A year of OLED monitor burn-in testing shows promising results

If you’ve ever seen images permanently etched onto an expensive television, then you know why some PC users still hesitate to upgrade to an OLED monitor. While the vivid colors and perfect contrast are amazing for gaming, doing regular work on these displays could spell burn-in disaster — or at least that’s the conventional wisdom.

One YouTuber decided to put a new QD-OLED monitor to the test for a practical look at burn-in risk on the latest panels. Monitors Unboxed spent a year torturing the MSI MPG 321URX, a 32-inch 4K monitor with one of the latest QD-OLED panels. They set up a worst-case scenario that would maximize the potential for OLED burn-in: entirely static content, mostly writing and browsing the web, with minimal gaming or video playback.

The semi-controlled test involved 60 hours of use per week, approximately 3,000 total hours after a year. The monitor was set to 200 nits of brightness. Windows 11 was set to light mode with a dark taskbar. The screen was set to sleep after 2 hours of inactivity (which is much higher than the typical setting for most users) and the burn-in reduction pixel refresh cycle going once per day (which is half the recommended refresh cycles, according to MSI). It’s a grueling schedule for any monitor. But for an OLED with basically no full-screen video? It’s a gauntlet.

“Basically, the idea here is to perform real-world testing of OLED longevity in the worst possible configuration,” says Monitors Unboxed, “effectively burning in the display on purpose.” The goal is to use the OLED monitor in the same way you’d use an IPS-LCD monitor, which shouldn’t have any major issues after just one year of use.

So how did it look after a year? According to the video, the panel showed some faint burn-in after three months, fairly evenly across the display. (I’ll add that as a former phone reviewer who’s dealt with dozens of small OLED displays, that’s pretty normal.) A little more was visible at the six-month mark, and a little less than expected at nine months.

After a year of not-quite-daily pixel refresh cycles, the only visible effects are slight burn-in on blue and green subpixels, an obvious band where the dark taskbar sits, and a faint line down the center of the screen (which Monitors Unboxed attributes to using side-by-side windowed apps).

The torture test is pretty good news, considering the test was done without most of the software compensations for burn-in, plus features like rapid display sleep turned off. Monitors Unboxed notes that burn-in on an OLED panel is cumulative, so there’s no way to lessen the damage once it’s done. Periodically playing games or videos won’t stop existing OLED burn-in damage from showing.

But if you’re using your OLED for a mixture of activity types, and if you’re using the proper mitigation tools, then you can expect a new OLED monitor to last a lot longer without showing these results, especially if you’re not a constant eight-hours-a-day user.

And as the presenter notes, this burn-in is all but invisible while you’re actually using the monitor. “I think most people will not see significant burn-in concerns using an OLED, even for productivity use, inside the first two years, possibly two and a half years.”

The whole video is well worth a watch if you’re thinking of buying an OLED monitor or concerned about the longevity of your current OLED display. I’ll point out that MSI, like other high-end OLED monitor vendors, offers a 3-year warranty specifically for burn-in on the panel.

Further reading: The best monitors, including OLED options