Monitor issues: Should we buy new one or fix it ?

Quality or Quantity?

As years pass by, Technology industries cultivate more the idea of mass production of technological things. Quality is not quite obvious . As far as for Monitors, usually last from 3 to 5 years with minimal or no damage, at full use, no matter what the brand is. After that, Nobody knows for sure.

So should we discard them and buy other  ones or try to fix them?

That relies on what problems we experience.

There is a variety of issues that monitors "go stall" and sometimes symptoms appear, which gives us the opportunity to understand what might the problem is.

So lets analyze them:

• Monitor starts, takes time to project visual: One of the most common problems that many faulty monitors tend to have. Maybe many of us might have realized during use, that our monitor day by day starts "delaying" showing the boot up logo , or even our OS desktop (if delaying that much the situation is a little worse though). Possible issue? A problem on the power board ! Don't be scared ! It's not the end of the world ! Simply if no explosion occurred during use, simply there are "BAD capacitors" on the power board that begun to pop up !

Lets have some visual over this:  

Bad Caps!

 Good Caps!

 Difference between a bad capacitor and good capacitor

So this "tiny" thing prevents our monitors well being. it is not considered that an issue. Many people though instead of checking the problem, they usually go to buy another screen. Those things are cheap to buy and a technician would not take a fortune to replace those.

•  Monitor does not start, black screen of death!: Could again be much of the same! The only difference in that is that maybe caps where too damaged to cause more problems, which means a power board replacement. Again this is not expensive.

• Monitor works, during operation starts visual distortion:  Now this could be a serious issue. If a monitor does such crazy stuff (blinking or image distortion) this means three things:

1. Bad Screen panel,
2. Cable issue (twisted cable that through heat expanded and caused trouble),
3. T-con board replacement

If the 1st and the 3rd happens then it's not that cheap to fix (due to parts expenses, except the 1st one which is affordable but not advised, costs like a new monitor :-S )

A simple example to understand the concept:

Lets say that we have an LG Flatron L207wt

• If we had the 1st issue take place (Monitor starts, takes time to project visual:) the approximate cost of service would be : pair of ideal caps = 5-12 $ + the job of a technician (certainly much less of buying a new screen, much less that 50$)

• If we had the 2nd issue take place (Monitor does not start, black screen of death!:) the approximate cost of service would be pretty much the same except the case of replacing the power supply part which costs at about 50$  + the job of a technician (goes at about 60 to 100$, that depends on the technician ) 

• If we had the 3nd issue take place (Monitor works, during operation starts visual distortion:) the approximate cost of service would be overrated. (in 1st case it might cost more that 150 $ the part of the assembly, 2nd case a change of cable would do the trick "cheap enough", 3rd case depending on the cost of t-con board which might be cheap . In our case, maybe 50 $ would suit fine.) All those + the work of a technician.

So, according to the facts, if you have a Monitor that costs  a fortune and issues like the mentioned above occurred, think twice !