Hi Krystian. Nobody can answer that question for you and you'll have to decide to chance it or not, as it's quite a lovely laptop in other respects (or at least my T440P was). Not everybody is as critical of certain things as others, so there's that. And also, Lenovo sells thousands and thousands of these laptops and even what seems like a relatively large number of complaints may actually be a very vocal but very small minority of a bulk of largely happy purchasers.  Who knows.

Mark,

I am still wondering why Lenovo have substantial non-TN display quality issues while the competition in the same price tag don't. Lets summarize it:

1. X220/X230 LG e-IPS displays suffers from excessive image retention, backlight bleeding and white spots developed after few months.

2. T440s AUO AHVA displays have noticeable backlight bleed and very inaccurate colors, typically the white background color is rather yellowish.

3. T440s LG e-IPS displays have very uneven backlight

Just take the other brand model having IPS display and compare them side-by-side and you will understand.

My 10 years old ThinkPad R51 has 15" SXGA+ IPS display made by IDTech. There is no noticeable backlight bleeding (compared side-by-side to X220 display), no image retention at all, no white spots, white color still looks white. After 10 years it is still in perfect condition.

X220/X230 screens are not e-IPS, they are AH-IPS; the LG display in the T440s is also AH-IPS.

Lightbleed on some IPS displays is something every manufacturer sometimes has. Even very expensive ZBook Dreamcolor 10-bit Displays or some of Apple Retina Macbooks have light-bleed issues.

My AUO display has no issues with yellow whites. However, there were some Touch models with this problem: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T440s-display-colors-calibration-problem/td-p/1327155 But most Touch models and all non-Touch models seem to be ok, the whites are very bright and white. The AUO displays is also used by other manufacturers (HP ZBook 14 / Elitebook 840 for example) and is in general a excellent display.

No wonder your R51 doesn´t suffer from light-bleed: This is an issue with LED displays, your R51 still uses CCFL. CCFL display develop other problems over time, for example a red teint when the CCFLs are dying (we have one R51 with SXGA+ IPS here with this issue).

A month ago, I called German Lenovo Support to switch my LG panel for an AUO. I sent in some photos and they agreed to switch the panel, however, only LG panels were in stock back then.

It was a bit back and forth, they said they can only exchange parts with the same FRU-No and it took some time until they looked it up in their system that these two are both valid replacement parts.

Today I read from an Austrian guy who called Lenovo Support and apparently, they got AUO panels in stock.

So I called Lenovo again, had to go through the same discussion again and the support person said he will look at the pictures I sent in the last time before he decides if they are going to proceed with the matter, however, he couldn't do so before tomorrow since these pictures are only accessible by the person who was originally responsible for my service request.

The tech support guy was quite surprised by my request for an AUO panel, he said that this is the first time he ever heard of any issues with those LG panels. He was quite sceptical about whether this switch would make any sense, but I guess I will hear the outcome of their assessment in the days to come.

Stay tuned for more...

Just read another glowing review of the AUO display at the Lenovo notebookreview.com forum. 

Unless something gets posted here by a Lenovo rep updating the status of their investigation and some resolution, I (and I'm assuming a few others) will continue to wait and/or explore alternatives.

And another update. Tech came today and switched my LG panel. They held true to their word and actually did send an AUO panel instead of switching it for another LG panel.

Comparison of my panels, I'm going to give highly subjective ratings from -4 (really bad, could hardly be worse) over 0 (average) to +4 (outstanding, hard to get it better). I'm judging them as IPS panels.

___________

Dependency of illumination on viewing angles:

LG: -4

My biggest grime with it. I posted some pictures before. While the pictures slightly exagerate the effect compared to how I perceive it in nature, it's still very strong.

AUO: 0

Notperfect either. Watching straight on, you can see that whites get noticeably darker towards the horizontal sides. Depending on how you turn/tilt the display, you can see shifts of brightness that are stronger than I know it from desktop IPS panels.

HOWEVER, the effect is much weaker than on the LG panel. I'm simply mentioning it to state the facts. Still, it's night and day compared to the LG! Might not be the perfect choice for someone who really wants a panel that shines in this area, but it's good enough for me. The effect is there, but it totally lacks that "in your face" momentum. Changing the viewing angle by 5° no longer results in extreme brightness shifts and you can actually tell whether you see an image with a gradient or not.

___________ 

IPS glitter / "snow"

Don't know if there's a better term for this effect. It's not exactly unsharpness but it gets really annoying to look at after a while. For me it also has the effect that the picture appears slightly unsharp even when the panel actually isn't once you look at single pixels.

LG: -3

After a while, my eyes always started to feel a bit like when you look at a bright light source after being acclimated to darkness. Whenever I looked somewhere else, I've seen some slight retinal bright patches for a few seconds. I really don't know how to describe it better, I know this description is quite vague.

AUO: +3

Yeah it has glitter too, but it's very minor. If you just look at it and not closely examine it, my guess is you won't notice it. Very nice.

___________

Backlight bleed:

LG: +2

Minor at best. It's not like an OLED panel, but still no problem at all. If you look at a black picture in a dark room, you can see some unevenness, but then again, why would you...

AUO: +2

Has some edge bleed, not uncommon for edge lit LEDs (which is like every LED LCD today). Still, the effect is minor. Black screen, maximum brighness, normally lit room, I can't see it. Once I turn off the light and shut the blinds a bit, it becomes visible. This might be the case as well if you use it to watch a movie in the evening/night. Still, you have to be really picky to consider that a real issue.

___________ 

Contrast:

LG: +3

Not OLED like, but still really good

AUO: +3

Quite comparable to the LG

___________

Brightness:

LG: +1

Good, but not especially good. If brightness is a top priority for you, there are better panels. Bright enough to be used outside, but you should avoid direct sunlight.

AUO: +1

Yet again, quite comparable. However, the brightness is actually of much more practical use since it doesn't get ruined by viewing angles.

___________

Colors:

LG: +3

If you're able to look past the glitter and the huge brightness shifts, this panel actually had quite good colors. Unfortunately, it's very hard to do so.

AOU: +2

Some people reported a significantly warm picture, some others a yellow or brown taint. While it might be slightly warmer, I cannot second the yellow/brown taints (unless this is your general perception of a warm image). The main reason why I rate it slightly lower than the LG is that the color balance noticeably shifts when you change the brightness. At lower levels, whites get a noticeable green/blue taint. While it's possible to calibrate against it, you really would have to recalibrate whenever you change brightness. I can handle it since I don't care about color accuracy that much with lower brightness settings.

Beyond that, colors are good and accurate. At least adequate for an IPS panel and much better than most laptop panels. I wouldn't be surprised if scientific measurements of the panel would hint towards giving a slightly worse rating, I don't have the subjective impression that the colors are off when I look at the screen.

___________

Mattness:

LG: -1

Still clearly matte, yet reflecting more than I would like. Not sure if this might be related to the strong glitter.

AUO: +3

Not moth eye panel quality, but still, it's a good matte panel. Direct light sources will be visible slightly blurred, beyond that, reflections are vague at best. Also, the matte coating doesn't let the picture appear grainy or unsharp.

___________ 

Conclusion:

The two panels are quite compareable in many aspects. But the very bad viewing angles and the strong glitter totally spoil the overall decent results for the LG panel. While AUO doesn't have perfect viewing angles either, it doesn't have any strong flaws and most results are at least solid or better. The issue with non linear color balance to brightness might be annoying for some, but for me it doesn't break the overall good to very good impression.

The AUO panel definitely swims with the best in the pool of laptop panels.

So overall, I'm really happy with the new panel, finally, I can use the laptop without constantly being annoyed by retilting and turning the screen whenever I move my head. The AUO panel isn't perfect in every aspect, but its a pleasure to look at and a steep upgrade over any other ThinkPad panel I've seen so far (mostly TN panels and some old IPS panels).

As a side note, also at Lenovo: You might want to think about streamlining the process of screen replacement regarding the bezel. My technician just had the panel with him and he was simply told to install it. While he seemed to have quite some experience with ThinkPads in general, it was the first time he worked with a T440s. He was quite surprised that it was just glued. He really had a wild time rumbling with it until he got it all off. A lot of the glue stuff got wasted in the process.

When I told him that the HMM recommends that the bezel gets replaced with the panel as well, he wasn't the least bit surprised and agreed that this seems to be the smart call.

Given the circumstances, the end result doesn't look too bad though, he was somewhat careful when reattaching the new panel to the bezel. But still, the bezel is slightly loose in some areas now, while it was quite solid before. As long as it stays like this, I'm fine with it, but he already told me that I might want to request a new bezel somewhen in the future, in case that it does start to come off.

We will see. Still, overall I'm happy with the result, especially since the screen delivers what I expect.

Hi,

I'm a new Lenovo customer. I just received my T440s (ordered on 16 February). Unfortunately the screen is an LG (I really hoped get an AUO). The screen quality is very disastrous... I have never seen a so poor quality on a laptop!

For me it's not a IPS panel: it's neither more nor less a bad TN panel.

(you can even see a white dot on this one)

So: poor viewing angle, screen bleeding, white +/- yellow

I plan to contact Lenovo about this problem. The problem is I live in France but I'm currently in Germany for my studies (and it's really difficult to send/receive packages from my german dormitory).

I have read that some of you have bought a AUO panel directly from Amazon or Aliexpress and they have replace the panel themselves. Is it difficult? I'm scared to break my new laptop. Do you think it is possible to change the screen by a professional (in a Lenovo reseller)?