Alienware Provide an Updated Statement on Uniformity Concerns with the AW3926QW
Owners and potential buyers may have heard about some of the concerns around panel uniformity on the new Alienware AW3926QW since we reviewed it and it was released widely a couple of weeks ago. This mostly relates to the use of an OLED care feature called CPC (Convex Power Control) which causes “edge dimming” on the screen as an image retention mitigation measure. This is a pretty common OLED care feature, many screens feature it, but manufacturers usually offer user control so it can be disabled if you want.
CPC impacts and observations
CPC causes the edges of the screen to be dimmed which can lead to noticeable uniformity variation and a vignetting effect. We noticed this during the course of our testing for the AW3926QW (timestamped link) and you will see many user complaints about this online too. See our review for more information on its impact, when it gets activated, how it compares to other screens like LG’s equivalent 39″ OLED (spoiler: that screen has it too!)
Importantly Alienware don’t provide any user control for this feature at this time and so it becomes activated during many situations and can cause issues for some users. For what it’s worth, we didn’t find this overly problematic or obvious during general usage, but we would still rather have the option to disable it if we wanted. We can appreciate many people may find it problematic or distracting for their uses though.
At the time of our review, we fed all of our findings and data back to Alienware for investigation and consideration, and we spoke to the product team at length while we were at IFA at the start of the month too.
Updated statement and latest information
Alienware have provided an update for us on this situation today to share with you all:
Statement on Uniformity / CPC
We hear the feedback on uniformity and are actively testing a potential toggle that could give customers more control over uniformity. We want to make sure we understand the full customer experience implications before we enable anything. More to come soon.
“Customer experience implications” would include things like its potential impact on image retention and burn-in, warranty cover etc so it’s certainly reasonable for everything to be tested, evaluated and considered. As soon as we have any further information we will share it with you and update this news piece. It’s pleasing to see Alienware actively looking in to this and considering user feedback – more info when we get it.
Alienware AMA on Reddit
Kris Graft (monitor expert at Alienware) and other members of the Alienware team are also running an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session on Reddit tomorrow, 11AM – 12PM CT / 12 – 1PM ET, on 16th Sept if you want to know more about the AW3926QW, or any of their new upcoming screens announced at IFA recently (our coverage here). You can join that AMA session here if you want.
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