Cracked laptop screen? What repair actually costs and how long it takes

Somebody knocked it off the sofa. Something got shut in the lid. It came out of a bag the wrong way. Cracked screens are one of the most common jobs through our workshop door in Radstock, and one of the more predictable ones.

First: is it the screen, or something else?

Not every broken display is a broken screen. Two quick checks:

• Is there visible physical damage? Cracks, spider-webbing, black ink-like blotches, bright vertical lines. That is the panel, and it needs replacing.
• Is the image fine but very dark? Shine a torch at it. If you can faintly see the desktop, the panel is alive and the backlight or its cable has failed — often a cheaper fix.
• Does an external monitor work? If you plug in a monitor and everything is perfect, the rest of the laptop is fine. That is genuinely good news.

What drives the cost

We will not quote a number here that turns out to be wrong for your machine, because four things move the price significantly:

1. The panel itself. A standard 15.6-inch HD panel is inexpensive. A high-resolution, high-refresh or OLED panel is not.
2. Touchscreen or not. Touch panels are bonded assemblies and cost considerably more.
3. The machine. Some laptops are designed for service; some require most of the chassis to come apart first. Ultrabooks and MacBooks are usually at the harder end.
4. Whether anything else is damaged. A drop that cracked the screen sometimes bent the hinge or the lid too.

Bring it in, or book a repair online, and we will give you a firm price before we do anything. If it turns out not to be worth repairing, we will say so.

How long will I be without it?

We aim to turn repairs around within three days, and we can often do same-day where the job is critical and the part is in stock. The variable is nearly always the panel: common ones we can get quickly, unusual ones take a little longer.

Can I just keep using it?

You can use it with an external monitor indefinitely, and that is a perfectly reasonable stopgap. What you should not do is keep flexing a cracked panel — a small crack spreads, and liquid crystal leaking across the display is not reversible.

Where we are

Our walk-in repair centre is at 1–2 Ludlow Court, Frome Road, Radstock BA3 3FX — easy to reach from Midsomer Norton, Peasedown St John, Paulton, Frome and Bath. Just drop in on a weekday between 8.30am and 5pm; no appointment needed.