Future-proofing my OLED

[R-T-B]

It's inherent to the technology bill (actually all emissive tech but yeah). I don't really understand how what I am saying is FUD. If its managed well (and it is) its a nonissue.

 

[JustBenching]

It's inherent to the technology bill (actually all emissive tech but yeah). I don't really understand how what I am saying is FUD. If its managed well (and it is) its a nonissue.

It's pointless, just say yes and move on.

 

[R-T-B]

It's pointless, just say yes and move on.

Fair enough.

 

[mama]

The modern oleds are pretty good at mitigating burnin.
The only thing i do with mine is set my wallpaper to slideshow on a 30 min rotation, and auto-hide my taskbar in windows.
and of course windows turns off the display after 5 min of inactivity.

Agreed. The burn in thing creates unnecessary fear. I have had various modern LG OLEDs for five years plus with no issues.

 

[R-T-B]

Agreed. The burn in thing creates unnecessary fear. I have had various modern LG OLEDs for five years plus with no issues.

I mean yeah that's what I think we all agree on. Regardless of the technical reasons: for 99% of use cases it is nothing to fear. The only situation I would get worried on is longterm static images, ie I wouldn't use it as a billboard. But who would?

 

[JustBenching]

Agreed. The burn in thing creates unnecessary fear. I have had various modern LG OLEDs for five years plus with no issues.

Part of not having fear is understanding what burn in is. Missinformation like burn in is preventable is just crazy. Even if you are just watching movies on your oled (which don't have any HUD or static elements on the screen) will still result in uneven wear on your panel, simply because not every subpixel will be used for the same amount of time in movies. That will lead to blue subpixel 1 having been used for 900 hours while blue subpixel 2 next to it for 300 hours. Now when you try to display a blue image at 600 nits, subpixel 1 can only hit 550 nits of blue while subpixel 2 can hit the full 600. That will result in what we call "burn in", the image won't be uniform.

Now the nice part is that after a couple of thousands of hours the pixel cleaning algorithm (it's a process that runs for 1+ hours) will detect which subpixels have been used more than the others and compensate by feeding more voltage to those subpixels (increasing their brightness and bringing them back on par with the rest), or if there is a no headroom for that decreasing the brightness of all the unaffected subpixels decreasing the brightness on your monitor (which is why it's not the best idea to have a background - even a rotating one - on your desktop if you plan to keep the monitor for 5+ years of heavy usage).

Now again, I personally don't care about those tests that they do to detect burn in with a full blue / red / green image etc, I feel they are useless. If you can't detect it on normal usage playing games browsing or watching movies then it's kinda irrelevant, and I don't think you can cause such an amount of uneven burn in within 2-3 years to make it noticeable. I have couple of thousands of dota 2 games with static HUD and still nothing. It will definitely be a problem down the line, I expect some permanent and obvious image retention at the 3rd to 4rth year, but that is kinda of an extreme usecase.

I can't be bothered. Both my laptop and desktop displays are OLED and I've tried, but no way I'm using my computer like that. I'd rather have it burnt in like a livestock brand than having to place my mouse at the bottom of the screen for the taskbar to show.

You can get used to that. I used to hate having to hide the taskbar but now I can't sit on a PC with a taskbar on. I feel like it's taking too much space. It's different on a laptop cause most modern laptops have a 16:10 ratio, but on a PC monitor that is 16:9 it takes a lot of the already limited vertical space.

 

[Thimblewad]

I can't be bothered. Both my laptop and desktop displays are OLED and I've tried, but no way I'm using my computer like that. I'd rather have it burnt in like a livestock brand than having to place my mouse at the bottom of the screen for the taskbar to show.

I'm keeping the taskbar on. I'm using darkmode anyways so I hope it won't be too bad after a while

 

[Vayra86]

Yeah, same here, the "pixel refresh" thingy runs automatically but hey, doesn't hurt to run it when I know I won't be coming back to my PC for a while, right? Right?View attachment 391977

Pixel refreshing is really a gradual way to equalize brightness and you might consider what that really means: the overall brightness range of each pixel is reduced, effectively this is just built-in 'wear levelling' of the pixels. I wouldnt run it too often. The panel should manage that itself.

Nothing. I let the default settings do their thing.

My LG 55" OLED TV is on a minimum of 6 hours per day, 365 days per year. 8+ hours is more typical. There is no evidence of burn-ins, image retention, degradation of display of the color blue, brightness dimming, or any other image quality concerns.

HOWEVER, I only purchased it May 23, 2017 so it is not even 8 years old. I'll let you know if things change.

BTW, OLED manufacturers have implemented even better mitigation features since I bought mine.


That is FUD. I am glad you contradicted yourself, and that blanket statement, by adding,

No normal person is ever going to display a solid color 100s of hours on end. So to suggest burn in cannot be avoided is nonsense.


Ummm, not even. I am afraid you don't understand what burn-in is. The goal is to have no burn in. And with modern OLED technologies, along with normal viewing habits, that is not hard to achieve.

Airport flight schedule or ATM monitors would be a poor choices for OLEDs, as examples, because grid patterns and the exact same text might be displayed in the exact same locations and patterns 24/7/365. But home-use TVs and computer monitors are not used that way.

Pixel shift is very effective at mitigating image retention problems, even with things like the Windows taskbar. But to that, if one ALWAYS displays the taskbar, would it matter if the image is retained? When would you notice it if you always display the taskbar? ???

Yes of course, if you ABUSE your OLED TV or monitor by displaying an image no normal user (and that is 99% of us) would ever subject their OLED to, you might see some image retention issues. So if you are going to abuse your OLED by using it in some manner the manufacturer NEVER intended it to be used, don't buy one.

But if you are going to use your OLED to watch TV or do computer tasks or play computer games, get one and totally enjoy the vastly superior image. And don't let the FUD comments worry you.

I think its about time you educate yourself on what pixel refreshers do in oleds. Ive explained it briefly here and so has @JustBenching ; it is retention prevention and seeks to prevent permanent burn in, but fact remains, its preventing burn in with a lasting effect by driving pixels dynamically. This is a finite exercise, eventually limits / tolerances are reached and the brightness of all pixels is reduced to meet correct color/luminance balance.

Visually the panel might not feel reduced in performance for a long time, which speaks to the tech's effectiveness. But that stops abruptly when you put a used oled next to the same one new.

 

[Dr. Dro]

I'm keeping the taskbar on. I'm using darkmode anyways so I hope it won't be too bad after a while

It won't be bad, don't worry about it. I don't hide the taskbar either, it's counterproductive. Besides, let me be perfectly honest and up front with you, mate. If it means I'll get Paimon, March 7th and Anby burned in my taskbar, I accept the terms of the deal

 

[JustBenching]

It won't be bad, don't worry about it. I don't hide the taskbar either, it's counterproductive. Besides, let me be perfectly honest and up front with you, mate. If it means I'll get Paimon, March 7th and Anby burned in my taskbar, I accept the terms of the deal

View attachment 392286

It's a good thing that progress in oleds and minileds has accelerated recently, by the time I get any noticeable burn in I might as well just upgrade to a new monitor. Being patiently waiting for a 42" LG GX series to use as a monitor but nope, they only make those at 48" and above.

 

[Endymio]

Part of not having fear is understanding what burn in is. ...after a couple of thousands of hours the pixel cleaning algorithm [will] detect which subpixels have been used more than the others and compensate by feeding more voltage to those subpixels (increasing their brightness and bringing them back on par with the rest)

You have that exactly backwards. It doesn't brighten pixels which are showing abnormal wear (measured by v/c levels), but by lowering the neighboring pixels to better match. It's simply a more advanced version of wear leveling.

 

[Maxiaid]

I used to hate having to hide the taskbar but now I can't sit on a PC with a taskbar on. I feel like it's taking too much space. It's different on a laptop cause most modern laptops have a 16:10 ratio, but on a PC monitor that is 16:9 it takes a lot of the already limited vertical space.

I think the opposite of that is usually true, my laptop has a 14" (16:10) screen, my desktop monitor is a 27" (16:9) screen. There's much, much more screen real state on the larger screen, a slightly higher aspect ratio doesn't come close to making up for it.

It's a good thing that progress in oleds and minileds has accelerated recently, by the time I get any noticeable burn in I might as well just upgrade to a new monitor.

I'm thinking of the same approach, maybe by then it'll be time for me to make the jump to 4K.

I'm keeping the taskbar on. I'm using darkmode anyways so I hope it won't be too bad after a while

I mean, all those white characters and program icons will still get burnt in. Just don't stress too much about it, by the time you get it it will no longer be a flashy new item and you won't care nearly as much as you do now. My AMOLED phone has the icons from WhatsApp, the notification bar and the keyboard very noticeably burnt in, if you look for it it's clearly visible, but most of the time as you use the device going about your business you don't even realize at all.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Missinformation like burn in is preventable is just crazy. Even if you are just watching movies on your oled (which don't have any HUD or static elements on the screen) will still result in uneven wear on your panel

I think its about time you educate yourself on what pixel refreshers do in oleds. Ive explained it briefly here and so has @JustBenching ; it is retention prevention and seeks to prevent permanent burn in, but fact remains, its preventing burn in with a lasting effect by driving pixels dynamically.

Gee whiz! You guys are so intent in saying I'm wrong and you right that you are not even paying attention to what I said, or even what you are saying. This is really sad.

@JustBenching - Uneven wear is NOT the same thing as burn-in. Just like a regular lightbulb gets dimmer over time, emitters weaken too. And no two lightbulbs will dim over time at the same rate. That degradation or uneven wear is NOT burn-in! And not once did I ever say or even suggest such wear does not occur.

@Vayra86 - I think it is about time to educate yourself on how to read and understand what people (and yourself)say. Don't you see that you just agreed with me? You just supported my entire argument. You just said "retention prevention seeks to prevent permanent burn-in." Clearly that means retention and burn-in (while related, with one leading to the other) are not the same thing. AND then you reiterated that by saying, "its preventing burn-in".

Thank you for agreeing with me. Sadly, you're so eager to make me look bad and you good, you don't even see that we are on the same page!

But not only that, it is about time you educate yourself on the difference between image retention and burn-in with the natural "aging" (if you will) effects on the emitters. That is, the reduced brightness (dimming lightbulbs) over time you pointed out that I NEVER disputed.

I don't really understand how what I am saying is FUD.

It is FUD because you and others won't let it go! This even after you claiming it is a silly argument, you again and again come back to spread it.

Yes, you said (my bold underline added),

If its managed well (and it is) its a nonissue.

But that was right after you started that same post with,

It's inherent to the technology

FTR, all electronics age with performance weakening over time. Yes, that is a blanket statement, but I am not aware of any electronics that isn't adversely affected by time. Fact: No monitor screen technology is immune to reduced brightness issues over time.

Now I will repeat what I said before and you guys can continue to perpetuate your silly argument as you wish as I am outta here.

The real bottom line is this; if users are looking for a new monitor, they should consider OLED too - unless they plan on displaying a static display (like a company logo) in the exact same place for hours and hours and hours on end - and if they intend to disable the maker's pixel shift and other burn-in mitigation features.

 

[Psychoholic]

While i do a few things to mitigate it, I low key kind of hope it burns in within a few years, I have a 4 year replacement plan that covers burn in

 

[JustBenching]

But not only that, it is about time you educate yourself on the difference between image retention and burn-in with the natural "aging" (if you will) effects on the emitters. That is, the reduced brightness (dimming lightbulbs) over time you pointed out that I NEVER disputed.

The fact that you don't understand that permanent image retention IS caused by the emitters naturally aging....wow. It's the reduced brightness that produces the effect of burn in,

 

[Dr. Dro]

I mean, all those white characters and program icons will still get burnt in. Just don't stress too much about it, by the time you get it it will no longer be a flashy new item and you won't care nearly as much as you do now. My AMOLED phone has the icons from WhatsApp, the notification bar and the keyboard very noticeably burnt in, if you look for it it's clearly visible, but most of the time as you use the device going about your business you don't even realize at all.

Which model? Older phones all have severe burn in issues. Have a Galaxy S5 that has screen burn so bad, that the upper half no longer displays a white tone at all. Newer phones should be much more resistant to burn in, especially if they're premium iPhone models that do have an OLED screen (the cheaper ones don't). Up until at least the Galaxy S10 generation, One UI 4 and Android 12 don't really have any sort of panel maintenance or burn in mitigations in place, so burn in will occur - my S10+ started to show retention on the notification area after around 4 years of use.

 

[AusWolf]

What have you guys been doing to prevent burn-in?

Not buying OLED. Simple. Why reinvent the wheel?

 

[Maxiaid]

Which model? Older phones all have severe burn in issues. Have a Galaxy S5 that has screen burn so bad, that the upper half no longer displays a white tone at all. Newer phones should be much more resistant to burn in, especially if they're premium iPhone models that do have an OLED screen (the cheaper ones don't). Up until at least the Galaxy S10 generation, One UI 4 and Android 12 don't really have any sort of panel maintenance or burn in mitigations in place, so burn in will occur - my S10+ started to show retention on the notification area after around 4 years of use.

Samsung Galaxy M31. I bought it January 2021 for about 200€. Cheap, low to mid range phone so it checks out. Picture quality is excellent, but it does have burn-in.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Samsung Galaxy M31. I bought it January 2021 for about 200€. Cheap, low to mid range phone so it checks out. Picture quality is excellent, but it does have burn-in.

Mmm yeah, those entry level devices use much older tech to keep cost down, so understandable

 

[Vayra86]

@Vayra86 - I think it is about time to educate yourself on how to read and understand what people (and yourself)say. Don't you see that you just agreed with me? You just supported my entire argument. You just said "retention prevention seeks to prevent permanent burn-in." Clearly that means retention and burn-in (while related, with one leading to the other) are not the same thing. AND then you reiterated that by saying, "its preventing burn-in".

Thank you for agreeing with me. Sadly, you're so eager to make me look bad and you good, you don't even see that we are on the same page!

But not only that, it is about time you educate yourself on the difference between image retention and burn-in with the natural "aging" (if you will) effects on the emitters. That is, the reduced brightness (dimming lightbulbs) over time you pointed out that I NEVER disputed.

Its a semantic discussion. The pixels age, end of story. The pixel refresher is there to counteract that behaviour. But at its core, without the tech to reduce its effect (because the pixels still age) you would see OLEDs burn in faster than you can imagine. I remember an age of AMOLED phones that simply started showing different color temperature over time, exactly because of this. We've also seen Rtings test a few panels where the pixel refresh would NOT kick in at its specced or required moments and we directly observed a significant increase in the image retention and on top of that, it becoming permanent despite further pixel refreshes later down the line. Surely you realize that regardless of whether you've been showing the TV logo in the top left/right of your screen the whole day, these refreshers run anyway? They will equalize things. Depending on your usage, that could result in a downgrade. People have wildly varying use cases. It shouldn't be a talking point. It never was with LCD either.

The facts don't lie. Without the varnish, OLEDs die faster than you can blink. This info isn't new either, its been a major thing plagueing OLED since the moment it got invented. Its the main reason Samsung had so much trouble implementing it in a way that actually worked for the lifetime of a product.

You are disputing obvious facts here. Its not about eagerness about persona anywhere. Its simply about stripping down the marketing around a technology to its bare bones. OLEDs simply age, the same way a backlight in an LCD ages, and since OLEDs are much smaller, they also age faster and in more specific ways.

Additionally, I would like to point out the absolutely fucking immense cognitive dissonance here: we have a topic FULL OF PEOPLE saying you should take some measures, however minor, to counteract retention effects. And here you are saying it doesn't exist 'with normal use'. Pray tell... what IS normal use for a DESKTOP MONITOR. Surely it is showing the taskbar 100% of the time, right? And then we've come full circle in my mind: its goddamn obvious OLED does still suffer from burn in, because if you don't take measures you never took with an LCD panel, you will see reduced lifetime. Your N=1 experience doesn't even come into play here. There are numerous scientific papers proving this effect.

 

[RejZoR]

What I did for my OLED monitor:
- use Dark Mode
- use Dark Reader extension or Dark Mode in browsers
- set taskbar to auto hide
- removed files and folders from desktop, moved Trash to Start menu and disabled it on desktop
- set 100% black image as screensaver and set it to 2 minutes
- set a ton of dark style wallpapers, just random photos I found on wallpaper websites that cycle every minute (or just solid black wallpaper if you don't care of blank desktop)
- set monitor image shift to High so it makes biggest image shifts in random directions

Taskbar auto hiding prevents it burning in, no static icons on desktop ensures they won't be burned in, when screen saver kicks in it basically turns off the monitor because all pixels go full black but monitor instantly wakes up if I move mouse unlike full standby where it shuts off its board entirely, cycling dark wallpapers keep my desktop visual, but since they cycle every minute to different images, it'll not burn in and high image shift ensures things that happen to be in same part of monitor are shifting around.

All OLED monitors do pixel cleanup by themselves during standby so unless monitor prompts you to do it after you used it for very long time without any pause, I wouldn't do it manually too often because that essentially shaves away the emissive layer of OLED as it tries to equalize the pixels to same brightness level. Certainly not every 4 hours. I have it set to 8 hours under my "settings" and I think it's perfectly reasonable. I only got the notification from monitor few times so far when having very long gaming sessions and I let it do its thing then.

 

[TheDeeGee]

Best way to future proof OLED is by not getting OLED.

 

[Arcsaber]

What have you guys been doing to prevent burn-in?
How long have you had your OLED and are you experiencing burn-in?

Samsung G60SD - pixel shift is forced (wish I could turn it off), and the display auto-dims after a few minutes of inactivity.

1. Windows dark mode.
2. Use AutoHideDesktopIcons to hide the icons and taskbar after five seconds.
3. Desktop background is a solid grey - RGB 48,48,48 - mimicking 50% signal input (2.4 gamma) to age all the pixels equally.
4. Calibrated to 80 nits peak white; no interest in HDR.
5. Use Youtube in fullscreen as much as possible.

This panel is notorious for vertical "stripes" appearing now and then on very dark greys, but no burn after more than a year of PC use.

 

[Maxiaid]

What I did for my OLED monitor:
- use Dark Mode
- use Dark Reader extension or Dark Mode in browsers
- set taskbar to auto hide
- removed files and folders from desktop, moved Trash to Start menu and disabled it on desktop
- set 100% black image as screensaver and set it to 2 minutes
- set a ton of dark style wallpapers, just random photos I found on wallpaper websites that cycle every minute (or just solid black wallpaper if you don't care of blank desktop)
- set monitor image shift to High so it makes biggest image shifts in random directions

Taskbar auto hiding prevents it burning in, no static icons on desktop ensures they won't be burned in, when screen saver kicks in it basically turns off the monitor because all pixels go full black but monitor instantly wakes up if I move mouse unlike full standby where it shuts off its board entirely, cycling dark wallpapers keep my desktop visual, but since they cycle every minute to different images, it'll not burn in and high image shift ensures things that happen to be in same part of monitor are shifting around.

All OLED monitors do pixel cleanup by themselves during standby so unless monitor prompts you to do it after you used it for very long time without any pause, I wouldn't do it manually too often because that essentially shaves away the emissive layer of OLED as it tries to equalize the pixels to same brightness level. Certainly not every 4 hours. I have it set to 8 hours under my "settings" and I think it's perfectly reasonable. I only got the notification from monitor few times so far when having very long gaming sessions and I let it do its thing then.

What I did for my OLED monitor:
- set 100% black image as screensaver and set it to 2 minutes
- use it as usual
- not worry at all
- i'll replace it when the time comes


I suggest that @RejZoR stops visiting the TPU forums altogether, as the static banners at the top of the screen might end up permanently marking his rather premium display. Frequently swapping profile pictures is also advisable, we wouldn’t want a goofy sheep image to become irremediably stamped onto the screen. Additionally, the UI language should be changed periodically to prevent the frightening appearance of imprints. Ultimately, screen usage should be limited to 45 seconds a day, allowing it to cool down for at least 3 days between uses.

 

[Dr. Dro]

This conversation has started to circle around and it's not really productive IMO, you don't really need to adopt these crazy countermeasures like aggressively hiding black backgrounds, taskbars, icons, it's already been discussed ad aeternum here. I'll just oversimplify it to the extreme:

At the end of the day, if you genuinely need to worry about your monitor being permanently damaged by simply using it to, you know, display things, it's not a monitor worth owning.

and OLED is anything but that! Honestly, just enjoy it. It'll take good care of you as long as you take good care of it. If anyone's curious, this is how my desktop usually looks like:

Colorful, pretty, organized - and my OLED isn't complaining. All I do is turn it off when I'm not using it, and avoid going ham on the brightness (thus preventing the panel from operating under heat stress) - that's it. 5005 hours as of this post - zero image retention.