When a screen needs replacing rather than repairing
A laptop panel is a sealed unit — the glass, the LCD layer and the backlight come as one part, so damage to any of them means a replacement rather than a repair. These are the symptoms that point at the panel:
- Cracked glass, or a spider-web crack spreading from one corner
- Black patches or ink-like blotches that spread over a few days
- Vertical or horizontal lines that stay in place when the image changes
- Half the screen dark, or a backlight that is lit but showing no image
- Flickering that changes as the lid is opened and closed
- Nothing on the laptop screen, but a perfectly good picture on an external monitor
Not every blank screen is a broken screen
If the display is dark but an external monitor shows a normal picture, the panel itself may be fine — the fault can just as easily be the ribbon cable, the backlight or the graphics chip. That distinction is worth settling before anyone buys a panel, and it is exactly what the diagnostic step is for. It has saved people the price of a screen more than once.
Which panel actually goes in
Panels vary by resolution, refresh rate, brightness, connector type and whether the lid was touch-enabled, and two that look physically identical can still be the wrong part. The replacement is matched against the panel already fitted rather than against a marketplace listing, and you are told what is going in — an equivalent panel, not whatever was cheapest that week.
Bring it in, or have it collected
The workshop is in TW18, a short hop from most of Spelthorne, so a laptop can be handed over in person and picked up the same way. If getting into Staines is awkward — no car, an inconvenient shift pattern, or simply not wanting to carry it — it can be collected from the address and returned once the work is finished.
What it costs
Labour is £65, plus the panel. Diagnostics are free when you bring the machine in, and if the screen turns out not to be the fault there is nothing to pay. The panel varies far too much between models for a published figure to mean anything, so it is quoted with the labour as one number before it is ordered — never after it has arrived.
See the full price list
