OLED TVs have an unshakeable association with burn-in. Admittedly, this was a problem with some of the first-generation models released back in the mid-2010s. But these days, burn-in isn't at high-risk to happen unless you do something really dumb with your OLED TV.
What constitutes doing something dumb in this scenario? How about watching the same channel without changing it for thousands of hours in a row over the course of 441 days.
That’s exactly what another publication did in the name of science to see exactly what it takes to get some of the best OLED TVs to suffer a catastrophic display error.
How burn-in can still happen
In an update to its industry-recognized, 10,500-hour torture test, Rtings reports that OLED TVs manufactured between 2020 and 2023 “did not show significant reduction in burn-in compared to a 2017 LG model.”
If you just read that bit by itself without any additional context, it could be worrisome — after all, how could OLED TVs made with newer deuterium-based organic elements perform the exact same as older models that use carbon-hydrogen bonds?
Turns out, that’s only the case if you’re watching these newer TVs at their maximum brightness levels. These brightness levels are, as you'd expect, significantly higher than a TV made almost a decade ago.
If you watch content without maxed-out brightness — or you allow key preventative features like pixel refresh and pixel shift to do their jobs periodically— your OLED TV is not going to be at high-level risk for burn-in.
3 tips to keep your OLED colorful for years to come
Unless you have your OLED TV in a sun-drenched room with no way to mitigate ambient light, you probably don’t need to have your OLED set to its highest brightness setting. This is something Rtings and I agree on: “In many situations, especially with SDR content in a dark room, an OLED does not need to operate at its maximum brightness setting.”
If you’ve never changed the brightness setting on your TV, don't worry — the default brightness settings aren’t high enough to cause any issues.
In many situations, especially with SDR content in a dark room, an OLED does not need to operate at its maximum brightness setting.
Rtings
Another way to stave off burn-in is to allow your TV to have some downtime each day. People tend to turn off their TVs between viewing sessions to save on electricity, so this isn't likely to be an issue for most folks. But if you like to leave your OLED TV on for, say, your dog, set a sleep timer for the TV to turn off after a set period of time, or switch them to an iPad when you’re not home.
Turning off your TV allows one of the aforementioned burn-in prevention features — pixel refresh — to do its job. You can do this yourself manually anytime you think it’s necessary, but it’s better to trust the TV to do it.
Lastly, try to watch different channels and play different games. The only reason this OLED torture test produced publishable results is because it was designed to do the absolute worst thing you can do to an OLED screen: leave it running the same content for months on end.
As long as you switch things up, I highly doubt you’ll ever run into the issues experienced by the OLED TVs in Rtings’ test.
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