Cleaning kits can damage flatscreens

When you’re whizzing round with your duster, do you give your flatscreen a quick polish? Well stop – you could be damaging the screen.

Flatscreens are usually plastic and can be easily scratched with a household duster or even clean kitchen roll. These scratches become visible after only a few wipes and can soon spoil your viewing pleasure.

The best material to use for cleaning a flatscreen is micro-fibre – this has round fibres and soft ends and shouldn’t cause scratches.

What’s more, even if you use a special flatscreen cleaning kit, you could still be damaging your screen as many of the kits currently available contain high levels of Isopropyl alcohol (IPA).

AM Products, a Danish IT accessories manufacturer, has recently conducted tests using 100 per cent IPA on 8 different brands of flatscreens. The screens showed visible signs of damage just two days after being exposed to the cleaning fluid.

AM Products found that the IPA had entered the screen through microscopic scratches and pores in the screen’s surface. The fluid caused bubbles to appear in the screen’s underlying material.

The company is currently promoting its own specially developed screen cleaner. The product is water-based and alcohol-free. In tests, it caused no damage whatsoever to flatscreens.

You can buy AM’s alcohol-free screen cleaner from Selfridges and House Of Fraser. The company’s iClean Screen Cleaner costs £19.99 for 35ml; OneClean Classic comes in a handy spray and costs £14.99 for 30ml; while OneClean Vision is excellent value at just £9.99 for 48ml.

All of the products come with a soft-foam backed micro-fibre pad.

They can also be purchased online from Micro Anvika, an independent retailer of computers and personal technology products and accessories at www.MicroAnvika.com .