I thought OLED burn-in was a myth — boy, was I wrong

OLED displays are the absolute cream of the crop when it comes to monitors. Accurate colors, deep blacks, no matter what you throw at them, it just looks great. It’s totally worth spending extra on an OLED screen.

But as always, there’s a catch—OLED burn-in. When I got my new OLED display laptop a little over a year ago, I assumed OLED had developed enough for burn-in to be a rare case of mishandling. So I ignored most OLED burn-in warnings and used my display without a care, until I learned my lesson the hard way.

OLED burn-in is still very real

I learned the hard way that “modern panels don’t burn in” is pure marketing fluff

The thing about OLED burn-in is that it seems like a contradiction. Modern OLEDs are supposed to be incredible—jaw-dropping contrast, perfect blacks, incredible picture quality. Yet, they’re also somehow fragile? That’s what threw me off.

It sounds like something that should either be a serious problem or not a problem at all. Turns out, it’s both. It’s real, it’s permanent, but it’s also easily avoidable if you actually pay attention. Once you understand how OLEDs work, it makes a lot of sense.

Unlike LCD panels that require a backlight, OLED or Organic Light-Emitting Diode panels illuminate each pixel individually. This yields near-infinite contrast and much better color reproduction, but these individual pixels degrade over time, especially when displaying the same high-contrast colors for extended periods.

So if you’ve got one static user interface running on your OLED monitor all day, the pixels showing that interface degrade faster than the surrounding ones. This results in a faint but permanent shift in the pixel’s colors, leaving behind what seems like a ghost of a static image. This is a rather simplistic explanation of OLED burn-in, but it’s about everything you need to know.

The manufacturers aren’t exactly screaming about it because, well, it doesn’t happen to people who follow basic precautions. But if you get too comfortable with your setup, you’re vulnerable.

That’s exactly what happened to me. I assumed OLED burn-in was a thing of the past, and ran my OLED laptop display like any other display I had in my four-monitor setup. My laptop powered three more monitors, which I used for work, leaving YouTube Music running full screen on the home page most of the time, and, before I knew it, my panel had burnt in.

The damage you don’t notice until it’s too late

The burn-in ghost won’t ever leave your display

I knew that OLED burn-in hits laptops hard, so I ran frequent checks for any damage. During a grey-screen test, I caught a faint glimpse of the YouTube Music homepage that had burned itself into my display.

Thankfully, it’s not too bad, and I can’t notice any artefacting issues unless the screen is showing a specific shade of grey. The burn-in is pretty much only visible when Discord is loading up on the laptop display, as the loading screen has the perfect grey background that highlights the damage. In fact, it’s so faint that burn-in tests like FixBurnIN and Black Screen Test don’t even detect it.

Apart from that, I haven’t noticed any issues when using the displays in daily life, playing games, watching movies, or just working. Still, I now know the display has burn-in, and it hurts a little every time I see that interface imprinted onto the screen.

Manufacturers’ stance on OLED burn-in is simple—it’s rare for normal users. And they’re not exactly wrong. If I were using my laptop’s display as the only display available, not as a sidekick to my multi-monitor display, I couldn’t imagine running into burn-in issues.

The keyword here is “normal.” Normal apparently means not leaving your screen running with identical content for weeks at a time. Normal means switching between different applications, or at least rotating what’s on your display. Normal also means using built-in protection and not glossing over more than a decade of warnings.

How to save your OLED display (while you still can)

Simple habits can add years to your OLED’s life

The myth isn’t that OLED burn-in doesn’t exist. The myth is that it’s something that happens to “those other people” or some random fluke of nature. It’s not. It’s the predictable cost of pushing pixels hard without rotation.

Protecting your display is rather easy as well. Following a basic checklist of precautions is all you need to do to protect your display.

Be smarter than I was. Treat your OLED like it matters—because it does.