iPad Pro 12.9 Screen Light Bleed

You’re right. You are correct. The problem with Apple is the loyalty of it’s customers. I’m an Apple fanatic since the mid 70’s with the Apple II. I purchased a CPM board for it so I could use in A-II in the office.

Thanx for your perspective.

My iPad Pro 12.9 has the same problem, so I made an appointment at the Apple Store (Covent Garden, London, UK). My iPad is just 60 days out of Apple Care (yes I should have popped in earlier). I was quoted a whopping £465 ex VAT !!

Ridiculous. That is a repair of appr 50% of the new price of the machine, 2 years after the purchase. Although having been a live long Apple fan-boy I am now seriously wondering if the steep Apple prices are indeed the value for money that I always evangelised.

I have a 2018 12.9" iPad Pro with stage lighting down one side. As someone who has invested a lot of money over the years on Apple machine products, I am very disappointed with the quality of such top end devices. We pay a premium so we don't have to deal with inferior products. I almost find it insulting that they only offer trade ins on such faulty devices rather than acknowledge theirs problems with their hardware. I will kepp this in mind with my next round of purchases.

My iPad Pro, 12.9", 2nd gen., started with just a single "spotlight", about a week or two ago.

Now it has three "spotlights", all clustered together, on the keyboard connector edge, near the Camera edge.

Obviously, it does get progressively worse, with time.

they change yours for another same generation, and you have to pay 650€.....My brother, my sister in low , my sister and my wife are waiting my opinion for the next dispositive to buy...actually all have Apple for me.

I have the same issue - fortunately I bought the 2 year warranty and I am still under warranty. I am going to get it replaced. Just curious, if you have the warranty, can you upgrade to the latest model for a cost that is not so prohibitive?

Yes, it is ... especially because it's supposed to be a premium product.

When I went to have the unit replaced I met a snarky "genius" from the "genius" bar.

Me: I found a thread where other people reported the same issue.

Her: Yes, you can find a thread for anything these days

Me: So do you think this issue is going to occur in the new unit as well?

Her: I don't have a crystal ball.

I showed restraint 😂 but no mercy when I rated my experience with apple support.

I guess replacing the unit is the best I can do just before the warrant expires.

I am still very curious to know whether they changed the hardware at one point in these models. I don't know how it works: how many units of one model are produced, when do they stop producing a model, do they always use the same hardware for a model, even after reports of issues emerge from customers?

Given your experience where the replacements end up having the same issue, it seems to me that they didn't fix the issue.

I guess the best punishment is not to buy their products anymore when that time comes.

since this post was made in 2019, considering you still have the iPad. Has the bleeding gotten any worse or still the same? I’m at a similar situation evaluating my options. The bleed currently doesn’t bother me. But I don’t want it to increase to an unusable state.

No, it doesn't become unusable; all the stagelights eventually merge into a continuous bar of light down the hinge-side of the screen. It's non-uniform backlighting along one edge, but honestly it looks better than the isolated stagelights did.

It's easily-ignored unless you're doing color-critical work along that edge of the screen. Still not cool for a four-figure flagship device, though...I just wish the newer models were available with white bezels.

...my before-and-after pictures were about four months apart, but i think my very first tiny stagelight defect manifested perhaps a year before that and it's still not quite complete if you look at the upper-left corner...much more tolerable than it used to be, though, or perhaps i've just resigned myself to it as my ipad gets older...

For now this seems to be the best and only option, especially as the Trade in Value for 1000€+ iPad Pros is below 300€.

What really upsets me is that Apple is certainly aware of their product defect and this is a case that leans into the legal frame of deceit and malice fraud, at least by german law. It cannot be that customers, especially in this age of consumer protection law across the EU and further, are being treated in this way simply because the finance and legal departments see it as the cheapest way to act instead of offering cheated customers the product and service they purchased when entering a contract with Apple.

Thank for your response SpectrumAmiga6128. I greatly appreciate it.

I ask those because I'm worried that It wont last until I was able to buy a new replacement and maybe managing the brightness might help decrease the progress of this problem. Im still a student and this is my only device use for my online class. I just want to estimate how long it will last usable.

Anyway, i read and watch some informations from technicians and user who encounter this problem. Most of them said that this issue mostly related to the backlight circuit, either the backlight coil or the filter thing.

I am an (obsolete) electronics guy and I believe this is a mechanical stress issue: I had a 3GS disintegrate due to battery swelling and the backlight light dispersion structure had disintegrated as well so I saw that it is a sandwich of plastic white foils, I guess with microstructures on their surface - if forces affect their inbetween distances I expect backlight hot/dark spots appear instead of uniform white, the way you can experience on an LCD monitor/TV with side illumination if you apply slight pressure directly on the screen. I guess the ipad structure is a bit less rigid around the edges and mechanical (thermal?) stresses accumulate over time causing the issue. Hard plastic cases may make the issue more pronounced. When I acquired the ipad I also got a high quality case, used it for a few days and then removed it for good as I found the 12,9 too big to haul around - since then it rests on a stand on the desk. The issue appeared about 12 months after I last used the case so I cannot see a direct connection to its past use but mechanical stress can accumulate in materials like hard plastic and aluminium.

Yes, myaka, I have a «second generation iPad Pro 12.9», and it is exhibiting the «Light Bleed».

However, though my case of «Light Bleed» is localized and small (~1.5 cm), my iPad Pro also has a crack in the black bezel portion of the screen, overlapping the ambient light sensor near the «Light Bleed».

So, my display had additional stress in the vicinity, prior to the onset of «Light Bleed».

I’m simply “hanging on” until Apple comes out with an iPad Pro with at least as good specs as the iPhone 12 Pro Max (though it need not use OLED tech). (I already have the funds set aside. I’m simply waiting on Apple, before I “pull the trigger”.)

Mine began as a small area of bleed like yours, but it continued to grow until it now extends across the entire left, vertical side. It's been in a substantial leather case since purchase, always transported in a well-padded Amazon small laptop case, and has no visible physical damage. Mine has a white bezel. It would be interesting to discover if the issue occurs more or less with each color, although I suspect it's more to do with adhesive quality and/or manufacturing process.