I played around with 8 different N3DS XL's today (5 units I bought and 3 store demos), in search of a good unit with the right FW. 7 of them had a noticeable scanline effect, and the one that didn't was unfortunately FW9.4. All of the demo units were affected.
First, I think I should define what I mean by scanlines, since there might be some confusion. I'm not talking about the spacing between horizontal pixel rows, mostly visible in 2D mode. That's something that should be visible to anyone who can see. No, I'm talking about an effect, that's visible in both 2D and 3D mode, that appears as though alternating horizontal rows of pixels are refreshing at different intervals. It very closely resembles an interlaced image, even though the image isn't actually being interlaced, and they're not actually scanlines. It just looks a lot like it, and it looks bad.
If you've never seen it or haven't noticed, count your blessings and don't look for it. Once you see it, it won't go away. They're best visible while physically moving the 3DS slowly up to down, left to right, or back and forth while keeping your eyes on the screen. The most offending color is grey, followed by pastels, followed by reds, greens and blues. It's most visible during smooth motion, and smooth transitions (fade-ins or fade-outs).
My DSlite had it pretty bad back in the day. Fortunately I was able to fix it by tweaking the variable resistor trimmers under the battery cover, as illustrated in this guide: http://blog.xorn.org/2010/12/02/old-nintendo-ds-lite-display-scanlines/
Unfortunately, the N3DS XL doesn't have these, under the battery cover or elsewhere. I'm half tempted to further disassemble one looking to see if they lie deep inside, but as I'm likely to return all of them, I'd rather not break something I can't fix.
What's really disappointing is my 3DS XL has an absolutely gorgeous screen with perfectly matching, pure white color temperatures and saturation that really makes the colors pop, and no scanline effect. Going from it to the N3DS XL (or any that I've tried) seems like a complete and total downgrade at this point, which is a shame since I really wanted to use all of the new features.
Not sure what I intend to accomplish with this thread. Is there anyone out there as picky as I am who's found a unit with a good display? Have you noticed the scanline effect? Have you noticed that generally speaking the screens are much lower quality?
Very disappointed here
Edit: Found an (albeit exaggerated) example of what the interlacing effect looks like
First, I think I should define what I mean by scanlines, since there might be some confusion. I'm not talking about the spacing between horizontal pixel rows, mostly visible in 2D mode. That's something that should be visible to anyone who can see. No, I'm talking about an effect, that's visible in both 2D and 3D mode, that appears as though alternating horizontal rows of pixels are refreshing at different intervals. It very closely resembles an interlaced image, even though the image isn't actually being interlaced, and they're not actually scanlines. It just looks a lot like it, and it looks bad.
If you've never seen it or haven't noticed, count your blessings and don't look for it. Once you see it, it won't go away. They're best visible while physically moving the 3DS slowly up to down, left to right, or back and forth while keeping your eyes on the screen. The most offending color is grey, followed by pastels, followed by reds, greens and blues. It's most visible during smooth motion, and smooth transitions (fade-ins or fade-outs).
My DSlite had it pretty bad back in the day. Fortunately I was able to fix it by tweaking the variable resistor trimmers under the battery cover, as illustrated in this guide: http://blog.xorn.org/2010/12/02/old-nintendo-ds-lite-display-scanlines/
Unfortunately, the N3DS XL doesn't have these, under the battery cover or elsewhere. I'm half tempted to further disassemble one looking to see if they lie deep inside, but as I'm likely to return all of them, I'd rather not break something I can't fix.
What's really disappointing is my 3DS XL has an absolutely gorgeous screen with perfectly matching, pure white color temperatures and saturation that really makes the colors pop, and no scanline effect. Going from it to the N3DS XL (or any that I've tried) seems like a complete and total downgrade at this point, which is a shame since I really wanted to use all of the new features.
Not sure what I intend to accomplish with this thread. Is there anyone out there as picky as I am who's found a unit with a good display? Have you noticed the scanline effect? Have you noticed that generally speaking the screens are much lower quality?
Very disappointed here
Edit: Found an (albeit exaggerated) example of what the interlacing effect looks like
maybe all of the ones you looked at were... damaged? somehow?? Perhaps I'm not fully understanding what you mean... a picture maybe? :/ Did you take drugs? 
