After about 3 or so years my 3 20 inch LG Flatron W2052TQ monitors started failing. They were continuously powered on for their entire life and would simply go into sleep mode when the computers weren’t in use. You can see the repair video below that shows the 2 1000uF caps that were the culprit. At this time I have still to crack open the other 2 monitors but they were showing the same symptoms so I am sure the same 2 caps have also failed in them. When they were powered on they would come out of sleep mode with no issues and work fine, the issue was if they were ever unplugged and allowed to power down completely. The power on button would need to be pressed many time or the power cord would need to be plugged and unplugged many times over and over to get the panel to liven up. In the end they just didn’t turn on or they would just turn on for 10s of seconds before the panel just went black.
The teardown shows what I consider very poor build techniques. First of all the entire monitor is held together with plastic snap together construction. I would have loved to see some screws holding things together allowing it to be serviced easier. But what I was very surprised at was how the electronics cage was just floating inside the box. There is a bit of tape holding it in place and a few tabs on the base plate bracket. In the video at around the 25 minute mark you can see a poorly designed PCB mounting design. I could see this passing as OK if they were making a few hundred of these but I am thinking they make hundreds of thousands of these monitors.
You can see many pictures below, full res images can be found here.
LG I think your quality needs to be improved!
