QD-OLED Burn-In Testing: One Year Later The Promising Results Are In
Can you imagine splurging on a big and beautiful quantum dot OLED (QD-OLED) monitor, only to turn around and intentionally test its mettle against burn-in over a 12-month period? It's not something the average consumer should do, and fortunately there's no need to either, because it's already been done as part of an ongoing burn-in test.
We have Tim Schiesser from Monitors Unboxed to thank for the somewhat brutal testing of MSI's MPG 321URX, an excellent 32-inch gaming monitor with a QD-OLED panel with a 4K resolution (3840x2160) and 240Hz refresh rate. Part of a newer crop of QD-OLED options, the MPG 321URX has been generally well received by buyers and reviewers alike, though it's not cheap compared to LCD options—it's currently on sale for $899.99 at Amazon ($50 off MSRP).
The good news for consumers who are interested in an OLED display is that pricing, while still in premium territory, has come down over the past few years. And the even better news is that OLED technology has also improved, along with various mechanisms designed to reduce the likelihood of burn-in. On top of it all, monitor makers have been beefing up their warranty policies to specifically include burn-in protection.
All that is well and good, but should you be concerned? That's what Tim is aiming to find out with his latest results from a full year of usage.
in the above video, Tim explains the criteria for his testing, which essentially mimics how he had been using an LCD monitor prior to switching over to MSI's QD-OLED model for full time usage. Some the highlights include no configuration changes to minimize burn-in, typical workstation usage with 95% static desktop apps, and around 8 hours (or more) of usage per day with the screen set to turn off/sleep after 2 hours of inactivity.
Additionally, Tim says the display is configured to only run a compensation cycle every 8 hours rather than the 4 hours that MSI recommends. The idea is to run the display in a worst-case scenario that mimics a continuous workday, which is perfectly fine on LCD panels but could be problematic for OLED.
So, how has it fared so far? After one month (~250 hours), there was no sign of burn-in. Then at six months (~650-75- hours), he observed "faint signs" of burn-in. At six months (~1,200-1,500 hours) burn-in was a bit more noticeable but not problematic. After nine months (~2,000-2,300 hours), there was a tad more burn-in, but relatively few changes compared to the six-month mark. And finally, after a year (~2,700-3,000 hours), the display continued a "stretch of relatively good news" with burn-in remaining isolated to the same kinds of tests observed at previous intervals.
This mostly constituted a line observed in mid to dark gray test patterns, and in apps that with a dark gray background such as Adobe Premier. The green subpixel test was the worst offender, but even so, Tim says that after 12 months, "it's still basically impossible to spot burn-in with brighter content, such as applications that use a mostly white background."
What's also interesting is that after six months, the line he references was less noticeable than at six months, which suggests that more compensation cycles had a positive impact over time. And at 12 months, the burned-in vertical line was more similar to six months (slightly worse) than nine months in most cases.
Overall, we'd say the results are somewhat mixed but mostly positive, especially considering that the usage habits for this test are more demanding than how most owners will use the display. Check it out for yourself (and here's a Google Drive link with examples that are high bitrate and optimized for viewing better than YouTube's compression) and let us know what you think.
