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Television

Ultrawide Monitors Remind Us There's Still Much To Learn About OLED Burn-in 47

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
OLED monitors risk burn-in, especially with static images. Newer models combat this using improved materials, algorithms, efficiencies, features, and heat management. However, long-term data is minimal as quality selection is recent. An unexpected quirk applies to ultrawides: playing 16:9 content creates brighter center areas versus darker sides, quickening OLED degradation. In an extreme test by RTINGS, Samsung ultrawides developed heavy differential wear in just 700 hours. ArsTechnica adds: Even OLED monitors that have already been released can see their capabilities change in a way that could impact burn-in risk. For example, the Odyssey G8 monitor got a firmware update in August that removed the ability to use the Peak Brightness setting in SDR mode. While this is just one specific mode that, again, some users might not use, it's worth noting how this could change the amount of wear an OLED monitor could see. RTINGS' review said that after the firmware update, the monitor's max luminance "when displaying a bright highlight in an SDR scene" went from 331 nits to 230 nits. Samsung hasn't confirmed the reasons for this change, but such changes highlight how OLED monitor burn-in risk can change from use to use and from update to update, across different products.
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Ultrawide Monitors Remind Us There's Still Much To Learn About OLED Burn-in More

Ultrawide Monitors Remind Us There's Still Much To Learn About OLED Burn-in

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  • And there OLED monitors that cost most than my damn PC.

  • Screensavers are back baby! (Score:5, Informative)

    by spiritplumber ( 1944222 ) on Wednesday November 22, 2023 @01:53PM (#64024797) Homepage
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dadoo ( 899435 )

      If only. Recently, I tried getting the original After Dark working on my Linux machine, and using DosBox, it works pretty well, but only when I'm logged in and active; I can't get it working on the lock screen. I've googled how to fix it, but I have yet to find a page that has a good solution.

      I think it would be pretty hilarious to get Totally Twisted working on my machine at work.

    • OLED gets persisted images because the pixels wear out during use. A typical screensaver will not help here as it is just more "use". The way to "undo" the wear is actually just to level out the remaining pixels to a similar wear level.

      This is entirely a game of avoiding wear in the first place whenever possible (pixel shift), making the wear as uniform as possible (full-panel maintenance refresh), followed by being leaving some voltage buffer to boost the brightness of worn pixels to match original levels

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      I still use screen savers because they're fun! :D

    • Screensavers went away?

  • Know your needs. (Score:3)

    by GotNoRice ( 7207988 ) on Wednesday November 22, 2023 @02:05PM (#64024839)
    My previous monitor was a VA panel. When I upgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 11, I noticed afterward that the Windows 10 Start Menu icon had become burned-in to the bottom-left of the screen. Just barely, but enough to notice it when you were looking right at it. I knew right then, that if I could cause burn-in on a VA panel, I could never make an OLED work for me. I went with a 38" Ultrawide using a Nano-IPS panel, and it's been a wonderful monitor for me so far.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      My previous monitor was a VA panel. When I upgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 11, I noticed afterward that the Windows 10 Start Menu icon had become burned-in to the bottom-left of the screen. Just barely, but enough to notice it when you were looking right at it. I knew right then, that if I could cause burn-in on a VA panel, I could never make an OLED work for me. I went with a 38" Ultrawide using a Nano-IPS panel, and it's been a wonderful monitor for me so far.

      TFT panels (TN/VA/IPS) can suffer from ima

      • I bought a 58" plasma TV back in 2008. Similar concerns back then. The manual said to reduce screen brightness to 50% to improve life. Another technique the TV uses automatically is to add random noise to reduce burn in. You can see the noise up close up but at a normal viewing distance you don't see it at all. 15 years later my plasma TV is still going strong.

    • I could never make an OLED work for me

      People said the same about LCD. Talking about a singular technology is silly. You can't make the current generation and type of OLED panels on the market work for you. Never say never about any technology under continuous development.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      There is an LCD technology that can rival OLED for deep blacks and colour accuracy, but it's very expensive. Sony do some reference monitors that use it. Basically two LCD panels, one which is monochrome and a colour one in front of it. The monochrome LCD helps increase the range of luminance possible.

      Unfortunately it's a massive power hog, because the backlight has to be extremely bright.

      So in the end, if you want extremely good blacks and accurate colours, one of the OLED types (like QD OLED for example)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

      I had a pair of VA panels for a very long time (2048x1152 displays basically became impossible to replace), and they exhibited what appeared to be "burn-in" but it was temporary. Give them an hour without the signal that was causing the problem, and the differences gradually disappeared. After more than a decade of use, it was the "front end" that went out on both, a few months apart. They just failed to decode incoming signals any longer, and it was evident over the last couple months of function that some

  • My launch day iPhone 13 mini has some burn in when I display solid color test images. Like that old joke where where a man tells his doctor "It hurts when I do this", just don't do that if it bothers you.

    During day-to-day actual use, I've never noticed the burn-in. In TFA, I'm having difficulty seeing what they're complaining about even after they blew out the contrast in the image of that woman in the dark, to supposedly make the burn-in more noticeable. Yeah, you can certainly see it in the test images

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      My launch day iPhone 13 mini has some burn in when I display solid color test images. Like that old joke where where a man tells his doctor "It hurts when I do this", just don't do that if it bothers you.

      My Google Pixel 3 Pro had to be replaced by Google (nice of them - it was like 2 months out of warranty) because the battery decided to change occupations and become a spicy pillow.

      The replacement Pixel 3 Pro had screen burn in - it was the exact same circular pattern as the recovery mode animation. You did

  • ... do not be an early adopter. Kind of obvious, that.

  • This is why my laptop and my TV are mini LED. I wish my phone wasnâ(TM)t OLED either but I guess only micro LED can change that when it becomes cheap enough.
    • LED:s are not immune to issues, if you check the Rtings test they show massive uniformity problems with LED:s over time which is that technologies version of the OLED burn in.
    • My wokr laptop is mini-LED (MBP). My gaming laptop (ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo) is OLED.
      OLED is vastly superior. Particularly in the case of HDR content showing a bright object moving against a black background, and you can watch the fucking illumination squares following and trailing it.

      Burn-in is a problem with OLED panels, but various levels of mitigation strategies work well.
      These ultrawides present a new problem that their manufacturers are going to have to figure out.

      I have no burn-in problems with an

    • Ha! That's why I use a 14" orange phosphor CRT with a Hercules graphics card!

      320x200 FTW!!

  • my dell QD-OLED for about a year now, so far no problems, it is a beautiful picture.
  • However, long-term data is minimal as quality selection is recent.

  • OLED is dumb (Score:3)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Wednesday November 22, 2023 @03:40PM (#64025105)

    We need microLED asap.

    • We need Super Turbo Ultra MicroLED, asaper.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Khyber ( 864651 )

      uLED panels already exist. They cost money, though.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Doesn't MicroLED have burn in as well? Fundamentally, anything where each pixel is lit individually, is going to experience different levels of wear depending on the content displayed. LEDs do fade over time.

  • The only thing that is clear at this point is that there is an insane quality control variance across the board of displays. There are OLEDs that report burn-in in very few hours. There are those which appear to be working fine after an insanely long continuous use making you wonder if it burn-in is a problem at all. Then there's this story here which seems to be related to a design defect on a specific type of display.

    Nothing is certain about the technology in general. Anyone saying "OLED" is bad and can n

  • I own three normal 4K monitors.
    Arranged in portrait mode, and screen-merged.

    I still spend an appreciable amount of time READING on my computer.
    I don't spend much time watching movies in widescreen.
    If I DO, I have no objection to black bars (Hello! 6480 x3840!)
    If I could get a high res-16x10 or 4x3 setup, I could die happy.

    But the entire market's skewed towards these silly-scroll-fests.

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