 degree viewing angle.

I live in Boon De'Ville (aka: Myrtle Beach), South Carolina and we don't have an Apple Store, so I can't support my opinion yet. But if Apple is using TN film in their new line of iMac LCDs as oppose to IPS film like their Cinema Displays, then you among many others are in a world of disappointment as I once was/am.

If you're a designer or photographer, you'll notice the following…
Looking at your iMac head on, does your display appear darker at top, and washed out at the bottom? Use a solid color for your desktop image. Does it look like a gradient? If so, then most likely the LCD is a TN film-based matrix.

Because of the cheap parts, TN LCDs are produced alot these days. They are total crap and they are everywhere, like Circuit City, Best Buy, Costco, etc. It would be very hard to find an IPS or PVA LCD monitor, unless you go to a specialized tech store.

People need to be educated about this issue. It's serious. Coming from a much older LG (a beautiful IPS LCD), I never expected LCD displays to head in the wrong direction.

According to the specs, I'm guessing the new 24" iMac does not have this fault, since TN film can not display a 178 degree viewing angle. So, I am guessing the 24" iMac uses the same IPS film as their Cinema Display.

My suggestion would be, go to the Apple Store and see for yourself. Kneel down in front of it as if you were viewing it from your desk chair, so you can get a good idea.

For more info on LCD types, do a Google search. This topic is all over. Also check this link out: http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/whichscreen1.htm

If you set your background to a solid color does it appear lighter at the bottom than the top? Mine gets very faded near the bottom of the screen.

It sounds like they are using TN film on their 20" iMacs, especially given the specs they supply on their product page. Believe me, though, some TN displays are just horrific. My former Samsung 2026BW was really dark at the top and just as washed out towards the bottom. At least my parent's 17" iMac isn't too bad up top, but it suffers at the bottom, which seems to be the case with many others experiencing the same thing with their new 20" iMac. I guess that's how they cut costs. More users need to stand up and complain.

Have you previously owned an older LCD iMac, Cinema Display or different brand LCD monitor?

John,

I too have an original iMac Core Duo. I really love the matte screen. Looks very sharp. When i got a macbook last year i just couldn't get used to the glossy screen. Things like icons just weren't very sharp on it so i returned it. Am very happy with the 1st gen intel iMac.

The only thing speed wise i didn't like was the long time it took to encode video in h.264 for my video ipod. So i spent $100 and got a Elgato Turbo.h264 USB accelerator. Now my iMac encodes 4-5 times faster. So it's like i've got a MacPro for that stuff.

lenn

You know, mine was way to faded out at first as well but: I went into the System Preferences -> Displays -> Color and chose the Adobe RGB (1998) Profile and it seemed perfect to me. That profile was much deeper and richer. Did you atleast try that? You shold have.

Just FWIW, I tried that last night with my 20" and it is definitely lighter on the bottom of the screen, even looking straight on. It's like a gradient instead of just a solid color. Is most noticeable for me with that medium grey color.

Played around with the Expert settings on the Calibrate Color panel/tab, and can get some things to look better but then other things look a little off. Most disappointing. I'd think that if the product was going to look like this, and people were going to have this kind of experience, Apple would not have sold it. When I buy Apple I expect to not have to worry or fool around with this kind of thing, especially right out of the box.

I have to totally agree. The icons are not sharp and the white is painfully bright. I play WoW and inside the game the glare is completely unacceptable. I did take my first unit to the genius bar as it also had some dead pixels. The "genuises" didn't see anything wrong with my screen. I'm not too keen on the gloss screen either. I really don't want to see myself first thing in the morning :P. Setting the profile to Adobe RGB (1998) D65 WP 2.2 Gamma provides some relief but not enough. I also played with a profile but like others on this post, the results were mixed at best. I'm obviously NOT a professional color profiler.

I'm on the phone with technical support and if they can't provide me with a satisfactory answer then the unit is going back to the store and I'm going back to my old 20" iMac that I was so happy with. I will be sad to part with this sexy machine but my poor eyes can't tolerate that bright white.

CWO Eric

Follow-up on support call. I just got off of the phone with a very nice support engineer and I'm sending my iMac to engineering so they can check out the washed out issue. Initial call from Apple is that it is a hardware issue with the screen. I'll keep this updated as I learn more!

I appreciate people posting work arounds but with Apple we should not have to do any sort of work arounds. The best thing to do is call support and let them know that you are having an issue so that they can address it.

CWO Eric

Message was edited by: CWOEric

I just bought a new 20" iMac last night. The default color profile is ridiculously bright and washed out, as folks have mentioned. However, calibrating the display in "Expert Mode" corrected the issue, and the display now looks great.

Eric, I played World of Warcraft last night. At first, things were too bright and overblown as you mentioned. However, to correct the problem, first calibrate the display, and then in your WoW video options, select the "Use Desktop Gamma" checkbox. This will cause WoW to use the calibrated color profile. Once I did this, WoW looked great--rich, vivid, and not washed out at all. Plus, the HD2600 PRO actually does a fine job running WoW in 1650x1080.