Another one to avoid - Inspiron 3520

Got a laptop with a broken screen to repair. It was an Inspiron 3520. Ordered the screen. Knew from the service manual that it was another one of those fine Dell offerings which needed complete disassembly to remove the hard drive. Screen arrived yesterday, as promised by laptopaid on eBay.

Followed the service manual to repair. Bad move. It said I had to do a teardown to remove the screen. So I removed the keyboard and took out all the screws from the bottom and from under where the keyboard was. Next step: Remove the palmrest/touchpad. Couldn't do without breaking it. There is no simple way to pry the touchpad from the bottom of the chassis. So I had to find another way.

I looked through the service manual and saw that the screen bezel could be removed very easily. I did so. Next was to remove the screws attaching the screen and then turning over the screen to detach all the connections. After that, it was easy to reverse the steps and put all the screws back in.

Good news: Screen repair done. Or was W once said: "Mission accomplished", except that it really was. Didn't take too long to do, and customer was impressed that the total time to repair was shorter than the last time, and actually the same as my estimate.

Bad news: Cheap construction. This is the second screen replacement for this 3520. Both times, the screen displayed all sorts of artifacts. My speculation is that the screen back is so damned cheap and flimsy that it is easy to do sort of torsional twist of the screen and bye, bye, screen. And fugeddabout it if you need to remove the hard drive.

Other bad news: It runs Windows 8.

Checked original price from one the 3520 reviews back in 2012. Now I understand. It was probably a Best Buy or Walmart special at around $400.

This is the second laptop screen repair I have done without removing the screen assembly from the bottom of the chassis. The other was a Lenovo Thinkpad T420, a far, far better build than the 3520... Ben Myers