Expected Life of a Monitor

carrierPigeon

Limp Gawd
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I am considering buying a used Asus PB298. The price seems fair but I am not sure if I am valuing the monitor correctly. The monitor in question was probably manufactured in 2014. So, it has probably had a few years of use.

What's the expected life span of a monitor like this, assuming 50 hours of desktop use per week. What typically fails first on monitors?
 
I'm not sure but I have 3 Asus VE248Hs and have been using them for about 70 hours a week for the last 7 years and they still look great.

Edit: I also have 2 Samsung 940BWs that are about 14 years old and they're still kicking ass.
 
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my monitors always last a long time...my most recent NEC 2490WUXi lasted for 8.5 years...it still didn't completely die, there was just this large vertical stripe near the middle (probably an issue with the ribbon cable on the top bezel)
 
I had an Acer monitor last me 8 years. I retired it when I got a 4K. It still works, I have it hooked up to a bench PC in the basement.
From what I have seen from my computer repair shop days the most likely failure is the internal power board. Usually old age sets in on the capacitors which causes the screen to not power up or flicker periodically.
Not sure what has changed over the years on that front.
 
I had a batch of Samsung monitors purchased around 2006 that started to go bad. First one in 2012, two in 2013, and just this week another one. Busted caps in the power circuit. They were repairable with a recapping kit. The most likely thing to go bad in my experience is capacitors, or the backlight itself, and both of those aren’t a big deal if you’re a little handy. Whether it’s worth fixing stuff a decade+ old when 5 year old stuff can be had cheaply, I leave up to the reader.

A monitor from 2014 probably has led backlighting, which is more reliable and easier on the monitors power supply than the cold cathodes in older lcd displays.
 
I have a Dell 2407wfp, it's more than 11 years old.

Still being used on a daily basis, backlight is still going strong (sits at 30% up from 20% when I got it).

I also have a few Dell 20" 4:3 with IPS too, they are even older, but not used as much.
 
My daily driver Benq G2400W is 118 months old, still going strong. I plan on retiring it to my 1 day a week work from home extra monitor when the 144Hz 4k monitors are released. I had the power button break twice within the warranty but it has been fine ever since.
 
my monitors always last a long time...my most recent NEC 2490WUXi lasted for 8.5 years...it still didn't completely die, there was just this large vertical stripe near the middle (probably an issue with the ribbon cable on the top bezel)

I had a couple of those monitors and while the color accuracy was still fantastic, I sold them because they were not nearly as bright as they used to be. I want to say they were a little over 100nits at max though I can't remember for sure
 
At home I've got a pair of NEC 2090's I bought 3rd party refurb a decade ago. Both going strong today as side monitors on my main display.

I also have a 3090 factory refurb that served as my main screen for about 7 years before being sidelined by a 32" 4k. It still works fine, I need a bigger desk to bring it back (in place of one of the 20s),

the NEC multisync 90 series was their flagship line from around 2005-10 and were built like tanks.

At my previous job I had an dell 19" 1280x1024 display that lasted my 11 years; it was old enough to date back to when that was a high end model. For my last 8ish years I also had a pair of 22" 1680x1050 displays, these were very middle of the road quality items and I went through 2 or 3 replacements in that time. With the possible exception of the first one, they were all internal used models though not brand new. Model numbers suggested the failed screens were 6-8 years old when they went.
 
My Samsung 275t is 11 years old. Still nice and bright and looks good...

I had a Benq 19" monitor that lasted almost 4 years before the back light went out on it....

Monitors for me last longer than pretty much any other component of my PC.
 
I had a couple of those monitors and while the color accuracy was still fantastic, I sold them because they were not nearly as bright as they used to be. I want to say they were a little over 100nits at max though I can't remember for sure

I don't have anything to measure with, but both of mine are at max brightness and quite comfortable at that level so they're definitely down a lot from max.

If the brightness on my Acer XB321HK is linear from zero they're down to about 70-80 nits.

I'd gladly buy replacements if anything was available, but while NEC recently refreshed its 21" 1600x1200 model, they haven't released a successor at the 20" size. No one else has anything at 1600x1200 at all.

EDIT: 0 on the Acer's still respectably bright, so my old monitors are a bit brighter than I'd estimated before. Still well past their glory days though.
 
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My Dell 3008WFP was bought as a floor model at CompUSA in 2008. Its used for over 8 hours a day and is still used today.
 
I have this old hp tn from a friend. Its 10yo amd have 22400 hours on the counter. Still works
 
I haven't seen a lot of old dell monitors fail. I've got a 2407WFP just turning 10 years old and 2007WFP turning 11 this year. Both still work, not as bright as they may have been but they're still going.

At my place of work there are a lot of old monitors still in use. A 12 year old samsung died recently and another of the same age works but will not auto sync.
 
I have a Samsung 244T that did daily duty for a very long time, lasted about 11-years when it failed. Main problem it had is if power was disconnected from it, it would need 15-minutes or so before it would turn on. It also made squealing/hissing sounds. I guessed it was probably bad capacitors, and when I took it apart I was not surprised to find 5 bad caps. I've had it sitting apart in my basement for 2yrs, I intend to replace the caps eventually.
I also have a really old HP 15" 4:3 VGA-only monitor that was given to me. It's probably real old (15 yrs I would guess) and just failed late last year. It started doing weird stuff, OSD randomly coming on and not responding to front panel buttons. Also assumed to be bad caps, and was not surprised to find my assumption validated.
Lastly, I have a Samsung T260HD that also did daily duty, it was purchased new. Probably from 2009, it died about 6 or 7yrs old. Backlight wouldn't come on one day. Saw a few Youtube vids mention the inverter transformer is a common problem. Saw mine was burned and open-circuit, so I replaced it with a $5 eBay one and it's been fine ever since.

I would say bad capacitors are the most likely cause of monitor failure. 5-10yrs for Chinese caps, longer for Japanese caps. My 244T had CapXon China caps and still managed to last over a decade.
 
LCD monitors with CCFL lamps are much prone to lamps dimming and getting more yellow over years. Lamps at times fail, voltage increasing circuitry also likes to fail. Still some monitors last decades...

With LEDs you can expect much more life span.
Of course LCD panel itself can fail or get bad pixel or whatever or board failure or power circuitry failure, etc. but these were always much rarer occurrence than backlight failures.
 
Three Dell 2001FPs still working great...maybe 15 years old. In any case, I wouldn't worry about a 4-year old Acer, should be fine for awhile.
 
anywhere from 1 minute to 20 years, it really just depends on customer use, heat, hardware used by the manufacture.. 9 out of 10 display failures are usually the caps bulging/popping before it's the panel it's self dying.. for example i have a samsung 19" 1280x1024 display that i bought in 2006 and have replaced the caps on it twice.. but then again i have an asus 21" 1080p that the panel shit the bed 3 days after the warranty expired.. there's really no way to know how long a display may or may not last but i'd definitely look around for customer reviews and see if you notice a failure rate trend for that display, if it seems to be high then i'd consider passing on them. if you don't notice any real complaints it's your choice and money to decide if it's worth the risk.
 
U2711 nearly 7 years and two small grey discolourations at top of screen recently. Not really noticeable. I have once or twice left sky lights open In winter and it got so cold the LCD would only partially display. Probably had something to do with it.
 
have a dell 1907fp that only lasted 10 years before it got the white screen of death.

have a sony 17" that is 15 years old still works.

Have old laptops whose screens still work after lots of regular use.

shit happens. lifespan is unpredictable.
 
I still have 3 Dell 2209wa I bought new in 2009 running great to this day. I have gifted those to family members but not a single issue. I honestly think they are easier on reading text than most my newer monitors even though the resolution is lower.
 
Strangely, the monitor and TV I have with CCFL backlights have run strong for nearly 10 years, while in that time three displays with LED backlights have malfunctioned. COINCIDENCE? Probably.
 
In average I'd expect perhaps 7 - 9 years, if you're lucky you could even get like 13-15 years of use but sometimes it fails in matters of years, it's a lot based on luck. But after 7-9 years you should WANT to upgrade the monitor anyways as there's something better out there by then, only for server rack monitors or whatever you might keep it for how long it runs.
 
My two Dell 2005s died last year. I bought them as used corporate models.
 
My 24 inch Dell I bought in 2002 is still working fine and I use it as a secondary monitor for coding. It is very good.
 
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