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I’m : a programmer, writer, podcaster, geek, and coffee enthusiast.

Retina MacBook Pro image-retention test →

Inspired by this MacRumors forum post by kpdillon, I made this web-page version of his test that’s easier, faster, and safer.1

I’ve never noticed any image-retention or burn-in issues on my Retina MacBook Pro. But mine has the LG screen, and after I ran this test for just 10 minutes, I saw the image-retention artifacts clearly.

I’m mildly annoyed, but as John Siracusa recently discussed in Hypercritical (starting at 16:49), getting it repaired or replaced always carries the risk that the likely-refurbished replacement might be a lemon in other ways. And I may need to get multiple replacements before finding one without image retention.

So I haven’t decided whether to get mine fixed. Since I’m outside of the return window, I’d probably only qualify for a repair, which carries less refurb-lemon risk but would still be a pain in the ass and still might require multiple replacements.

  1. Mine won’t display the grid for more than 10 minutes, in case there’s a chance of permanent burn-in. I haven’t heard of any cases of that, but I don’t want to take chances. ↩︎

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