In my last post I mentioned that my new iPad Air 5. Generation had an annoying screen shadow. My Apple reseller send the iPad in for repair and it’s already back in my hands.

They told me yesterday, that they didn’t actually repair the tablet rather than just give me a new one. We checked the new device for any problems and after not finding any issues with the new device I went back home. It was only there, that I noticed a slight screen shadow again.

This time the shadow is much lighter though. I couldn’t notice it in the store. In the iPad setup process, the standard Apple wallpaper makes it hard to notice but using safari or any app with a very bright background after the setup is finished made it noticeable.

However, I believe this is as good as it gets since the shadow is only noticeable if you really look hard at it. I can’t really tell if it’s the lamination again or just a tiny difference in dimensions between the case and the screen. If it was the later, the issue should be visible in a lot of iPad Air 5’s. I decided not to contact Apple again for another repair and just use it, since it works just fine. Through to my personal circumstances, I get 3 years of warranty on Apple products and feel quite safe knowing that I can just get a repair in the future in case this problem gets larger.

I need to mention too, that the pictures above were taken with my iPhone 12 mini from a distance of about 5 – 10 cm. If you use the iPad from a normal distance (maybe starting at 30 cm), you won’t notice it at all. The shadow from the last post was definitely visible from further away.

Maybe this post can help you identify a similar problem in your iPad. If you don’t mind you can activate dark mode since most of the time you can’t see the shadow on a dark background.