Broken LCD

My brother's laptop is almost two years old and he expects it to last for two or more years. This morning, he opened his laptop and saw vertical lines and unstable images on the screen. We tried to connect an external monitor to its vga port and the display was fine. We suspected it was a damaged lcd and this was confirmed by a service center. We were shocked by the repair/replacement cost estimate, however. The quoted amount is almost half the price of a brand new laptop with the same specs. We are presently weighing our options. One is to just use an external monitor which will come out cheaper but will make the laptop less portable. Another is to buy a brand new laptop with the same specs. We don't think it's wise to replace the lcd because there's no assurance that the motherboard or hd will last long enough to recoup the lcd replacement cost.

Any advice? Thanks in advance.

 

Here's a service manual link, it will show you how to replace a lcd screen
you can download the doc if you like top left.

https://www.manualslib.com/manual/440327/Acer-Aspire-V5-431.html

Obtaining a new lcd screen is easy from ebay

IF YOUR NOT IN THE UK THEN
GO TO EBAY IN YOUR OWN COUNTRY.

Here's an example from the uk ebay site,

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_f...V5-431lcd.TRS0&_nkw=Aspire-V5-431lcd&_sacat=0

 

I wonder why the replacement screen is that too expensive. Maybe the tech is trying to con you? No offense meant but over here, there are repair shops that offer very cheap replacement parts that they call factory overruns. And they will offer you a choice between an original part or a surplus which is cheap enough. When our desktop's power supply got busted, we did not have an issue because the tech seemed honest and we settled for the surplus part that has only 1 month warranty. Now it's almost a year with that surplus power supply and it's still working good.

 

I would recommend just replacing the screen if that particular laptop means a lot to you, and also just keep using the vga cord, or just replace it with a used laptop. You can just take the SSD and put it in the used one, it's not hard to do.

You can probably find a used laptop for the price you would pay to fix it from the pawn shop.

 

Thanks for the input, guys. My brother settled for a 22" external monitor because sadly, we're both laptop tech challenged, and we don't want to worsen the situation.

@Corzhens , we're from the same country, I suppose, and I know about surplus and original parts. Laptop lcd is one of the most expensive parts of a laptop. If it's just a desktop part, I would have done it myself. I can buy a discounted laptop of the same specs from Octagon Superstore at Php 11,000 and I am being quoted a total repair price (parts and labor) at P4,500 by the 4 repair shops I've canvassed. I've looked around olx and the quoted prices are close enough but the sellers' locations are not.

 

If you do replace it yourself, you get to learn how (that's fun, right? . You also get to use it longer or sell it as used when upgrading. Dead electronics are a waste.

 

Buy a new LCD screen. If the genuine one seems costly, buy a cheaper variant and replace the screen yourself. The screen probably faced some sort of a pressure on it, so make sure it doesn't happen again. Its not that hard to replace screens and it makes no point getting it replaced by someone else.

The last screen that I got replaced was back in 2006! The guy charged me about 30% of the lappy's price, which made no sense to me. Soon after I went on ebay and even back then ebay had an assortment of screen replacements for my system's model. If you don't trust ebay, then you can always go buy stuff on Amazon.

 

In my opinion when a major parts of your computer is broken, you should always get a new computer instead of fixing it. If you fix your old computer, it is still old computer. If you buy a new computer, it is better than th3e fixed old computer. Once I had a laptop which needed keyboard replacement (several keys were missing), DVD drive replacement (the lens was damaged) and a cooling pad (it had over heating problem). When I calculated the money needed, it was more than the prece of new laptop. I bought a new laptop.