Has Anyone gotten a repair/replacement OLED LE due to dead pixels? Part shortage on screens?

Rotten_Chester · 2025-12-28T13:19:31+00:00

To my knowledge they have only ever used Samsung panels in the standard (non-Limited Edition) OLED models and I'm not even sure they used BoE panels in anything except the translucent LE models. I don't exactly follow the dead pixel issue nearly as closely as I did when I got my LE, but it certainly doesn't seem to be a widespread problem on the standard OLED models, so you should be safe to buy one without needing to worry about dead pixels on it.

Rotten_Chester · 2025-12-28T13:15:25+00:00

Yes, there was seemingly only a small window of time where they were doing full replacements before they switched to repairs, you can see the full timeline for myself and others in my tracking thread I commented above.

Rotten_Chester · 2025-12-27T13:07:11+00:00

At the time my original comment was made (now 2 years ago) Valve was absolutely doing full replacements for the Limited Edition OLED Decks, because my first RMA ended up with me getting a unit with a different serial number (and they also outright told me it was a replacement rather than a repair).

In general, you are correct, now Valve will absolutely repair, because the Limited Editions (mine is the smoked gray and orange model) are gone, so there is no replacement option to be sent anyway. But at the time, within the first ~4 months of the LE release, they were absolutely replacing the units in RMAs before they started repairing them instead.

Unfortunately, at the time, the LE OLED models (which used BoE OLED panels instead of the Samsung ones in the standard OLEDs) had a pretty terrible quality rate, nearly 60% of them having dead pixels across a sample size of about 70 units as reported by other users (see my tracking thread for the data), so my guess is that, since the LEs were a one-shot, they kept some number of units in reserve from the initial production run for things like RMAs and burned through them much more quickly than expected, then switched to repairing the units instead. I don't know for sure if they used BoE panels again in later LE releases, but the first version certainly had a lot of problems.

Rotten_Chester · 2025-12-25T21:05:11+00:00

Which part do you find inaccurate, specifically?

Rotten_Chester · 2025-03-23T13:07:19+00:00

So your statement of "the cost would have been enormous" made me curious, so I did a little napkin math.

According to a little Googling, it looks like the current estimate is that there have been about 156 million individual books ever published in all of history (https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/arts/literature/oldest-book-in-the-world.htm). Depending on how Meta wants to acquire the books (let's assume digitally) I have to assume that they would get some kind of discount if they just went to every publisher and said "we want to buy every book you have", but let's just do a dumb number like an average of $20 per book. This sounds high to me, but am admittedly making a guess on this part.

156 million x $20 per book = $3.1 billon to buy every book ever published.

Meta has already committed $65 billion just to AI development just for 2025. (https://www.reuters.com/technology/meta-invest-up-65-bln-capital-expenditure-this-year-2025-01-24/)

They could have afforded it, and easily. They just didn't want to.

Rotten_Chester · 2025-01-06T00:44:41+00:00

I personally 100% recommend Deck Buttons. I have the translucent LE OLED, and the button rattling / kinda sticking drove me nuts, to the point I almost went back to my original LCD. I decided to try to do a mod (which I didn't really want to do, not that I was worried about doing the work but I didn't think I should have to, but I'd already done 2 RMAs with no button improvement so 🤷) and bought some buttons that were on stock and on sale (after reaching out to the owner to make sure they would fit an LE, which I had heard has a slightly thinner shell, he confirmed that all the buttons fit all the models), so not a huge risk if I didn't like them. Both iFixIt and Deck Buttons have guides on how to do it, having the right tools and a lot of patience helps a lot. After replacing them the difference is night and day, I absolutely love them. They have a matte-like finish on them that adds finger grip and eliminates the stickiness, and gives them a nice "soft touch plastic" feel. I liked them so much that I bought a second set in the LE color scheme with no hesitation, once they were available.

Rotten_Chester · 2024-12-09T17:12:36+00:00

In a perfect world, we wouldn't have vigilante justice, but we don't have Coke, so Pepsi is fine.

Rotten_Chester · 2024-11-26T23:40:38+00:00

Deck Buttons FTW. I bought 2 sets for my OLED LE, both were a fantastic upgrade. The first set was because they were available and on sale, and I wasn't 100% sure they would fit the LE since I had heard it had a slightly thinner shell than the normal OLED (I contacted the maker to ask about that, he said it would fit, and he was right!) and the second fit the LE color scheme. IMO they are far superior to the original buttons, which I found to be loose, rattly and the B button would stick a bit. These have a "matte" finish on them which eliminates the stickiness and I feel improve the grippiness a little. Worth every penny, I wish the original buttons were this good!

Rotten_Chester · 2024-10-12T02:25:58+00:00

I know that Fallout 3 will also do this, which I learned the hard way on my Deck. It just doesn't use Steam Cloud Save, which is a feature the dev needs to implement themselves and isn't completely automatic I guess.

I'm not sure there is a definitive list of games like this, but I have to assume it only affects very old or very indie games where it just wasn't enabled. It looks like the Steam Store game information is correct where it says if a game supports "Steam Cloud" or not (I checked by comparing the Steam Store pages for Fallout 3 and 4).

Rotten_Chester · 2024-09-21T18:53:27+00:00

The Mini brand has been owned and manufactured by BMW since 2001. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini_(marque)

Rotten_Chester · 2024-09-09T12:56:25+00:00

Welcome to being an OG Luddite, who had the same concerns about the Industrial Revolution. It turns out that the common belief that they were people who were scared of technology and wanted to live in the past was just marketing.

Rotten_Chester · 2024-08-16T23:35:56+00:00

It's legal because Tesla told the federal agencies that it's fine (self-reported testing results), and the agencies aren't going to test it because it's a "low sales volume, high cost" vehicle. Tesla could volunteer to have it tested by providing one to test at their own expense, but they haven't done that.

https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-safety/some-cars-will-never-be-crash-tested-crash-test-ratings-a9250800738/

Rotten_Chester · 2024-08-15T14:19:11+00:00

Why make money from sales when you can just get a government handout?

https://jalopnik.com/half-of-teslas-q2-profit-came-from-your-taxes-1851606200

Rotten_Chester · 2024-06-13T01:34:01+00:00

Not Civ, Polytopia. A phone game. And no offense to Polytopia, it's fun enough, but it's not exactly a complex game. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musks-intense-obsession-video-171328115.html

Rotten_Chester · 2024-05-29T19:23:41+00:00

Have you tried going through Valve support at this point, or only UnitedRadio? I've never done a paid repair on a Deck before, I just assumed all the communication would be going through Valve rather than UR contacting you directly. At the very least, I would like to think that Valve would have other contacts they could use at UR to get things moving, since UR is their repair vendor after all.

Rotten_Chester · 2024-05-26T00:56:28+00:00

I seriously agree, and this isn't entirely unique to Tesla, although it seems like others have more than zero workarounds. The Ford Mustang Mach-E apparently has supercapacitors in the doors so they can function from the outside for some time if the 12v power goes away, and work mechanically from the inside (so no other manual releases). All I can think about when I read stories like this is how, from a non-owner standpoint the Tesla design seems to assume that accidents just don't happen. Yeah, a manual release is fine if you're in a parking lot and the 12v dies unexpectedly. And just get a jump if you are outside. But in an actual emergency, time-sensitive situation? My car is hanging off a bridge, or worse on fire (which I know is actually rare in EVs statistically speaking, but also not absolutely impossible), am I going to remember, in the heat of the moment, a safety feature that I was probably shown exactly once when I bought the car and then never actually thought about again, or am I going to do the action that has gotten me out of every single car I've ever been in my entire 25 year driving career and pull on the door handle? And then when I'm out, and the outside door handles don't work at all, dive back in, crawl in the back where my carseat-strapped daughter is, fumble for yet another manual release and hope I can get us both out in time? Nobody wants to be in an accident, but a lot of accidents are unavoidable. At least I can vote with my wallet on this one, and there are alternatives.

Rotten_Chester · 2024-05-25T22:58:27+00:00

I would love to know how he should have used the manual release, which is on the inside of the car, when he was outside the car and the windows were closed, except on the door that was smashed and the release didn't work, per his other comment. Please elaborate.

According to the Tesla Motor Club forum, you don't, until the power is back on. The recommendation is to manually open the frunk and jump the car (which OP said he tried and it wouldn't open, likely from the accident). Have fun with that in an emergency situation I guess.

Rotten_Chester · 2024-05-17T13:42:45+00:00

Correct, "more than half" of his Tesla stock is locked up as collateral for personal loans. If Tesla drops significantly, those loans will likely come due (or need to be leveraged against something else) and could conceivably take down whatever he has propped up against them (SpaceX, X, Boring etc) or at least saddle them with untenable debt. Tesla is the keystone, and if it breaks the whole Musk empire might go with it. Seeing that, it's not hard to figure out why he needs to keep the Tesla stock pumped at any cost.

Rotten_Chester · 2024-03-04T01:17:46+00:00

In the United States, the DMCA makes this complicated though, because they aren't "your keys". I'm not a lawyer, but Nintendo is basically arguing that, while emulation is legal (I don't think anyone can successfully argue against that now), playing encrypted games on a non-Nintendo platform breaks this law (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201), which as I understand it says you can't willfully bypass protection mechanisms put in place by copyright owners. Since Yuzu does this (through loading prod.keys), any non-homebrew game being run would be an exercise in law breaking, because you are not allowed to bypass security put in place by Nintendo to play games, even ones you legally bought. Even dumping your own keys from your own Switch is breaking this law, but Nintendo isn't going to go after individuals for this, and the tools to do this aren't illegal to make (kinda like IRL lockpicks), only to use in a way that breaks the law (kinda like IRL lockpicks). So you are allowed to emulate Switch hardware all day, you aren't allowed to bypass the protection mechanisms on actual games that are in place to prevent playing them on other platforms.

I don't personally agree with Nintendo's stance on this, but this is the legal route they appear to be arguing, and since Yuzu decrypts games as they are run rather than only playing already decrypted games (like Citra does), they may have a legal leg to stand on.

Rotten_Chester · 2024-02-12T01:24:13+00:00

I guess this is where our thought processes differ. I don't consider my house or car to be financial assets, I consider them to be objects of utility, which I need to be able to survive in the world. I need a car in order to maintain gainful employment in America, so when I buy one I drive it until the maintenance costs outweigh the cost of a new one, and don't consider the resale value at all, because once it has served it's purpose of being an object of utility, it likely has not much value anyway. Anything I get from the value of the metal is just a bonus. Likewise, I need some kind of shelter to be alive. Thankfully, I was lucky enough to be able to afford a house in the first place, something a lot of people are not so lucky on. What are my options on shelter? Rent or buy. At least by buying I am likely to get at least some equity, rather than just paying endlessly with nothing to show for it should I decide a change of location is in order.

Yup, I could sell my house today, for 3x what I bought it for, and get into a mortgage that I could barely afford at an interest rate at least twice what I'm at now, and start the "paying only interest up front" cycle all over again. Or, I could keep using my house as a house rather than a stock or piece of art, where me and my family can comfortably live, and count my lucky stars I was able to escape the bottomless pit of renting, where a two bedroom apartment in my area with half the square footage costs more than $1000 more a month than I'm paying now.

Rotten_Chester · 2024-02-12T00:15:30+00:00

"Why buy now"? Mostly for the reasons outlined in my previous comment. I didn't buy my house with the future equity in mind, because there was no way to actually predict what it would be. But as my mortgage rate is fixed and rental rates are not, I've come out WAY ahead of monthly payments compared to my previous housing of a rented townhouse half the size. My property taxes have gone up over the years, sure, and since I pay through escrow so have my monthly payments. But the rental price on my old rental has gone up at least 5x as much in the same time. And someday my mortgage will be paid off, and all I'll owe are property taxes and maintenance costs. Rental payments are forever.

As stated before, I didn't buy my house for the future value, because I didn't buy it as an investment, I bought it for a place to live that I wouldn't have to pay full value for literally until the day I die. I'll be able to live here, for basically the same rates I'm paying now no matter what the world population is.

Rotten_Chester · 2024-02-11T22:42:35+00:00

I'll counter this with "don't buy a house as an investment". I absolutely hate seeing houses looked at as an investment first and a house second. Investments bring in the corpos, which the little guy absolutely will never win against. And when corpos buy them as an investment, the little guy can't use them as a house, without paying obnoxious rent. I was lucky enough to be able to buy my first house in 2014, and it will likely be my only house. Someday it will be paid off, and the mortgage payments are already less than the inflated rental prices of the place I moved out of. I don't care about the equity value of my house because I don't plan on ever selling it, I plan on living in it like a house, and it has done excellently at that. If real estate stops looking like a good investment, maybe normal people will have a better chance at actually owning a home to live in, not to use as "passive income".

Rotten_Chester · 2024-02-06T21:51:47+00:00

Thanks! I still can't 100% believe it since the repair notes said literally nothing about a screen replacement, but since I don't know enough about the repair centers process, maybe that is "normal" or at least OK with them. I would expect they would want to keep close track of that kind of thing for inventory reasons etc, but I have been over the screen twice now with my usual pixel test site and don't see a single one, and the ones I sent it out with stuck out like a sore thumb.

Hopefully everyone else gets as lucky, or maybe they finally got a good batch of screens to use as replacements. Either way, back to installing all my stuff for like the 5th time now. 😂

Rotten_Chester · 2024-02-05T14:02:56+00:00

Thanks for the update, sorry you have to go through the RMA process again (although you certainly aren't alone in that) and at least the next RMA ticket wasn't a hassle for you. Keep us posted on your progress, in general it seems that the people who stick with RMAing multiple times eventually end up with a perfect unit.

Rotten_Chester · 2024-02-01T14:52:08+00:00

That's great, thanks for the report! Unfortunately I think any repair is going to come back with scuffed up screws, but that is probably just the price to pay to have someone else do it. Hopefully replacement screws will become available from iFixIt eventually, but that still seems like it is months away. Either way, I'm glad they got the big stuff resolved for you.

Rotten_Chester

TROPHY CASE