OLED Burn-in – A Practical Test
The fear of burn-in for OLED displays can be either a reality or a promotional tool for proponents of other display technologies, however OLED display designers have been working toward eliminating or reducing the problem since OLED display came to market. Burn-in is not new. It was an issue for CRT (Cathode Ray Tubes), particularly black and white displays or the monochrome monitors of the early days of personal computers where screen phosphors that were illuminated by a logo or similar image left ‘ghosts’ that were visible when the screen images were darker. LCD displays, while there are ways in which they can also be ‘ghosted’, are less susceptible to burn-in and when it does occur, it is easily reversed in most cases.
When it comes to OLED displays burn-in was a particularly worrisome issue years ago but has been addressed in a number of ways by OLED display designers. The cause of OLED burn-in is the uneven use of the three OLED materials that are used in each OLED display pixel (RGB displays, such as smartphones and tablets). If an image remains on the screen for an extended time in a single location and is a particular color or shade, such as deep blue, the blue sub-pixels will be ‘on’ more than the other colors and therefore will ‘age’ faster than the others. As OLED materials see reduced output as they age, a white screen (which implies all colors are ‘on’) where a blue image has been persistent, will see less blue in the white where the aging was most prevalent, meaning the pixels that have been persistently on will look slightly different than the other white pixels, creating a ‘ghost’ of the persistent image.
There are ways in which this can be avoided, with the most effective being not to watch programming that has persistent images, but that is certainly not a practical solution. Second would be not to leave your display on if you are not watching it, or turning down the brightness, but there is little a user can do if they are watching CNN or sports channels where logos are extremely persistent so display designers have come up with solutions that help to mitigate the problem. One such is to shift pixels. At regular intervals, each pixel in an image is shifted left, right, up, or down, so the wear on a particular sub-pixel color does not fall on that pixel at all times. This movement is not noticeable to the user but ‘spreads the wealth’ across more pixels, reducing the wear on any single one. Extending the lifetimes of OLED materials is also a viable solution to burn-in, as the longer it takes for a material to degrade, the longer it will take for burn-in to occur under the circumstances described above, but that is a task left to material scientists.
While many studies have been done concerning burn-in, most are done in labs with display metrics measured with sophisticated equipment that would generate terabytes of data and innumerable graphs and charts, but do not accurately give a consumer a ‘real world’ picture of what to expect with OLED burn-n on a practical basis and this is where the ‘average’ Joe comes in. The Nintendo (7974.JP) Switch offers an OLED display for its game device. We believe the display is produced by Samsung Display (pvt), the leader in small panel OLED displays, so the quality should be above reproach, but who is willing to leave their game device on for hundreds or thousands of hours to see if it burns in? If hundreds are willing to eat Ghost Peepers or dance naked on YouTube (GOOG), then there are those that would be willing to forego playing games for150 days to rack up a 3,600 hour ‘real world’ test to see the actual effects of burn-in.
While this is certainly not a scientific test and the conclusion is subjective, but YouTuber and Twitch (AMZN) host Bob Wulff, was willing to put his Switch through a 3,600 hour test with a single image from “Zelda, Breath of the Wild”, set to maximum brightness. During the 1st 1,800 hours, there were no image issues but after the next 1,800 continuous hours he noticed small ‘ghosting’ images that were sometimes discernable during game play, but were easier to see when the Switch image was set to a single color full screen image. We note that the Switch, in portable mode, does not use pixel shifting or screen dimming, so the average OLED display would have access to these fixes while the test did not. Mr. Wulff is hoping to keep the test active until he brings the system to “an unplayable state,” and will report back with results when that happens, but for now it seems that the fear of burn-in for OLED, in this non-scientific but practical test, is rather small, but we note that the displays used in the test were produced last year, so one might be careful in researching what year a potential OLED device was produced as older display might not have the same characteristics. See the actual video below.
https://youtu.be/PaC5RbGAeVo
When it comes to OLED displays burn-in was a particularly worrisome issue years ago but has been addressed in a number of ways by OLED display designers. The cause of OLED burn-in is the uneven use of the three OLED materials that are used in each OLED display pixel (RGB displays, such as smartphones and tablets). If an image remains on the screen for an extended time in a single location and is a particular color or shade, such as deep blue, the blue sub-pixels will be ‘on’ more than the other colors and therefore will ‘age’ faster than the others. As OLED materials see reduced output as they age, a white screen (which implies all colors are ‘on’) where a blue image has been persistent, will see less blue in the white where the aging was most prevalent, meaning the pixels that have been persistently on will look slightly different than the other white pixels, creating a ‘ghost’ of the persistent image.
There are ways in which this can be avoided, with the most effective being not to watch programming that has persistent images, but that is certainly not a practical solution. Second would be not to leave your display on if you are not watching it, or turning down the brightness, but there is little a user can do if they are watching CNN or sports channels where logos are extremely persistent so display designers have come up with solutions that help to mitigate the problem. One such is to shift pixels. At regular intervals, each pixel in an image is shifted left, right, up, or down, so the wear on a particular sub-pixel color does not fall on that pixel at all times. This movement is not noticeable to the user but ‘spreads the wealth’ across more pixels, reducing the wear on any single one. Extending the lifetimes of OLED materials is also a viable solution to burn-in, as the longer it takes for a material to degrade, the longer it will take for burn-in to occur under the circumstances described above, but that is a task left to material scientists.
While many studies have been done concerning burn-in, most are done in labs with display metrics measured with sophisticated equipment that would generate terabytes of data and innumerable graphs and charts, but do not accurately give a consumer a ‘real world’ picture of what to expect with OLED burn-n on a practical basis and this is where the ‘average’ Joe comes in. The Nintendo (7974.JP) Switch offers an OLED display for its game device. We believe the display is produced by Samsung Display (pvt), the leader in small panel OLED displays, so the quality should be above reproach, but who is willing to leave their game device on for hundreds or thousands of hours to see if it burns in? If hundreds are willing to eat Ghost Peepers or dance naked on YouTube (GOOG), then there are those that would be willing to forego playing games for150 days to rack up a 3,600 hour ‘real world’ test to see the actual effects of burn-in.
While this is certainly not a scientific test and the conclusion is subjective, but YouTuber and Twitch (AMZN) host Bob Wulff, was willing to put his Switch through a 3,600 hour test with a single image from “Zelda, Breath of the Wild”, set to maximum brightness. During the 1st 1,800 hours, there were no image issues but after the next 1,800 continuous hours he noticed small ‘ghosting’ images that were sometimes discernable during game play, but were easier to see when the Switch image was set to a single color full screen image. We note that the Switch, in portable mode, does not use pixel shifting or screen dimming, so the average OLED display would have access to these fixes while the test did not. Mr. Wulff is hoping to keep the test active until he brings the system to “an unplayable state,” and will report back with results when that happens, but for now it seems that the fear of burn-in for OLED, in this non-scientific but practical test, is rather small, but we note that the displays used in the test were produced last year, so one might be careful in researching what year a potential OLED device was produced as older display might not have the same characteristics. See the actual video below.
https://youtu.be/PaC5RbGAeVo
RSS Feed