The smudge that won't wipe

You rub a mark off your screen and it stays put. Sometimes it's a loose cable or a bad source, but sometimes it's the panel itself.

“Many electronics users have felt the wave of panic that comes with trying to wipe away a mark on their screen”

Two kinds of bad dot

Pixel faults come in two flavors, stuck and dead. They look alike in shape, and neither spares expensive monitors.

Light is the tell

A stuck pixel is permanently on, glowing blue, red, green or white. A dead pixel has quit entirely and sits black.

“A stuck pixel is permanently on, displaying a constant blue, red, green or bright point”

One you can fix

Stuck pixels respond to a range of troubleshooting tricks and often come back to normal. A dead pixel can't be salvaged, so it's replace the screen or live with it.

“A dead pixel, on the other hand, cannot be salvaged.”

Rule out everything else

Clean the display properly, check whether the dot follows you across different apps, then swap the cable and the input device before blaming the panel.

Run a pixel test

Tools like Dead Pixel Buddy, JScreenFix and Dead Pixels Test and Fix pinpoint the fault. Power or heat related stuck pixels flicker in and out, so test the moment one shows up.

“stuck pixels can sometimes be harder to diagnose, as those with power or heat problems as the underlying cause may only appear intermittently”