The Retina MacBook Pro Apple gave me as a replacement for my 17 inch MacBook Pro exhibited some minor image retention pretty much out of the box. It was so mild and faded so quickly that I didn’t worry too much about it. After 8 months the image retention had become more pronounced and remained on the screen for longer so it was time for a visit to the Genius Bar.
The Genius ran the official image retention test. It’s a 4 minute test; they leave a checkerboard pattern on screen for 3 minutes, then the screen goes black for 1 minute. If at the end of the fourth minute the pattern is still visible, the display fails the test and is eligible for replacement.
They didn’t have the display in stock so I had to wait a few days for it to come in and then another few days for a Genius Bar appointment just to drop the computer off which was disappointing. When I dropped my MacBook off this morning, the Genius figured the repair would take closer to 3 days to fix vs. 7. It seems that was the case since they called me a couple hours ago to let me know it was ready for pickup today. Pretty awesome.
UPDATE: After Apple’s lightning-fast repair, I went to pick up my MacBook. A Genius brought it out and booted it up and, wow, the screen was yellow. It looked like it had been calibrated to about 5,000K. He took it to the back for a minute, but it looked the same when he came back out. So, it’s back in for repair. Apparently they get displays made in batches so the Genius mentioned that another display from the same batch could look just as bad. I will be astounded if that’s the case. If I bought a new machine that looked like that, I’d return it.