The OLED Burn-In Test: 9-Month Update

We’re still aggressively burning in our test 4K OLED monitor and using exclusively it for productivity work. We’re now 9 months into this experiment, so it’s time for an update. Again, just like the last update, not much has changed in how we’ve been using our MSI MPG 321URX QD-OLED. We’re still talking about a worst-case scenario for OLED usage with maximum amounts of static content and minimum amounts of content consumption and gaming.

If you missed our last three updates, we’d recommend going back and checking out at least the initial article just so you get an idea of the setup we’re using and why we’ve decided to use MSI’s 4K 240Hz QD-OLED as our workstation display.

The basic idea here is to perform a real-world test of OLED longevity in the worst possible configuration, effectively burning-in the display on purpose.

I swapped my personal 32-inch 4K IPS LCD for this new QD-OLED and changed nothing else about the setup – no dark mode or screensavers, or anything like that – and that’s to see whether OLED monitors really can be used as LCD-equivalent productivity displays long term.

I use my monitor more than 8 hours a day, and sometimes that usage is continuous with no breaks for the display to turn off and rest. This leads to hours upon hours of static usage in applications like web browsers, the Microsoft Office suite, and production tasks like Adobe Premiere and Photoshop.

With virtually no content consumption in our daily use of this display and zero gaming, this is not how we recommend using an OLED at all, though it is a use case that has been perfectly fine for LCDs for a long time.

Still Burning It In

After the first month of usage, the MSI 321URX had no signs of burn-in at all, which was to be expected. At that point, I had used the monitor for about 200 to 250 hours. After three months, we started to see faint signs of burn-in, and at that point, we’d used the display for approximately 650 to 750 hours with 71 panel compensation cycles. At six months, the monitor had hit 141 compensation cycles and between 1,200 and 1,500 hours of usage, at which point we noticed slightly to moderately worse burn-in across various areas of the panel.

Now, at 9 months in, this is the state of play. The 321URX is reporting 224 compensation cycles, which is in line with our typical usage on a daily basis and is a linear increase over the last update. At this stage, we would estimate the panel has been used for between 2,000 and 2,300 hours, so we’re still looking at between 9 and 10 hours of usage at 200 nits of brightness per compensation cycle. This is the equivalent of using the display for eight hours a day every single day since we got it.

The recommended rate for panel protection cycles is every four hours, so this is a particularly intense stress test. Not only is the panel being used in a worst-case scenario for static content, it’s also being used at a relatively high brightness level with no software mitigations to minimize burn-in (such as putting the display to sleep after a few minutes of inactivity) – all while running the panel protection cycle half as often as is ideal. But this is all a very realistic use case: it’s exactly how we were using an LCD before switching to OLED.

For this article, we’ve made a couple of changes to the way we show the burn-in examples, which will hopefully make them easier to see on screenshots or on the YouTube version with the unavoidable compression.

The Burn-In Results at 9 Months

The focus of today’s comparison is going to be the 3-month, 6-month, and 9-month results because we already know that after 1 month there was no burn-in. Again, we’re focusing on the center of the display, which is where, in previous months, there was visible burn-in: a line down the center of the screen, most likely due to frequent use of side-by-side applications.

There’s actually a bit of good news here.

First, this vertical line is still only visible in mid to dark grey test patterns. It hasn’t spread to other, brighter tests, so we’re still only noticing this burn-in with similar types of content to previous months. There are some apps that use a dark grey uniform background, such as Premiere and Photoshop, where this line is somewhat visible. But for the most part and across most situations, this type of burn-in is relatively difficult to notice during everyday usage. We also use side-by-side apps so frequently that the burn-in actually aligns with the content we’re seeing on screen.

The impact across the various subpixels is also relatively unchanged compared to previous months. When viewing darker colors, it’s difficult to see any burn-in with the red and blue subpixels. The green subpixel is more noticeably impacted and seems to be the primary contributor to the burn-in we see in greyscale tests. After 9 months, we haven’t seen the red and blue subpixels becoming more affected. These results are pretty similar to previous months.

In fact, overall we would say that as far as the vertical line is concerned, after 9 months this burn-in has actually improved. This is most evident when using the burn-in enhancement filter we used in the previous article, which adjusts the samples to more clearly show the differences and any impacts of burn-in. This is not how the monitor looks in real life; it’s a higher contrast version for analysis purposes only, so don’t freak out when the filter is being used at how bad it might appear.

In these new samples, particularly when viewing dark greys, we think that the line is less noticeable at 9 months versus 6 months. This is especially true in the top third of the screen, but really across most of the central section, the 9-month result is better to our eyes than 6 months, despite being captured in exactly the same way. Comparing 9 months to 3 months, we also think the 9-month result isn’t too bad, though whether the burn-in is more noticeable than at 3 months depends on the exact greyscale test being used.

This improvement could be due to the compensation cycle process actually working to reduce or mitigate burn-in over time. Obviously, it hasn’t “fixed” the amount of burn-in, but to have this area improve – or at the very least not get substantially worse – is, we think, a positive result for owners of OLEDs worried about burn-in. Certainly, we were expecting to see more burn-in after 9 months than what we’re seeing here.

Other aspects of the image are not as great. Taskbar burn-in, seen along the bottom edge of the screen, is usually slightly more noticeable when comparing 9 months to 6 months, and is much more noticeable when comparing 9 months to 3 months. This isn’t always the case, and we did see the 9-month image looking slightly better or equal to the 6-month image in some tests. But generally, this part of the screen seems to be slowly degrading over time, and certainly when comparing results after 2,200 hours versus 700 hours of use, it’s obvious that having the taskbar visible at all times is not good for OLED image retention.

With that said, in actual use, this burn-in is not noticeable because, well, we’re using applications all the time, so the taskbar is on screen and thus the burn-in is obscured. Even in the occasional full-screen app or when watching a full-screen video, it’s pretty hard to tell this area of the screen has degraded, unless you’re viewing specific sorts of full-screen uniform content. So at least for now, we think this level of burn-in is tolerable.

Another area we think has been impacted slightly more after 9 months is the area to the right of the vertical line. The most recent samples we’ve captured show the screen a bit more blotchy and less uniform in this area compared to previous months, again most noticeable when viewing mid to dark grey test images. We wouldn’t say it’s degraded substantially or anything, but there’s a small decrease in uniformity.

As for screen brightness, it’s exactly the same result as the last update, with peak brightness hitting 243 nits. Even though some aspects of burn-in are holding steady or improving – possibly due to image protection features – brightness so far has not been impacted. Theoretically, brightness will reduce over time due to panel aging, but we’ll have to wait to see any impact there.

How Are Things Shaping Up So Far?

Overall, we think this is a relatively positive update on the burn-in front after 9 months of heavy static content usage, or around 2,000 to 2,300 hours of total use. As we saw in the previous update, there are visible signs of burn-in on our panel, but the level of degradation between 6 months and 9 months has been relatively minimal.

Taskbar burn-in has held steady or gotten slightly worse, uniformity is also slightly worse, but the burned-in vertical line has actually improved and become slightly less noticeable. Small changes all around, but nothing too drastic after an additional 800 hours.

As things stand, burn-in is not having a significant impact on our daily usage of this monitor, and it’s close to, though not quite, a non-issue. We can spot the burn-in in some edge case applications with large uniform areas of dark grey, but it’s pretty uncommon and rarely distracting. We think that’s a pretty good result given we’re stressing the crap out of this display, using it in absolutely the worst-case realistic scenario you could think of, and our usage patterns equate to displaying eight hours of virtually static content every single day.

Where we are currently at with 2,000 to 2,300 hours of total use is the equivalent of eight hours a day, five days a week, for about a year. Burn-in with OLEDs is directly related to hours of usage and is cumulative. So, if you only used static apps for four hours a day, you should expect to see your lifespan double to what we’re suggesting here. Mixing in dynamic content between periods of static content usually won’t improve the burn-in results – it’s all related to the cumulative number of hours displaying the same static content on screen.

You should also see the lifespan of your OLED panel improve if you take any steps to mitigate burn-in, none of which we are doing for this test. Running at a lower brightness and using dark mode will extend the lifespan because burn-in is correlated to brightness output.

Setting the display to sleep after a few minutes of inactivity will reduce burn-in because you’ll lower the amount of cumulative hours displaying static content. Minimizing the taskbar in Windows, though annoying, will help reduce burn-in in that area of the screen because the same static image isn’t always shown.

But if we’re honest, we were expecting to see more burn-in after 9 months. The levels we’re seeing right now are still very tolerable, and with realistic, sensible usage, we think most people won’t run into proper burn-in problems within the first 12 to 18 months of usage on this sort of QD-OLED panel. Maybe some light burn-in here or there, a few edge cases where you’ll notice it, but nothing that ruins the experience. And this is an ongoing test, of course – if we see similar results to this after 12 months, the “relatively safe” lifespan for OLED will push out even further.

These results are even more positive for people primarily using an OLED for gaming or content consumption. We haven’t seen anything so far that would indicate people primarily using this sort of monitor for gaming will suffer horrific burn-in after several years. Even for mixed use, it’s looking reasonable at this stage.

Getting two good years of usage out of an OLED, though… that’s probably not going to cut it when we’re talking about high-end, $1,000 monitors. Ideally, you’d want this sort of monitor to last for at least 5 years, if not longer, so we’ll see how it goes. We’re not planning on stopping this burn-in test anytime soon, so we’ll keep monitoring things and see how long it can last.

Shopping Shortcuts:

• MSI MPG 321URX on Newegg
• Asus ROG Swift PG32UCDM on Amazon
• Samsung Odyssey OLED G9 on Amazon
• Asus ROG Swift PG32UCDP WOLED on Newegg
• Asus ROG Swift OLED PG49WCD on Amazon
• Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 on Amazon
• Alienware AW3423DW 34″ QD-OLED on Amazon
• LG C2 42″ OLED TV on Amazon