Strange "Ghosting" / Image Retention on Display

[balboah]

Interesting... No my screen is usable aside from the ghosting, which seems to be worsening. Changing the drivers, or forcing the use of the nvidia card as well as a different operating system don't change anything for me. Guess that's just reflective of a primary hardware issue.

[SS77]

That was my problem originally, just ghosting/persistence that worsened for about 1 month but then one day I lowered the display brightness and the whole display turned fuzzy and unusable. Switching to 40 hz at least made it usable for me. Its a hardware problem no way around it though. Seems like it gets worse the warmer the machine is also.

[julien_ebisu]

The Refresh rate is interesting to highlight the issue.

When the laptop has been cooling down, shutdown, for a night, I can sometimes get the 4K default display to work again.

It shows as "59Hz" in the Windows hardware specs.

When the screen goes crazy again I managed once to get the display to come back at 40Hz.

60Hz consistently failed, 40Hz consistently worked on that day.

This does not remove the ghosting. But it adds flickering (my eyes can see the 40Hz refreshing).

Other times, even switching from 60 to 40 or 40 to 60 won't get the screen back.

Only cooling down for several hours will.

So it looks like the screen at cold boot can handle 60Hz, then as some electrical parts heat up and lose their characteristics, only 40Hz works, then none of them if you keep using your laptop longer.

Still not a fix, but you can extend your screen time a little longer at 40Hz.

Julien

[zeeep]

I also have a 15-ch0xx which is 25 months old. 

My screen has just started doing exactly what everyone else is describing. I've got some strange ghosting above any application to the top of the screen and it follows when you drag the application around.

This is the second screen this laptop has had and I'm ready to throw the towel in with this device.

The first screen started flickering uncontrollably but would settle down eventually and then it was just unbearable so I changed the screen. 5 months on the replacement screen looks like it's going wrong as well. 

During this time also, the shift buttons behaved erratically and wouldn't work for certain letters. QUIOP would not go uppercase and I had to clean the keyboard ribbon. 

I'm disappointed with the reliability of this device. When I first got this laptop I was amazed by it but it's reliability has completely ruined the experience for me. I bought this for my freelancing work as it was powerful but now I just can't rely on it and I can't see me buying another spectre if this is what the experience is going to be like. 

Colin

[LpMathurin]

Same thing here!

I bought HP Spectre x360 15-bl1XXXX in January 2018 and the same issue appear after 1.5 years of usage, so after the warranty. This is a 2K laptop so it's totally unacceptable that HP does nothing since we all have the same issue.

I'm now selling my Spectre x360 and will not come back with HP.

[balboah]

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@julien_ebisu wrote:

The Refresh rate is interesting to highlight the issue.

When the laptop has been cooling down, shutdown, for a night, I can sometimes get the 4K default display to work again.

It shows as "59Hz" in the Windows hardware specs.

When the screen goes crazy again I managed once to get the display to come back at 40Hz.

60Hz consistently failed, 40Hz consistently worked on that day.

This does not remove the ghosting. But it adds flickering (my eyes can see the 40Hz refreshing).

Other times, even switching from 60 to 40 or 40 to 60 won't get the screen back.

Only cooling down for several hours will.

So it looks like the screen at cold boot can handle 60Hz, then as some electrical parts heat up and lose their characteristics, only 40Hz works, then none of them if you keep using your laptop longer.

Still not a fix, but you can extend your screen time a little longer at 40Hz.

Julien

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My screen has now progressed from ghosting to having the same issue - after a prolonged usage, even including standby time as opposed to a complete shutdown, the screen will flicker and not tolerate a 60Hz refresh rate. Like in your case Julien, if I turn the refresh rate down to 40 Hz, the screen becomes usable, albeit with some ghosting and the noticeable 40Hz flickering.

I agree with so many other folks in this forum - the sheer number of people reporting this issue suggests a problem with the HP hardware, yet decent support is lacking and no one from HP wants to answer the question whether this is a known issue. HP is probably not the brand to go with if you want a reliable computer...or not needing to refill cyan if you want to print black and white only...

[zeeep]

My first screen showed the same symptoms, dropping the refresh rate would stabilise the screen.

It would flicker all over the place, even look like an old CRT TV that's not tuned in correctly. I spent ages thinking that it was a driver issue because the screen would sometimes go back to normal if I fiddled with refresh and resolution. 

Changing the screen solved the problem until now where the second screen is now showing ghosting. 

Maybe the hardware is not up to displaying such a high resolution? I don't know, but it's deeply frustrating. 

[balboah]

Hi Zeep,

I fear you might be right. Again, frequency of posts about this issue and the activity in this thread I think are evidence enough that this goes beyond what one would expect as the "normal" amount of occasional faulty hardware.

I will get my screen replaced soon - how long did your replacement last?

Cheers,

B

[ezcomeezgo]

its sad to see that such an expensive piece of machine is so prone to faults. HP get your act together. I got my screen replaced and I was under extended warranty. I have only 6 months left on my warranty, I hope that problem doesnt make a come back after that. 

[balboah]

Yeah, agreed! HP has been plagued with hardware issues, every printer and every old laptop someone in my family had...

I will say though, that the Spectre x360 I'm using otherwise has been working like a charm. Fast processor, speedy hard drive response through the SSD, despite not having the most boisterous graphic card still running games with decent results. The design is sleek too. Sad that all of this gets overshadowed by the screen issues.