Reasonable life expectancy on a CRT?

My monitor of about 9 months just died, and I'm curious as to whether such a short lifespan indicates that the thing had a (hopefully rare) defect, meaning I should request a replacement, or that the manufacturer made a bunch of * monitors and goes on my blacklist.
I bought the monitor that just died, a Samsung SyncMaster 957MB, from Newegg late last July. Even during the first week I noticed a high-pitched whine whenever I was viewing anything with a lot of white or light color. I knew that it was a bad sign, but I had tossed out the bulky box once I saw that the thing had a picture. The noise would diminish or disappear when I highlighted the text (since highlighting would usually darken some parts of the picture), so I figured I'd deal with it. I also noticed that when the furnace would come on, the picture would shake for a couple seconds. (The furnace is less than 1m from the monitor, although there's a wall in between them.)
Apart from the noise and the fact that it's dead, it's a great monitor with a nice picture, bright colors, etc. Googling around, it looks like the a handful of people have noticed the whining too. I found one instance where someone had one of these with a 3-month lifespan, but I wasn't sure how to Google for it. There may be more.
So the question is this: what's the fairest thing to do, given that the monitor had such a short life? Should I contact Newegg and ask for a RMA/refund/replacement, should I ask for a partial refund or should I just deal with it? I'm miffed that the thing had such a short life, but I'm not out for blood and I can live without a the monitor until this gets sorted out.

RMA --I have Monitors that are over 10 years old and working strong, although the picture is not as fine as the newer models.

ive got two Win95 era 14inch monitors. ( my 17" is on knossos)

one of them is just great, and one of them * requires * ever harder and more multiple thumps/whacks/smacks to power on.
right now it takes 3 *Hard* smackings to power on, and sometimes it powers off randomly - requiring the same treatment to go again.

the high pitched whine sounds like what happens to mine ( the 17") if i set the refresh rate too high, or overclock the vidcard too high or both.

when that happens though, it goes into standby with an allmighty *crack* (kinda like the mother of all static discharges) soon followed by the sound of capacitors winding down and static crackle you dont want to imagine. i aviod that now.

vidcard O/C and/or refrash rate too high?

Edit: that being said, samsung is making some really good stuff last few years, sounds kinda suprising.

It doesn't matter, you have a right to an RMA as long as it's still under warrenty, which it should be with only 9 months.

ghettocomp said:

RMA --I have Monitors that are over 10 years old and working strong, although the picture is not as fine as the newer models.

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Monitors should last 5-15 years, IMO. I still have a SyncMaster from my PII-350... so it's probably about 6 or 7 years old now. I've also got an old 14-ish inch Compaq monitor that I got with a PI-150MHz, so thats got to be even older.

for the past couple of years crt tech has sloped off but they last for a LOOOONG time (like digging said anywhere from 5-15 years)... MY nec 19" moniter has been the best 19 crt mon to buy for ages (multisync fe991sb for reference)... companies concentrate more on lcd's but crt's still rock!

i've still got a 15 inch monitor that came with my first PII back in 1996. Nearly 10 years old. King_Warg has some monitors that are closer to 15 or 20 y.o. and still work fine.

The thing definitely isn't OCed and I made sure to either Google the refresh rate info or get it from the manual (I can't recall which). Now that the consensus seems to be an RMA, how should I ship it? I don't have either a box of a suitable size or styrofoam blocks. I accept that I'm going to have to pay for tossing out the box the monitor came in, but I'd still like to spend as little as I have to.

bump

They should last about 10 years. I have one that's like 15-20 years old. My 955DF used to make the high pitch noise when it was at a white picture but overtime it went away. It's the coils making the noise, sometimes they need sometime to break in or they aren't covered in enough hot glue to stop the noise. I found plugging it in to a good power conditioner helpped a lot. You might want to invest in a UPS for you computer system they do a lot.

It used to be CRT's lifespan were average 10 years at least in the broadcast industry but most would go longer. Today I think standards are slipping 5-15 sounds about right. A high pitched whine from a CRT is usually the oscillator having problems. If it's still under warranty get a replacement.

I found out that it's still under warranty (3 years == woohoo), but it costs US$40 to get a replacement shipped. Fortunately, Samsung has a deal with UPS where I'll be able to swap the old monitor for the new one at the UPS place, so not having a box won't be a big deal.
I'm hoping that the new one will be here next week, although it'll probably be more like 10 days from now.
Thanks for the info all.

Good luck Ihope the new one lasts longer than the first.

you guys sayin moniters last you 15 years must NEVER use it! all of the CRT's i had lasted 2-5 years at most, if you use them alot they wont last long, i belive the average life on a crt is 20k hours compared to 60k on a lcd. Now i have 3 lcd's, and 1 CRT, which is about to die, and it will be time for another lcd.

I notice the whine since I boosted refresh rate too. Damn, I'm gonna turn mine down.

Sevin7 said:

you guys sayin moniters last you 15 years must NEVER use it! all of the CRT's i had lasted 2-5 years at most, if you use them alot they wont last long, i belive the average life on a crt is 20k hours compared to 60k on a lcd. Now i have 3 lcd's, and 1 CRT, which is about to die, and it will be time for another lcd.

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Whoa, whaddaya DO to them?

I've been using some IBM P70 trinitrons every day for 4-5 years, and they were 3 years old or so when I got them as refurbs. Think the manufacturing date is in 1997. I've had the odd early 90s era monitor up and quit on me, but they usually had "issues" when I got them. Anything I've ever had in perfect condition is still going strong. Well actually I had to replace a resisitor that burned out on the neck board of a "Orchestra Trumpet" monitor that my wife had from new in 1995, a few years ago, but apart from that, I've had good luck with CRTs.

I can imagine cheap/low end monitors blowing after 2 or 3 years, but if you've been using them hard for that long you should be damn grateful they finally gave out and saved your eyesight

Decent CRTs are bulletproof. IBM, Sony, NEC, Samsung etc should all be good for 10 years+

LCDs however, seem prone to blowing backlights that are out of production after a year or two and hard to source or replace.

Road Warrior

Sevin7 said:

you guys sayin moniters last you 15 years must NEVER use it! all of the CRT's i had lasted 2-5 years at most, if you use them alot they wont last long, i belive the average life on a crt is 20k hours compared to 60k on a lcd. Now i have 3 lcd's, and 1 CRT, which is about to die, and it will be time for another lcd.

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What the...? I've worked on CRT that are over 15 years old. Most of the time they are either being used, then the screen saver is on or they are off.

It has seemed to me that older monitors have lasted longer. Newer monitors that run at much higher refresh rates seem to burn out faster. I've been through several 17" to 19" monitors over the past few years. I'm voting for 2 - 5 years for newer CRT's. Why do you think the manufacturers warranties on CRT's are allways 3 years? If average lifespan was 10 - 15 years the the warranty would be for 5 or more years easy.

J.

juliendogg said:

It has seemed to me that older monitors have lasted longer. Newer monitors that run at much higher refresh rates seem to burn out faster. I've been through several 17" to 19" monitors over the past few years. I'm voting for 2 - 5 years for newer CRT's. Why do you think the manufacturers warranties on CRT's are allways 3 years? If average lifespan was 10 - 15 years the the warranty would be for 5 or more years easy.

J.

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Warrenty gives you an idea of how long the engineers expect it to last, but sometimes they design it so well it lasts much longer. Cars are warrented 3 years yet we have cars that are 10 years old and are still running strong. Warrenties are warrenties, but the real world is more than calculations.

Anything electronic that has a warranty is designed to last longer than the warranty. ie, a product with a 3 year warranty is designed to last 5+. They make lots of money on extended warranties when you dont need them.

And CRT's are nearly bulletproof, go pick up any tv that is 20+ years old, it still works..