Monitor is dimmer and looks worse out of nowhere

Infernalz · November 16, 2023

ASUS PG279Q 27" 2560x1440 IPS 165Hz

Turned on my PC, logged in, 30 seconds later the monitor flashes dimmer than it was. I re-plugged both ends of the display port cable and have re-plugged both ends of the power cable. If I had to say it seems worse on the left half of the screen and the pixels, especially on the gray of the edges of the site here, seem fuzzy and like I'm looking at an array of color that make up the gray instead of just a solid gray. This thing has already got bad image retention over the last ~2 years and it seems this just made it much worse.

I do believe this was first start up after a Windows update (Windows 10), maxing brightness and contrast in the monitor's OSD didn't change anything and the settings they were on were what they were before.

I've attached ~~pictures of the left vs. right sides of this site in terms of the color~~ an image showing the screen as a whole given a full screen of the color of the site color. Even forgiving that horrible band of color you get when getting a picture of a computer screen the actual perceived difference still shows through. That black area in the center has been a problem for a while, along with the spots... I'm thinking I cleaned it wrong but that's not today's problem.

Any help would be appreciated.

GuiltySpark_ · November 16, 2023

Hard to really tell with those pictures. A full image of the screen would have been useful, those give no context to anything.

Dead/dying backlight? Verified bit depth, resolution and refresh are set correctly in Advanced Display settings? Factory reset display?

Infernalz · November 16, 2023

1 hour ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

Hard to really tell with those pictures. A full image of the screen would have been useful, those give no context to anything.

Dead/dying backlight? Verified bit depth, resolution and refresh are set correctly in Advanced Display settings? Factory reset display?

Updated the picture. The darkness on the left side there is what's new. That area just looks blurrier instead of a real solid color like the right side.

Backlight is what I'd have to assume but I didn't think it'd be just a small change. I looked at pictures of the entire screen going black to the point of having to hold a flashlight up to the screen to see anything. I don't know if the backlight would explain the weird color issues though either. Bit depth (8-bit as shown on spec sheets online), resolution, and refresh rate are all what they should be. I don't know where the setting to factory reset would be.

Infernalz · November 18, 2023

;_; Gotta try at least one bump.

blueblur22 · December 2, 2023

I'm also seeing similar things with my PG279Q. For about 2 months now I notice moderate image retention if it displays a static image/HUD for more than 5~10 minutes as well as some significant dimming and dark spots (mostly when the monitor is waking up or powering on). The back lighting becomes fairly normal after a solid ~10 minutes of being actively on. I wonder if there's a cap on the board that's dying on these?

I notice in your picture an especially dark circle in the middle, which mine also has very visibly on startup (though it's easy to ignore once the thing warms up a bit).

I bought mine in Oct 2017.

If you figure anything out let me know. I'm probably just going to have to wait until it becomes unusable and replace it at this point. What a shame, it's been my favorite monitor so far.