Guide · Updated August 2026
Dead Pixels: When a Screen Counts as Defective
A new screen with a bright dot in the middle of it feels like an obvious defect, and quite often it legally is not. Manufacturers work to pixel fault standards that allow a certain number of failures before a panel counts as faulty. Knowing where those lines sit, and how little time you have, decides whether you get a replacement or a shrug.
Dead, stuck and hot: three different faults
A dead pixel receives no power and stays black on every image. It is the least visible fault on a dark background and the most permanent: nothing brings it back.
A stuck pixel is still lit but frozen on one colour, usually red, green or blue, because one subpixel is jammed on. These sometimes free themselves after hours or days of normal use, and are the only category where the folk remedies occasionally work.
A hot pixel is white on every image, meaning all three subpixels are stuck on. In the fault standards these are treated more harshly than dead ones, because a white dot on a dark film is far more distracting than a black dot on a bright document.
The fault classes nobody mentions at the till
The international standard for pixel faults sorts panels into classes. Class I allows no faults at all and is rare outside medical and professional equipment. Class II, which covers most consumer monitors, laptops and televisions, permits a small number of dead and stuck pixels per million before the panel is considered defective.
In practice that often means two bright pixels, two dark ones and a handful of stuck subpixels are within specification. One dot in the middle of your new monitor can therefore be both genuinely annoying and entirely compliant.
Some manufacturers advertise a zero-tolerance or perfect-screen guarantee on their premium lines, and a few extend it for a fixed period after purchase. It is worth checking before buying rather than after, because it is one of the few specifications that changes what happens when something goes wrong.
The clock matters more than the count
Consumer law is often more useful than the pixel policy. In the EU and the UK, goods bought at a distance can be returned within fourteen days without giving a reason, which sidesteps the fault classes entirely: you do not have to prove a defect to return a screen you have not accepted.
So test a new screen on the day it arrives, not after the weekend. Fill it with white, black, red, green and blue in turn, look at the whole surface including the corners, and clean it first because dust looks exactly like a fault on a white field.
If you do find something, photograph it against a flat colour with the screen filling the frame. A photo taken while the return window is open is worth more than a description written after it closed.
What to try, and what not to
For a stuck pixel, cycling colours rapidly over the area for twenty minutes sometimes shakes the subpixel loose. It costs nothing and occasionally works, which is the best that can be said for it.
The pressure trick, gently rubbing the spot through a soft cloth with the screen off, works often enough that it keeps being recommended and damages panels often enough that it should be a last resort. Gentle means gentle: hard pressure creates a permanent bruise far bigger than the pixel you were chasing.
Nothing repairs a genuinely dead pixel, and no software can. Applications that claim to fix dead pixels are running the colour-cycling trick, which only ever addressed stuck ones. If the dot stays black on every colour, the choice is the warranty or living with it.