From Trying to Buy a Monitor to Creating a Website

I’m a bit of an entrepreneur, and I love restoring products that bring benefits to people. My main projects involve creating various websites, online products, browser extensions, apps, and so on. One of the biggest challenges is figuring out the most useful product for users that will truly be beneficial. I want to share an experience about how, in trying to solve my own problem, I ended up creating a solution that could help others too.

As someone who uses a computer regularly for work, having multiple monitors hooked up is quite comfortable for me. In my office, I had two 23-inch Dell monitors, and it was the perfect setup for my needs. But at home, I worked on a laptop and quickly realized that my productivity was much lower than when I was at the office with my dual monitors. The issue was the time lost switching between different program tabs because I couldn’t see all the necessary information at once. Also, having two monitors is a significant advantage—you can watch a guide or tutorial on one screen while working on the same guide on the other.

Decision to Buy Used Monitors

I decided to buy two monitors for home use. When I checked online for prices, I saw that they had increased significantly. I pondered whether it was worth spending $500-$600 on new monitors or if I should try to find used ones on the second-hand market. Given that I didn’t spend as much time on the computer at home but still wanted comfort. After searching, I found suitable models from two different sellers and decided to quickly negotiate the prices, which were about half that of the new models.

I met with the first owner, who showed me the monitor in action by playing a video. Everything seemed to work fine, so I paid him, took the monitor, and went to meet the second seller. This seller was in a rush, which I initially didn’t think much of. When I arrived, he quickly showed me a specific video on YouTube, explaining he didn’t have much time and needed to run. He said, “Take it if you want it, otherwise, goodbye.” His haste didn’t alarm me then, so I trusted the seller and bought the monitor.

Discovering the Defect

I was pleased with my purchase until I got home and set up both monitors. About half an hour into using them, as I adjusted the settings and opened Photoshop on one of the monitors, I noticed color tints in certain areas. For instance, a gray fill appeared differently across different parts of the monitor. I thought it was just dirty, so I cleaned it, but that didn’t help. That’s when I realized the monitor was defective. It was the one from the second seller, who probably knew about the defect and hurried to sell it. I tried calling him back, but unsurprisingly, he didn’t answer.

After that, I noticed that the monitor, when displaying a single-tone image or just a solid fill, did not render colors properly in the central and lower right areas, especially the darker colors. It seemed as though the pixels were slightly burnt out, and the dark color appeared somewhat gray. The monitor is fine with light tones and bright colours and the defect would not have been noticeable, but on a black screen it was very noticeable and particularly annoying. The unresponsive seller upset me a bit because I effectively wasted $130 on a used monitor that I can not use and it didn’t bring me the pleasure I expected. If I had known it was defective, I might have still bought it, but for maybe $50 or $40, definitely not $130. This experience led me to conclude how great it would be to have such a product, especially an online one, that you could quickly use and check your monitor. This would be particularly awesome for buying used monitors. That’s when I got the idea to create such a website.

Creating a Monitor Testing Tool

The idea was quite simple, so I got down to implementation. In just a few days, I made a beta version of the site and launched it. A few days later, I created my Chrome extension, where users can test their monitors. Recently, I expanded the website’s functionality. Thus, when buying a monitor, I can check the necessary colors and the required quality of my monitor in literally 1 minute. I am sure that the seller won’t be able to trick with a specific video that he picked in advance to hide the monitor’s defects. My test is quite simple but includes testing of a white screen, black, colored screens, gradient, screen color speed, how clearly the monitor transmits color changes, gradient test, and other tests. If you need to use such a test when buying a monitor, I would be glad if you use my tool at AllColorScreen.com. Thank you all.

Short news. Finding pleasant solutions to problems can be very simple and easy. Perhaps, you will find a solution that not only helps you in the future but also other users. Good luck to everyone.