Device Tests

About Device Tests

Something is wrong with the hardware and you need to know whether it is the hardware. These tests answer that directly: press every key and watch which ones fail to register, check whether the microphone picks up sound and at what level, see the camera's own output, look for stuck pixels against full-screen colour. They are the first thing to run before a call, after a spill, or when buying second-hand — a two-minute check that separates a broken device from a driver problem. The camera and microphone tests use your browser's own permission prompt, and neither records nor transmits anything.

Buying second-hand is where these earn their keep. Running the keyboard, screen, camera, and microphone tests in front of the seller takes a couple of minutes and covers the faults that are expensive to fix and easy to hide — a dead key, a stuck pixel in a corner, a camera that shows a picture but no microphone that carries sound. A device that passes all four is not guaranteed good, but the common ways of being quietly broken have been ruled out.

The results tell you where the fault is, not just that there is one. If a key does nothing here but the same key works in another program, the hardware is fine and something above it is intercepting the press. If the microphone level moves but a call is silent, the device works and the call's own input setting is on the wrong one. Ruling the hardware in or out first is what stops an afternoon of reinstalling drivers that were never the problem.