This is a rare one!
We replaced the backlight on the Display Assembly for MacBook Pro 14-inch 2021.
The job started as LCD replacement which is a complicated job in its own right. Chips need to be transferred from the old display to the new LCD so this alone takes few hours. To make things worse, our technician nicked the backlight cable in the process of laking off the old cracked LCD so backlight would intermittently flicker and go off.
The first attempt was to repair the damaged backlight cable. We are used to doing this for A1708 and A1706 models which suffer from flexgate so we thought we’ll give it a go.
It turns out taking out the backlight layer without damaging the little driver chips at the bottom is not an easy task. The backlight sheet is fliexible and glued down well while the chips are rigid and separate from the sheet in the process. After repairing the cable, the result was not satisfactory so we had to source the complete new backlight layer.
It is quite a different concept from other older MacBook backlight systems. The sheet is full of separate LEDs, about 36 x 56 squares with 4 LEDs each. This totals to over 8000 LEDs for the back light!!
Successful job in the end but I would call this Pyrrhic Victory, the job took much longer than anticipated and cost us much more than we charged the customer. I guess we know for the next one, don’t damage the backlight cable on this model!