One-Year Update: OLED Burn-in Test

Megalith

Megalith

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Rtings.com has been running a year-long test with LG OLED C7 displays playing real, non-altered content to determine whether burn-in is a significant issue under normal usage patterns. Photos taken at 48 weeks show only significant image retention for CNN; burn-in appears to be either minor or non-existent for gaming and other channels.

Our current stance is that if you vary your content and don’t display static areas then you’re unlikely to experience any issues. If you do plan to watch a lot of static content with bright, saturated colors, then an OLED TV probably isn’t for you. There has been no appreciable change to the brightness or color gamut of these OLED TVs, which is great.
 
It IS an issue, only effects a small % of TVs and it is caused by static content under certain usage environments.

LG doesn't cover IR/BI under their warranty, so that is the biggest issue.

No way I would put 5k+ down on a TV to have some IR/BI kill the TV or have diminished quality due to some other defect over time.

OLED is walking the plasma Green Mile, Micro Led is here.
 
This is just like the Plasma debate, pointless for 99% of the people. Also, they state the new OLED's are probably even better since they have reinforced the red pixel that seems to have the most problems. I love my LG B7.
 
Kind of a crappy test. Does not look like HDR was tested at all and a max brightness of 200 nits.
 
Same here. Always let it run its cleanup cycle after shutdown--not sure what it does but it must do something.
 
How far away is microled? I don't want to drop 2k on an OLED and have micro led come out a couple years later.
 
Actually it's pretty good. 46 weeks of just Call of Duty didn't burn in. Really only CNN was a problem.

Any mix of them is NOT a problem.
 
tordogs said:
Same here. Always let it run its cleanup cycle after shutdown--not sure what it does but it must do something.
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That's unnecessary, but if it makes you comfy... just make sure you have pixel shift on, which doesnt effect performance as far as I can tell and have read, and do the refresher cycle once every handful of months or if you accidently leave a static image up
 
Koizumi said:
How far away is microled? I don't want to drop 2k on an OLED and have micro led come out a couple years later.
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MicroLED TVs will be out this year, but they won't be ready for the consumer market for a while. The first sets are going to be more business focused. I wouldn't be surprised if its 2-3+ years before they're really ready for consumer level budgets. TCL (maybe others as well but I haven't looked at a lot of TV news from CES yet) was showing off some MiniLED sets this year and those might be interesting to keep an eye on.
 
mothandras said:
It IS an issue, only effects a small % of TVs and it is caused by static content under certain usage environments.

LG doesn't cover IR/BI under their warranty, so that is the biggest issue.

No way I would put 5k+ down on a TV to have some IR/BI kill the TV or have diminished quality due to some other defect over time.

OLED is walking the plasma Green Mile, Micro Led is here.
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Who pays $5K for a TV?! I got mine as a refirb on woot.com for $1K. Plus, everyone talks about burn-in, but TVs only have a 1 to 2 year warranty anyway, and I have had friends and family who have their power supplies or backlights die on their LEDs long before burn-in would have been an issue.
 
Shmee said:
Who pays $5K for a TV?! I got mine as a refirb on woot.com for $1K. Plus, everyone talks about burn-in, but TVs only have a 1 to 2 year warranty anyway, and I have had friends and family who have their power supplies or backlights die on their LEDs long before burn-in would have been an issue.
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No joke. I got an LG 65" C7 last year for ~$1300 new. You do the work, you can find the deals.
 
mothandras said:
It IS an issue, only effects a small % of TVs and it is caused by static content under certain usage environments.

LG doesn't cover IR/BI under their warranty, so that is the biggest issue.

No way I would put 5k+ down on a TV to have some IR/BI kill the TV or have diminished quality due to some other defect over time.

OLED is walking the plasma Green Mile, Micro Led is here.
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They can be had for under 2K for at least a good two years now. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for what Micro LED will bring to the table, but as some stated above I don't foresee mass production of consumer available TVs anytime soon. I would love to be wrong, but these things are slow to develop.

Plus LCD TVs are cheap to make and people still buy them like hot cakes, that isn't helping.
 
JavaLava said:
i have a LG OLED for over 2 years now and its running like the day I got it. Color is still crisp and sharp, no burn in, etc. I think all of the OLED burn in debates are way blown out of proportion.
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Probleminfected said:
Have had a oled lg tv for over 2 years. No burn in at all.
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Also in the 2+ year club with 2 different LG OLEDs and have no signs of burn-in, image retention or any other picture quality degradations. One set probably has ~3000 hours and the other has ~1000 hours.

EDIT: Just checked the actual hours on my TV and realized I grossly underestimated them...
 
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Koizumi said:
How far away is microled? I don't want to drop 2k on an OLED and have micro led come out a couple years later.
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It took about 4 years for 55" OLEDS to drop from $20K to their current prices, so I would expect similar for MicroLED - unless Samsung or others come up with some manufacturing breakthrough the gives them reliability at scale faster.

I was surprised to see Samsun with modular MicroLED panels that can be stitched together at CES this year. The thought of covering a significant portion of my living room wall with a big-ass microLED display - or perhaps even growing it over time - makes my mouth water :hungry:
 
I'd love to replace my Panisonic plasma with microLED, but if something happens and I need to replace it sooner I'd have zero problems pulling the trigger on an LG OLED. My parents have two and my father watches all kinds of sports and news channels with bugs all over and there are zero image retention issues. Maybe if you load a gray background (like the background on daringfireball) you might be able to pixel peep something - but for normal watching, and especially movies where the inky blacks of OLED best even my plasma, there's simply nothing better. If people are happy with LCD TVs more power to them - there certainly are a lot more of them to choose from and they can certainly be a lot cheaper - but once you watch a movie in a dark room without the grey goo it's pretty hard to go back to LCD :unsure:
 
DocNo said:
I'd love to replace my Panisonic plasma with microLED, but if something happens and I need to replace it sooner I'd have zero problems pulling the trigger on an LG OLED. My parents have two and my father watches all kinds of sports and news channels with bugs all over and there are zero image retention issues. Maybe if you load a gray background (like the background on daringfireball) you might be able to pixel peep something - but for normal watching, and especially movies where the inky blacks of OLED best even my plasma, there's simply nothing better. If people are happy with LCD TVs more power to them - there certainly are a lot more of them to choose from and they can certainly be a lot cheaper - but once you watch a movie in a dark room without the grey goo it's pretty hard to go back to LCD :unsure:
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For my family the blacks are great, but we have a big room, so the fact they have super wide viewing angles with great color is the major selling point. We could have got an IPS, but then those blacks get even grayer.
 
CNN needs to move to a transparent logo...all channel logos should be transparent
 
I wish they had hooked one up to a computer and left it on a desktop with a browser open for about a year. I bet that would produce unhappy results.

LED isn't totally immune either. I have burn in on one of my IPS 1440p LCD monitors, the bad sections line up exactly with the taskbar and upper right/left corners where browser tab bars go. When it has power but no signal (like during system startup) it's very noticeable. Even the Mrs pointed it out and said "hey whats that?" BUT.... you cannot notice it when it's in use at all. Or when it's off. So not a huge deal. My wallpaper does rotate but browser windows, icons, taskbars, etc don't move too much.

Something else I'd like to see and they didn't show in the video... is that one that got hammered by CNN... what does it look like when in use but on other channels? I wonder how much it would even be noticable.

Interesting that the bargin bin model LG LCD was showing LED / brightness failures in under a year of use. That sucks. Because even the low end name brands are likely better quality in general than the Wal Mart brands (TCL, Hisense, etc etc). I wonder how much that is noticeable during normal viewing.

TLDR... not running out to buy an OLED for a desktop monitor, but then again, I wasn't going to anyway. But I was thinking about it for my next TV...

polonyc2 said:
CNN needs to move to a transparent logo...all channel logos should be transparent
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Right? Or rotate the banner to different corners and move the text crawl to top/bottom every now and then around or something. Really any channel that has a static logo vibrant logo would be an issue.
 
Galvin said:
Rather just wait for micro LED
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Eh. I just bought one. Affordable Micro LED tvs are probably 5 years away. Now if you're up for a $25,000 TV, then it'll probably a bit sooner.

I'll enjoy my set and by the time burn in is an issue, Micro LED TVs will be affordable....and frankly 8k probably will be too.
 
mothandras said:
It IS an issue, only effects a small % of TVs and it is caused by static content under certain usage environments.

LG doesn't cover IR/BI under their warranty, so that is the biggest issue.

No way I would put 5k+ down on a TV to have some IR/BI kill the TV or have diminished quality due to some other defect over time.

OLED is walking the plasma Green Mile, Micro Led is here.
Click to expand...

I'm all for microLED when it comes out. Until then, OLED is it.

Glad I didn't have to pay $5k for my OLED.

I don't have issues with it now, which is fortunate - it's a risk, I realize. However, after having my C7 for about a year, even if I had IR/BI issues, I would have no issues getting another OLED. Especially once the clearance prices start, can usually find previous year models for around $1.0-$1.5k. That still isn't cheap, and it's not exactly disposable, but the image quality to me is worth playing the panel lotto on IR/BI.
 
I have 2 LG OLEDs with no burn in. I play xbox on them all the time, along with various Hulu and Netflix, etc. One from 2015, one from 2017 (B7). They are still perfect with amazing picture. Don't regret buying them at all. - I just wish the refresh rate was faster.
 
viivo said:
Wow, I thought Panasonic was completely out of the tv market. I have a Panasonic 1080p HDTV that's been used ~12 hours a day every day for over 10 years. Sure, the CCFL backlight has dimmed some, but it still looks great. Anyway my point is I wish Panasonic would put out consumer models again.
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They are. Click the link and you'll see the article is from 2010. This TV came out in 2009 and cost $500,000 USD. It also weighed more than 1,200 pounds. You can find used ones these days for $100,000-$150,000.
 
My Samsung plasma is going on 8 years now and no burn in that I can see. And it's been used with game consoles, television, dvd/bd, etc.
 
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