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It's time for another update on OLED monitor burn-in. As you likely know, we've been aggressively burning in our 4K OLED monitor for 15 months now, so we're going to take a look and see how the display is holding up. Hopefully, there hasn't been too much degradation since the last time we checked in three months ago – we really do want this monitor to last a decent amount of time.
As with the last few updates, there have been no changes in how we've been using our MSI MPG 321URX QD-OLED. We're still very much demonstrating a worst-case scenario for OLED usage. We almost entirely use this display for static content, such as writing scripts, browsing the web, editing videos, and so on. As a result, there's basically no content consumption or gaming occurring on this display – the complete opposite of how we normally recommend people use OLED panels.
If you missed some of the quarterly updates, we recommend going back to check out at least the initial article, so you can get the full idea of the setup we're using and why we decided to use this MSI 4K 240Hz QD-OLED gaming monitor as our workstation display.
We have purposefully been using a 4K OLED monitor in ways that will cause permanent burn-in. This is not how you should be using an OLED monitor, but we're taking one for the team.
The idea here is to perform a real-world test of OLED longevity in the worst possible configuration – effectively burning in the display on purpose. We swapped our 32-inch 4K IPS LCD for this QD-OLED and changed nothing else about the setup. No dark mode, no screensavers – and that's to see whether OLED monitors really can be used as LCD-equivalent productivity displays over the long term.
A Brief Recap
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, something that has been perfectly fine for LCDs for a long time, but is quite risky on newer OLED screens.
The progression to this point has been as follows:
After one month and 200 to 250 hours of usage, we saw no signs of burn-in.
After three months, 650 to 750 hours of usage and 71 panel compensation cycles, we saw faint signs of burn-in.
After six months, 1,200 to 1,500 hours of usage and 141 compensation cycles, burn-in was a bit more noticeable than at three months, but not overly problematic.
At nine months – 2,000 to 2,300 hours of usage and 224 compensation cycles – there was still some burn-in, but relatively few changes compared to the six-month results.
One year later – the most recent update we did was at 12 months with 2,700 to 3,000 hours of use and 322 compensation cycles. Again, burn-in progressed at a slow pace but worsened compared to previous results, with a more visible line down the center of the display and more prominent taskbar burn-in.
After 15 months, the 321URX is reporting 413 compensation cycles, and we would estimate around 3,400 to 3,800 hours of total usage. This continues to be around 8 to 10 hours of usage at 200 nits of brightness per compensation cycle, and around eight hours of screen use every single day for 15 months.
The recommended rate for panel protection cycles is every four hours of use, so our test continues to be particularly stressful – especially when factoring in the high level of brightness and the fact that we don't put the monitor to sleep after a few minutes of inactivity.
The display-side burn-in protection features are enabled, and everything here reflects a realistic use case (it's identical to how we used an LCD), but it's probably more of a worst-case scenario than a typical usage pattern for an OLED buyer.
The Burn-In Results So Far
In this update, we're showing the 6-, 9-, 12-, and 15-month results. 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.
We've made a couple of changes to how these burn-in results are rendered to help combat image compression in our samples, including adding some static noise into the image, which seems to reduce compression artifacts and make the burn-in more visible. We experimented with a couple of solutions, and this approach seems to work best when trying to highlight small differences in dark images.
First, we're going to look at the original, unenhanced examples, which roughly show how burn-in looks in real life. If you look closely at these images – and it can be hard to see because the level of burn-in is not overly obvious – you'll spot three main burn-in artifacts. There's a line down the center of the screen, which corresponds to the border of applications when used in a side-by-side configuration.
This is mostly how we use this 32-inch panel for productivity work. We'll often have a web browser snapped to one side and a word document snapped to the other. The border is darker than the application windows themselves, so we're effectively seeing inverse burn-in here: the brighter app windows have degraded the left and right sides of the monitor faster than the darker border line down the center. Darker, lower-brightness pixels degrade more slowly than brighter pixels.
The second artifact is taskbar burn-in seen at the bottom of the screen. We use a dark taskbar, so again, this is inverse burn-in: the brighter application windows above the taskbar area have degraded the screen faster than the darker taskbar itself. No app icons are visible, it's just a general shadow where the taskbar is located.
The third artifact is more subtle: the right side of the screen is more degraded than the left. This is because if we only have one app open, we tend to favor snapping to the right side over the left. This means the right side is more likely to display brighter content, and thus burn in that side faster than the left.
The first two artifacts have been visible in all four examples shown on screen, from 6 months through to 15 months, though the level of burn-in is slowly becoming worse, making these artifacts more visible. The line down the center of the screen was visible as early as 3 months into this testing, and the taskbar burn-in began around the 6-month mark.
The right side burning in faster than the left started to become noticeable at 12 months and is now more visible at 15 months. Across all of these issues, however, there hasn't been a huge leap in degradation over the last 3 months – it's more of a steady decline.
Results with Enhancement Filter
Now let's enable the burn-in enhancement filter to make these artifacts more obvious. We've updated the filter we're using for this month's update to make it even clearer for those who have struggled to identify burn-in previously. We've also optimized this filter for every example, allowing us to extract the burn-in artifacts across a broader range of images.
To be clear, these are digitally enhanced images of the screen that deliberately exaggerate the small differences in uniformity the camera is capturing. This is not how the panel looks in real life.
With the enhancement filter enabled, these burn-in artifacts are more noticeable, and you can see that burn-in is actually impacting all of the examples. While it's most noticeable in the mid-grey range – both using the enhancement filter and in real life – there is also a subtle level of burn-in affecting dark greys, lighter greys, and whites. The line is most prominent, but taskbar burn-in is also present.
Of particular interest are some of the mid-grey enhanced results, which show the left-right uniformity issue getting worse over time from 6 months through to 15 months. The right side is visibly darker now than it was back at 6 months in several of these examples, and there is clearly more degradation today even compared to our previous snapshot after 12 months of use.
This has the effect of making the line more visible, because it makes the boundary between the left and right sides of the monitor more distinct. This is something we're starting to notice more in applications with a dark background, like Premiere: the line is becoming easier to notice, and grey uniformity is getting worse.
Color Results
We can also use color examples to explore how individual subpixels are degrading. This is pretty hard to spot in the regular shots, but there are some faint signs of burn-in throughout each of the color examples. When we enable the enhancement filter, things become more obvious.
The red subpixel has degraded the least, though at the 15-month mark there are some very faint signs of vertical line and taskbar artifacts. The blue subpixel is the second most affected, with more obvious levels of burn-in going back to the 6-month mark. This subpixel seems to be degrading slowly, with only small changes when comparing each three-month interval, though the 15-month result is the worst in terms of vertical line and taskbar artifacts.
Then we get to the green subpixel, which is clearly the worst of the three and shows all three of the issues we've been discussing in the most obvious way. The green subpixel also appears to be degrading the fastest, particularly when looking at left-right uniformity.
Uneven aging of the subpixels will affect color temperature over time: if red ages more slowly than blue and green, the panel will slowly shift toward red. This is something we noticed in the previous update: our panel started out with a 6,450K white point and had shifted to 6,350K after 12 months.
With that said, we haven't noticed a significant difference between 12 and 15 months; the test results were within the margin of error. Maximum brightness is unchanged – the panel is still hitting 243 nits peak after 15 months, the same as every other month.
More Samples
The question now becomes whether these artifacts are actually affecting our usage of the display. At this point, the answer is still no for the most part. Taskbar burn-in is basically a non-issue because the taskbar is always visible, so uneven degradation in this area versus the application area isn't noticeable.
The only time this would potentially be an issue is when viewing something full-screen. Right now, we only watch full-screen videos on this monitor rarely, and when we do, the taskbar burn-in is not visible.
The vertical line and left-right uniformity issue is mostly not visible, especially in the main apps we use, like a web browser or anything where we're using a normal side-by-side configuration. Where it is visible and potentially problematic is in full-screen apps with a dark background, like Photoshop and Premiere.
These artifacts are becoming more visible and more annoying over time in those apps, but for now, it's more of a cosmetic annoyance than something that actually affects our work. These problems are practically never visible in full-screen video content – for now, it requires a uniform dark grey background for us to notice.
How Are the Results Shaping Up?
While this QD-OLED panel does continue to degrade slowly, we think the outcome to this point has been relatively good. We've used this display for somewhere between 3,400 and 3,800 hours, and burn-in has so far been quite minor.
We were expecting to see more burn-in after this length of time, particularly with the extreme worst-case scenario we've been using. In the last update, we said we were optimistic the 321URX would have a level of burn-in after 2 years that isn't distracting for everyday use – we think that's still accurate after the 15-month mark.
The results we're seeing are still positive news for people with more realistic usage scenarios. 3,600 hours of use is equivalent to 8 hours a day of static content every single day for 15 months, or 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for over 20 months.
In a more mixed workload – say, 4 hours a day of static content – these 15-month results would roughly equate to 2.5 years of use. And that's assuming a similar usage pattern with 200 nits of brightness, light mode, a lower-than-recommended rate of compensation cycles, and no meaningful screensaver. Making some minor tweaks to optimize your OLED's lifespan – things that shouldn't impact your usage all that much – could easily extend those timelines quite a bit.
As a reminder, burn-in with OLEDs is directly related to hours of usage and is cumulative. So if you only used static apps for 4 hours a day, you should expect to see double the lifespan compared to using static apps for 8 hours a day. Mixing in dynamic content between periods of static content usually won't improve the burn-in results or "clean" the screen, it's all related to the cumulative number of hours displaying the same static content.
Based on these results, we currently believe an OLED will be okay for productivity work for between 2 and 3 years, depending on how frequently you use the display for static content. It's possible we'll extend that timeline as we continue to run this burn-in test, but that's all we're willing to commit to based on the evidence we've seen so far.
Two to three years is decent considering we were expecting to see problematic degradation after just a year or so. At least this specific generation QD-OLED panel seems to be a bit more resilient to desktop burn-in than we anticipated.
However, it's still not amazing, given LCDs easily last 5 to 10 years without any issues whatsoever in most circumstances. The power supply is more likely to fail than the backlight itself. We think it's very reasonable to expect a $1,000 monitor to last at least 5 years, so only getting 2 to 3 years of decent use out of an OLED would be disappointing. But we'll see how things go over the coming months.
