Trouble-shooting the Palette Cube/Pico

Over the years, the Palette products have proven to be highly reliable.  They undergo extensive testing before leaving the factory, and have a very well built design involving all solid state electronics - meaning there are no parts prone to failure.

In all our time selling them, we have never encountered an issue with a faulty Pico or Cube device, or even needed to help a customer with a warranty claim.  I'm sure eventually that will happen, but in the mean-time, here are a few tips in cause you feel like you've encountered an issue.

Please note that Palette themselves have an extensive help and information section on their website and you should also check this if you're having any issues or want to learn more about your device.  (We don't repeat information here that they already have available as part of their standard support resources).

The Palette Cube uses a touch sensitive power button.  Occasionally, this can become a bit fiddly if the touch operation has not been nice and clear.  Here are two steps suggested by Palette themselves for you to try:

1. Please ask the customer to power cycle the device by turning it off completely and waiting for 10 seconds before turning it back on. This action should reset the sensitivity of the touch sensor, potentially resolving the problem.
2. If the power cycle using the finger does not work, please ask the customer to perform a power cycle by covering the entire textures area (or , better, the entire top area of the Cube) with their hand for 5 seconds.

We've found these steps always resolves any issues with power on/off.

Here's a little video of how to perform option 2, above, which we've found the most reliable.

The Palette products are tested to stringent conditions before leaving the factory, and we've never yet encountered any Palette device that mis-measures (i.e. can not measure colours accurately to within the stated tolerances, which for a product at this price level, are very tight!).

The first thing to do, if you think you're getting inaccurate readings, is to check carefully what you are doing (i.e. what you are measuring and how you are doing that) - and how you're concluding that the measurements are not accurate.

The first thing to understand is that you can't judge the accuracy of the Palette measurements by simply visually looking at the results on your phone/tablet/computer monitor.  (And especially so if you're not using a proper imaging monitor that is properly calibrated).   The Palette products are far more accurate than typical consumer electronics, so even if you think you have a 'good device' (iPad, Macbook, whatever...) - the reality is that those devices are simply not colour accurate devices.   The whole point about these devices is to give you accurate, reliable and repeatable colour numbers to use in your downstream image processing, so as to avoid the issues of accuracy with your screens etc.

(If you want to solve the issue of colour accuracy of your computer system, we have absolutely scores of information about this on our website, including high quality monitor recommendations and calibrator recommendations).

To test your Palette device, we suggest you start by measuring a few simple things such as a blank piece of paper, or your walls.  Make sure when doing this that you hold the device completely flat against the surface you're measuring, and hold the device as still as you can.

Are the readings for those grossly incorrect (e.g. you're getting an obviously pink reading for a blue wall), and/or do they vary significantly if you repeat the measurement?  If so, there may be a fault - please send us full details of what you've done (ideally a video) and the resulting readings and we can look at this further.  You might need to send the device back to us so we can test it against our known-accurate demo models here.

If those basic measurements seem broadly accurate, it is really quite unlikely (though, of course not impossible), that you have an accuracy issue.  The next step would be to measure against some known colours, if you can - e.g. using a Pantone book or similar, and seeing if the measurements match the expected results.  Even using paint sample cards from e.g. Bunnings might help here - the idea is to take a reference colour, measurement, and see if the measurement results are as expected.

If after these tests you still feel you have an accuracy issue, then please send us full details of the testing you have done for further discussion.  You may then need to bring/send us the device for testing.