Why OLED monitor burn-in isn’t a huge problem anymore

Until recently, OLED computer monitor selection was limited. Today, there's more than a handful available. LG Display and Samsung Display have made picking an OLED monitor exciting by designing competing models—white OLED (WOLED) and quantum dot OLED (QD-OLED), respectively—and monitor vendors are steadily addressing OLED scarcity and price barriers.

But what about longstanding fears of OLED burn-in?

People tend to display static images on computer monitors more frequently than on TVs—things like icons, taskbars, and browser address bars—making burn-in risk a concern.

I spoke with display experts and monitor vendors to get a deeper understanding of how modern OLED monitors fight burn-in. From improvements in the efficiency of OLED materials to software developments and new testing techniques, OLED burn-in risk has been lowered. OLED monitors are generally a more sound investment than ever—at least for the right person.

Yes, burn-in still happens

If you've ever owned a plasma display, you're already familiar with the threat of permanent image retention and the menacing shadow it casts on some brilliant display technologies. Some enthusiasts quickly shrug off burn-in risk as an overhyped occurrence that's irrelevant these days, but there are still accounts of burn-in happening on modern OLED monitors.

One person's experience doesn't guarantee your own, though. Further, you never know how someone who experienced burn-in actually used their monitor and whether what they're seeing is TFT layer-related image retention (which may be temporary) or permanent degradation of the OLED layer (burn-in). Still, these modern stories show that burn-in with today's OLED monitors is still possible and concerning for owners.

Dough (a company formerly called Eve) is taking preorders for its first (not totally uncontroversial) OLED monitor. Before starting the project, the company consulted with gaming monitor brands already pushing 48-inch OLED monitors. "Industry chatter," Dough co-founder Konstantinos Karatsevidis told me, showed that burn-in affected "around 5 percent of users" after two years. Without stronger evidence, we'll have to take that figure with a grain of salt. Five percent is still greater than zero, and most people hope to use a monitor for longer than two years.

That doesn't mean the OLED monitors coming out today aren't worth considering. The latest models have improved materials and firmware that make them significantly more resistant to burn-in than they were years ago.

Burn-in risk varies from monitor to monitor

Advancements in the materials science of OLED and quantum dots are big contributors to OLED displays' growing life spans.

Roland Wooster, chair of VESA’s Display Performance Metrics Task Group, told me that physical design changes have also helped. "For example, if blue is your problem, you can make a bigger blue pixel so that you don’t need to drive the current quite as high, and it lasts longer. Or you can cool the display better to reduce the temperature," he said.

Burn-in happens when subpixels aren't burning as brightly as before. This causes a shift in color among the pixels or, if they were all affected equally, dimming. Monitor firmware techniques can help mitigate or hide damage, Wooster explained:

By counting the time each subpixel is displayed and at what brightness, a "wear level" can be determined for each pixel, using an algorithm to estimate the luminance degradation this can be compensated for. However, to do this, you must have some spare luminance headroom that gets utilized as the display gets older. Or alternatively, if the display unlocks full maximum luminance when new without saving any headroom, the algorithm would dim the other pixels over time to bring them down to the level of the burned-in pixels, so the peak luminance of the display would diminish over time as the burn-in occurs.

Already, we can see why answering the question "which OLED monitors are more susceptible to burn-in?" isn't so easy.

The companies that make monitors can implement a range of firmware, software, and hardware techniques to help fight burn-in. These methods can vary among monitors from the same brand and between monitors using the same OLED panel but produced by different OEMs.

Meanwhile, panel suppliers for OLED desktop monitors, such as LG and Samsung, can implement their own burn-in safeguards, including using only about 70 percent of a panel's maximum brightness potential, Karatsevidis said.

Since greater monitor luminance can call for higher current, potentially leading to burn-in, newer OLED monitor designs "have emphasized reducing the current while maintaining or improving the luminance," Wooster noted. But there's "no single, simple answer or way to compare different brands, as each design is affected and optimized differently."

He added:

I personally think there’s more "concern" than real impact of burn-in, and that’s unfortunate, as the lifetime of the materials has been improved over time, and the problem is generally well-handled.

Wooster noted that this is an "ever-changing field" and that OLED and quantum dots have gone through "many generations" of chemical changes.

Adding to the pressure for change is the European Union's Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive, which limits the use of 10 substances in electronic equipment, including cadmium, lead, and mercury. The need to adhere to this legislation helped push developments like cadmium-free quantum dots and improvements around OLED monitor efficiency, spectra, power, and costs.

Wooster pointed to OLED monitors often having similar warranty periods as LCDs, which you could see as an indicator that OEMs might not be seeing a significant difference in the warranty return rate of OLED monitors versus LCD monitors.

I asked Wooster how users can identify a less risky product. "In general, OLED technology is improving with each generation," he said. "Newer-generation devices will typically last longer and may have more sophisticated compensation algorithms. As compute gets cheaper, faster, and lower power, and storage for the dimming algorithms gets cheaper, more data can be stored, which can be useful to some compensation algorithms."

QD-OLED versus WOLED burn-in

Samsung Display announced its quantum dot-infused entrance into OLED panels in 2021. QD-OLED bolstered a wave of new displays hyped up with claims of improved colors and more consistent colors across different brightness levels compared to LG's Display WOLED.

OLED monitors suddenly got interesting. Consumers finally started seeing more choices, not just in OLED monitor SKUs but also in OLED panel tech. Today, LG Display's WOLED is still squaring up against Samsung Display's QD-OLED. WOLED has four subpixels (white, red, green, and blue), whereas QD-OLED includes red, green, and blue subpixels in a triad formation. (Some older OLED monitors have RGB stripe OLED panels made by Japanese company JOLED, but there haven't been any new releases in a while. JOLED went bankrupt and was acquired this year, so we may not have heard the last of RGB stripe OLED monitors.)

This has led to consumers wondering whether one-panel technology is more vulnerable to burn-in than the other, but neither subpixel structure nor OLED panel type determines burn-in risk on its own. Other hardware elements and approaches to firmware, software, and compensation cycles are all factors.

Some people have theorized that QD-OLED is more susceptible to burn-in because it only has red, green, and blue subpixels, meaning all three subpixels must run simultaneously to show white. Early results of an ongoing longevity test of 100 TVs from RTINGS suggested signs of burn-in among some QD-OLED TVs that weren't present among WOLED ones. But after eight months of testing, RTINGS determined that those artifacts were actually TFT-related temporary image retention that was virtually erased during a short compensation cycle while the TVs were off.

To keep RTINGS' testing in context, note that testing conditions are so extreme that they're referred to as a torture test. RTINGS is trying to simulate 10 years of usage in two years. There are methods and features that real users could use to reduce burn-in risk that RTINGS' testing doesn't touch.

When reached for comment, Daniel O'Keeffe, RTINGS' director of content, said:

OLED burn-in is really all about brightness levels and static elements. We expect that the intended use case is something that is more important to consider than the model of monitor when it comes to burn-in.

Speaking more broadly, Samsung Display's QD-OLED tech is still in its early years. The QD-OLED displays in RTINGS' longevity test are in their first generation. Second-gen QD-OLED is supposed to have a more efficient and clearer blue-emitting layer through electroluminescent material. It will also use an updated pixel-level optimization algorithm that Samsung Display claims improves durability and reduces power consumption, as detailed by TFTCentral.

As Samsung Display and LG Display's OLED panel tech advances, we'll keep an eye on how each company improves on brightness efficiencies. LG's WOLED panels, for example, use a white pixel alongside RGB so all subpixels aren't pushed to their max when things are super bright. Samsung Display strives for efficiency with blue OLED. Advancements or changes to these technologies will be critical, not just to bolster brightness claims but also to make OLED monitors more efficient, which can help lessen the threat of burn-in.

Since March, RTINGS has added three OLED monitors (Alienware's AW3423DWF, LG's Ultragear 27GR95QE-B, and Samsung's Odyssey OLED G8) to its longevity test. In general, monitors and TVs from the same brand can have different compensation cycles. O'Keeffe told me that Samsung claims its monitors and TVs have the same compensation cycles. But RTINGS has only confirmed that the short compensation cycles are the same (as they are between LG monitors and LG TVs). We don't have hard evidence to prove that the long compensation cycles between TVs and monitors of the same brand are identical.

Monitor brand matters

A key factor in OLED monitor burn-in risk is how the OEM tests the product and the algorithms involved in mediating burn-in. For example, two monitors could use the same WOLED panel from LG Display, but one could be more susceptible to burn-in.

"Each process, each color primary, and even the application involved can have a different impact or influence on burn-in. The combination of variables is both vast and proprietary," Wooster said.

Before buying an OLED monitor, consider how much you trust the vendor to test displays. A company with a history of QA problems or with which you've had bad customer support experiences can be bigger red flags of burn-in risk than whether a monitor uses QD-OLED, WOLED, or otherwise.

Alienware's AW3423DW QD-OLED monitor.

Credit: Scharon Harding

A deeper look at testing

For example, let's take a deeper look at how Dell prepped its QD-OLED Alienware monitors. Dell-owned Alienware was the first monitor brand to sell QD-OLED monitors, and it currently sells two similar models, (the AW3423DW and the AW3423DWF, with lower-priced Adaptive-Sync).

When Alienware investigates a panel for a potential monitor, it first selects the algorithms that will test and grade panel performance and reliability, an Alienware spokesperson told me. Rather than making its own algorithms, Alienware gets a range built for different panels and use cases from its panel suppliers.

The algorithms selected for testing the QD-OLED panels in Alienware's monitors were recommended by Alienware's user experience, marketing, panel engineering, and quality workers and focus on gaming since Alienware is a PC gaming brand. The Alienware panel engineering team "further worked with the panel suppliers to optimize and fine-tune that set of algorithms," Yoon Lee, vice president of displays at Dell Technologies, said.

"The supplier then shared its samples together with feasibility data and reliability test results with the Alienware engineering team, who evaluate the samples to validate whether or not the panel meets our standards and criteria before greenlighting it for full-scale development," Lee added.

During this phase, Alienware's Panel Engineering team fine-tunes specs, like brightness, the gamma curve, and the monitor's algorithms. The investigation and incubation phase for Alienware's QD-OLED monitors reportedly took two years.

Next, the development phase reportedly took one year. Here, the panel engineering team used the same testing standards it uses for LCD testing (examples here and here). They also make additional standards for burn-in that are "based on the risks perceived with OLED reliability and upon recommendations from panel makers based on the performance of current OLED panels," Lee said.

Additionally, Alienware uses section 10.4 of The Society for Information Display's (SID) Information Display Measurements Standard (IDMS) for residual image testing. Dough also uses that testing standard. There are other similar burn-in tests, including one from the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), that an OEM can use as well.

Alienware's panel suppliers must adhere to its selected standards and submit testing records to Alienware for verification.

The final steps include quality control performed by panel suppliers during production and with regular reports sent to Alienware.

Alienware's OLED burn-in testing procedures and algorithms combine recommendations from Samsung Display and its own team, as well as standardized tests used for LCD-LED testing and burn-in. They are then fine-tuned to the specific use case of PC gaming.

Different OEMs put their own spin on burn-in testing. A spokesperson for MSI told me that its burn-in testing includes IEC 62087 video content and VESA's DisplayHDR Test.

"We use a microcontroller to control the monitors, repeating a cycle of five hours on and one hour off, four times per day," Dough's Karatsevidis said. "This cycle is designed to mimic typical usage patterns of our customers. We display a variety of real content on the monitors during testing, including static desktop, games, etc. Test is run at high room [temperature] to simulate faster aging at 55 degrees Celsius until failure."

As with any large tech purchase, checking the warranty terms for an OLED monitor is imperative. OLED monitors today typically offer a two- or three-year warranty, but that warranty may not cover burn-in, and there's occasionally a separate burn-in warranty. Understand how a vendor will respond to complaints of image retention before buying.

Warranty periods for an OLED monitor compared to an LCD-LED monitor tend to be similar. But limited data on OLED monitor longevity could continue to hinder buyers.

"If you're a consumer planning to use an OLED monitor for gaming for two to three years, it's a good choice. Beyond that, we don't yet have enough real-world data to make a definitive judgment," Karatsevidis said.

Heat matters, too

Since higher temperatures speed up chemical reactions or decay, heat management—from cooling fins and holes to integrated fans with temperature sensors telling them when to rev—is a crucial weapon in the war against burn-in.

Michael Helander, CEO and president of OTI Lumionics, a company that develops materials used in OLED display manufacturing to increase display transparency, efficiency, and lifetime, said the relationship between heat and burn-in is "typically non-linear." That means "even a relatively small increase in temperature" could accelerate the degradation rate. That's why screens used in environments that heat up, like cars, have special design needs that often increase price, Helander added.

"One simple approach to compensate for potential burn-in of OLED pixels is pumping more power into the degraded pixels to restore their brightness to its original state. This will obviously slightly increase the power consumption of the display," Helander said. "Given that an OLED monitor will be plugged into the wall socket compared to OLED laptops, which run on a battery, OLED monitors can have reduced burn-in since they have a large power envelope to play with."

Unfortunately, there's no hard threshold for determining when an OLED monitor will see burn-in, but it would be wise to look into an OLED monitor's cooling features before buying. This is a key way that OLED monitors using the same panel may differ in burn-in risk.

For example, Alienware's AW3423DW claims "360-degree ventilation for better heat dissipation" on its product page.

Asus' ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM highlights a "large custom heatsink" under its back cover and "smart algorithm-coded" voltage optimization. The Asus monitor also has an "internal component layout designed to draw heat away from the OLED panel to minimize the likelihood of image burn-in" and a visible top air vent. Asus claims the monitor "operates at 5 percent lower average temperatures compared to other 27-inch OLED gaming monitors." I'd take that with a grain of salt, but I appreciate the focus on heat management.

Karatsevidis said that to fight burn-in, it's important to ensure that heat is "distributed evenly rather than reduced" so that the panel ages evenly. The company's OLED monitors will also use "a special algorithm running in the panel firmware uniquely developed" for Dough's design to adjust panel heat distribution.

If you're worried about burn-in, investigate such claims as thoroughly as possible, including by reading detailed reviews, before buying an OLED monitor.

How willing are you to use burn-in mitigation techniques?

Some users may want to consider how customizable an OLED monitor's image retention prevention features are, how often refreshes are performed, and how distracting those features may be in actual use.

OLED monitors can run long compensation cycles, which are more extensive refreshes than short compensation cycles targeting the TFT layer. To fight uneven luminosity loss among pixels caused by aging, a long compensation adjusts the voltage of the monitor's pixels to even things out. Long compensation cycles go by different names, depending on the vendor.

Because long compensation cycles physically degrade pixels, they shouldn't be used often, according to OTI's Helander. Some OLED monitors, like Alienware ones, claim to automatically run a long compensation cycle every 1,500 hours and let you manually run one when you want.

OTI's Helander also pointed to pixel shift as a burn-in preventative, "except for static images with saturated colors." Such burn-in is best tackled with a long compensation cycle, he said. Pixel shifting is supposed to be subtle, but it can still annoy some users.

Wooster says that another tip for protecting your OLED investment is to stick to operating systems with features like dark mode and active screen savers. But those are personal preferences that some people might want to avoid.

Today's OLED monitors typically advertise features that users can toggle to help prevent burn-in, but they're only effective if you're willing to use them. For example, if you don't ever use your operating system's dark mode, rarely turn off your monitor or PC, don't want to hide your taskbar, always set your display brightness to the max, or don't use screensavers, your burn-in risk will be higher.

Advancements could further reduce burn-in risk

LG Display and Samsung Display wouldn't comment on their burn-in strategies for this story. Historically, both have kept mum on the topic, save for criticizing the other. That said, it seems OLED panel makers and partners are continuing to research and develop ways to make OLED products more durable, especially by improving monitor efficiency. If you're holding off on buying an OLED monitor until the technology advances further, here are three things to watch for.

First up is the use of deuterium, which is already available in OLED TVs. LG Display has claimed that introducing the hydrogen isotope into its OLED panels fights image retention because it enables brighter OLED displays that are more efficient.