OLED burn-in is real

[pippenainteasy]

Even the OLED TVs at Best Buy which are looping movies I've noticed develop burn in, so I definitely wouldn't touch OLED with a 10 foot pole unless all I did was turn it on just to watch movies occasionally. For a daily driver I'd definitely prefer a standard LED TV with FALD.

 

[Zinn]

I have a 65" C7 and this thread makes me sad.

 

[Lateralus]

I have a 65" C7 and this thread makes me sad.

It shouldn't. Just don't leave static images on it for obscene amounts of time - it's as simple as that.

I have never heard of a display that constantly loops movies developing burn-in...in fact, that's pretty much the ideal scenario for an OLED so I can only guess that there are logos or static content that get displayed for periods of time in between the motion content. And I imagine that like most store display TVs, the display's brightness is cranked to the max so that's certainly not helping. Something's not right there.

There have been several OLED threads here and lots of people are still using their first generation units which were more susceptible to burn-in without issues.

I'm using mine in one of the most abusive ways one can (PC monitor) and I've had zero issues. Just checked again this morning. So have others so it's not like I received some magical panel that's was blessed by the display gods. I stand by my opinion that this issue gets way overblown.

 

[Lepardi]

Even the OLED TVs at Best Buy which are looping movies I've noticed develop burn in, so I definitely wouldn't touch OLED with a 10 foot pole unless all I did was turn it on just to watch movies occasionally. For a daily driver I'd definitely prefer a standard LED TV with FALD.

Most likely that's just retention and would go away with refresher.

 

[whateverer]

My understanding is that the pixel refresher only reverses image retention, which has a different cause from burn-in. IR is caused by voltage retention in the backplane, while burn-in is caused by aging of the OLED emitters. IR is reversible, burn-in isn't.

Right, LG actually recommends you don't use the pixel refresher very often, as it tends to age the panel quicker, and more age means more susceptibility to permanent burn-in.

That brightness the OP is running at is pretty high (I think it ships at 50), so I imagine that also helped age the panel. If you watch TV in a a bright room, OLED is not for you.

 

[spiroh]

I had both the C8 and the Q8FN (both 55 inches) in my office and I felt the Oled was very slightly better than the QLED picture quality wise. Personally speaking that very slight picture upgrade isn't worth it when it means I have to baby the set and be careful how I watch content especially for the additional cost over the Samsung. No regrets sticking with the Q.

 

[Lateralus]

I had both the C8 and the Q8FN (both 55 inches) in my office and I felt the Oled was very slightly better than the QLED picture quality wise. Personally speaking that very slight picture upgrade isn't worth it when it means I have to baby the set and be careful how I watch content especially for the additional cost over the Samsung. No regrets sticking with the Q.

Curious, did (or do) you game at all? I play a lot of dark/horror games and the difference my B7 has made in those titles is staggering. I've had lots of IPS and VA monitors in the past, including the (in 2015) high end JS9000 quantum dot set from Samsung and nothing has come close to delivering the absolute blacks and contrast of the OLED. It has been wonderful not having to deal with IPS glow, backlight bleed, or grey blacks that ruin immersion. It's also a big deal for movies, though I understand the Q-series sets do quite well there. I realize that the benefits of OLED are largely lost on the desktop where most any LCD set would do, but for games the difference has been anything but minor.

That's a big deal for me, though I realize it may not be for everyone.

 

[Lepardi]

Curious, did (or do) you game at all? I play a lot of dark/horror games and the difference my B7 has made in those titles is staggering. I've had lots of IPS and VA monitors in the past, including the (in 2015) high end JS9000 quantum dot set from Samsung and nothing has come close to delivering the absolute blacks and contrast of the OLED. It has been wonderful not having to deal with IPS glow, backlight bleed, or grey blacks that ruin immersion. It's also a big deal for movies, though I understand the Q-series sets do quite well there. I realize that the benefits of OLED are largely lost on the desktop where most any LCD set would do, but for games the difference has been anything but minor.

That's a big deal for me, though I realize it may not be for everyone.

The LCD FALD algorithms cant keep up in movies either. Haloing, half of stars become invisible in a night sky...

 

[Zinn]

It shouldn't. Just don't leave static images on it for obscene amounts of time - it's as simple as that.

I play games with static HUD elements, but when possible i try to tune the opacity down on them (eg. Fallout 4 / 76) - so far I've had the TV for six months and haven't seen any burn in that wasn't resolved with the pixel blanker. It's just a little disturbing feeling like I have to walk on eggshells around a $2.5k TV

 

[mike_j_johnson]

I have been concerned about this too, but after watching a few YouTube videos were the author had a QLED and OLED side-by-side playing the same game, OLED is worth "babying". The picture quality difference was incredible. OLED is truly amazing.

I would suggest folks get their displays properly calibrated and just use common sense with usage.

 

[Lateralus]

I play games with static HUD elements, but when possible i try to tune the opacity down on them (eg. Fallout 4 / 76) - so far I've had the TV for six months and haven't seen any burn in that wasn't resolved with the pixel blanker. It's just a little disturbing feeling like I have to walk on eggshells around a $2.5k TV

If it makes you feel any better - and this is purely anecdotal I realize - I have had a few marathon gaming sessions on weekends where I played games with static HUD/UI elements (Mad Max, Arkham Knight, etc.) for 6-8 hours without even a hint of image retention after the game was over...much less burn-in.

The biggest risk mitigation factor I think is to keep the OLED light level as low is as practical. Like I noted earlier, I use a setting of 8 and even using my set right now in the daytime, it's more than bright enough. Anything past 12-15 to me is pretty eyeball-searing, especially without ambient lighting.

1.5 years of mixed PC/game/movie use here and I haven't even had the need to run the manual pixel refresher utility.

 

[whateverer]

For people using it as an HTPC, have a screen saver, and use Windows 10 Dark Mode - now complete with the October update, and make sure you don't jack the light levels above what they ship from the factory.

And just make sure you vary your content, which means you don't watch sports TV shows with bottom tickers for hours at a time, and you watch mostly full-screen content on YouTube. Just don't play the same game for three+ hours every night, and that's enough variation for the system.

I've been using as C7 for a year and a half now as an HTPC, with no signs of burn-in. But I have a dark room and knew what I was getting myself into. And I also never had to run the pixel refresher.

 

[Necere]

It shouldn't. Just don't leave static images on it for obscene amounts of time - it's as simple as that.

I have never heard of a display that constantly loops movies developing burn-in...in fact, that's pretty much the ideal scenario for an OLED so I can only guess that there are logos or static content that get displayed for periods of time in between the motion content. And I imagine that like most store display TVs, the display's brightness is cranked to the max so that's certainly not helping. Something's not right there.

It's not just static content that can cause burn-in, but really any content that's onscreen for long enough - by repetition or otherwise - that not only can, but will (after a long enough period of time). High brightness (especially with HDR) and high saturation will cause the OLED emitters to age at a much faster rate.

For example, see this post. They had a demo model in a store looping a short video all day long, and after 8 months it looks like this:

If you watch the video, it's clear that what's causing the burn-in here are the combined aging of those scenes where you have bright, saturated images being displayed - even though they're moving and only onscreen for a few seconds at a time. It adds up.

Having said that, in the real world, you're not going to be repeating the same short HDR video tens of thousands of times over months, and so burn-in like this isn't something to worry about. However, it is possible if you watch a lot of movies - especially in HDR - that eventually over several years the screen will start to show uneven wear due to the tendency for the bright action highlights to take place in the middle of the screen. In that case, the result would be more of an indistinct "smudge" around the middle of the screen where it's dimmer/less saturated. Something like the person-shaped burn-in from Rtings' CNN test (though even more spread out than this):

I'm using mine in one of the most abusive ways one can (PC monitor) and I've had zero issues. Just checked again this morning. So have others so it's not like I received some magical panel that's was blessed by the display gods. I stand by my opinion that this issue gets way overblown.

I would argue that PC monitor use actually isn't very abusive, since 1. you've probably got the brightness turned down, 2. desktop doesn't have HDR highlights, 3. there probably aren't a lot of highly saturated icons that stay in the same place indefinitely. Additionally, there's usually a lot of whites and less saturated colors on a desktop, and these are not nearly as bad as saturated colors for burn-in on LG OLEDs. The reason for this being that there's no color filter in front of the white OLED, so it doesn't have to run as hard to get to the same brightness. A saturated red, in comparison, needs to run much harder to get to the same brightness because you lose like 2/3rds of the light to the color filter.

 

[Lateralus]

snip

Great info, thanks! I thought about the same thing after I posted - if a TV is displaying the same video (or series of videos) over and over and over and over for months on end, the cumulative effect of certain elements of those frames could add up.

I fully agree that it shouldn't be an issue in normal use for most people, so the talk about OLEDs being "sketchy" or "dodgy" or what have you seems to be very much overstated. I think they're not as fragile as some are led to believe, and are more robust than they're given credit for as with normal use and some precaution you shouldn't have much to worry about.

Given the fact that my OLED light is set to such a low setting, my HDR use is limited, and the fact that I'll eventually want to downsize from this 55" behemoth for desktop use, I'm pretty certain that I'll be fine. As I said before, no product is right for everyone and I don't have any reason to bash the QLED sets as they are still very capable. If I didn't play games, the benefits of the stunning OLED image quality would be somewhat negated. TV and movies obviously look great too, but I primarily watch those on other devices as watching a movie from my office chair isn't the most comfortable setting.

 

[Mad Maxx]

I wish someone posted a thread like this before I bought (and ruined) my OLED.

Of course, that would have meant someone else had ruined his/her OLED.

 

[gan7114]

Additionally, there's usually a lot of whites and less saturated colors on a desktop, and these are not nearly as bad as saturated colors for burn-in on LG OLEDs. The reason for this being that there's no color filter in front of the white OLED, so it doesn't have to run as hard to get to the same brightness. A saturated red, in comparison, needs to run much harder to get to the same brightness because you lose like 2/3rds of the light to the color filter.

Additionally, LG also doubled the size (roughly) of the red OLED pixels in the 8 series. A larger pixel means more light is let through, which means the red pixels don’t have to be driven as hard to produce that same amount of light as the prior models did. Presumably, this remains the same for the 9 series. We’ll see if LG revised the pixel structure any further once the new models are reviewed.

 

[Necere]

Additionally, LG also doubled the size (roughly) of the red OLED pixels in the 8 series. A larger pixel means more light is let through, which means the red pixels don’t have to be driven as hard to produce that same amount of light as the prior models did. Presumably, this remains the same for the 9 series. We’ll see if LG revised the pixel structure any further once the new models are reviewed.

True, or at least, around 66% bigger from the 2017 to 2018 models, according to this. Green and blue got smaller bumps as well. Oddly enough, it seems they may have actually shrunk a bit on the 2019s for some reason.

They'll probably continue to tweak the subpixel sizes, but we won't see any big gains until top emission OLED, which we could see in some models as soon as next year.

 

[gan7114]

One point of caution with gaming: if you're the kind of person that plays the same online game for th

True, or at least, around 66% bigger from the 2017 to 2018 models, according to this. Green and blue got smaller bumps as well. Oddly enough, it seems they may have actually shrunk a bit on the 2019s for some reason.

They'll probably continue to tweak the subpixel sizes, but we won't see any big gains until top emission OLED, which we could see in some models as soon as next year.

That was a great read (as is usually the case with AVSF threads), thanks for that.

No doubt LG will continue to refine the subpixel sizes. Our best look will be from Rtings review when it comes. I’m curious if they did, in fact, shrink again (and why).

And now I’m juiced after reading about 43” possibilities arising from LG’s new 10.5G plant, which we could see as soon as middle of next year. The dream, it’s almost here.

 

[gamerk2]

If it makes you feel any better - and this is purely anecdotal I realize - I have had a few marathon gaming sessions on weekends where I played games with static HUD/UI elements (Mad Max, Arkham Knight, etc.) for 6-8 hours without even a hint of image retention after the game was over...much less burn-in.

The biggest risk mitigation factor I think is to keep the OLED light level as low is as practical. Like I noted earlier, I use a setting of 8 and even using my set right now in the daytime, it's more than bright enough. Anything past 12-15 to me is pretty eyeball-searing, especially without ambient lighting.

1.5 years of mixed PC/game/movie use here and I haven't even had the need to run the manual pixel refresher utility.

I've only had one instance of image retention on my B6P, and that was due to stupidity on my part (mainly, using the Windows HDR background plus having an app minimized that disabled the screensaver), and that cleared in a few hours.

I will say that games are doing better with fading out HUDs, which helps a ton. I mainly game on my B6P and haven't had an issue thus far.

I would avoid OLED for two main use cases: Significant amounts of word processing, and watching news networks (those static HUDs *shiver*). Aside from that, as long as you aren't blasting the panels, they should last a good while.

 

[spiroh]

Curious, did (or do) you game at all? I play a lot of dark/horror games and the difference my B7 has made in those titles is staggering. I've had lots of IPS and VA monitors in the past, including the (in 2015) high end JS9000 quantum dot set from Samsung and nothing has come close to delivering the absolute blacks and contrast of the OLED. It has been wonderful not having to deal with IPS glow, backlight bleed, or grey blacks that ruin immersion. It's also a big deal for movies, though I understand the Q-series sets do quite well there. I realize that the benefits of OLED are largely lost on the desktop where most any LCD set would do, but for games the difference has been anything but minor.

That's a big deal for me, though I realize it may not be for everyone.

This TV is mostly used for gaming. I tested a couple of titles like Destiny 2 and others and I actually preferred the QLED for gaming. I game almost always with the light on and the extra brightness levels from the QLED really helps with that.

 

[Vader1975]

Yea for something your watching news or sports constantly with markers on the same point of the screen I would just go simple cheap LED TV. No real worry if it happens to one of them in a few years they are dirt cheap anyway.

 

[Arioch]

I do all my "normal" tv viewing on a QLED...I only use my OLED for gaming and movie watching - so far, so good...