The next big thing in TVs is certainly OLED sets with screens that are much brighter and offer better image quality than LED technologies (not to mention better black levels). The concern for many of the people who have researched OLED TVs the higher occurrences of burn-in compared to LED-baclkit TVs. The folks over at RTINGS performed real-life burn-in testing on LG OLED C7 TVs to get to the bottom of OLED burn-in. In the test, the publication purchased six of the sets and set up an accelerated aging test to see what type of content was most likely to lead to burn-in and how fast it can happen.
The testing is still ongoing as of this writing, but already the publication reports that the TVs have burn-in that is worse with certain types of content. The test regime took the six TVs and ran through them different types of content for 20 hours per day with an hour of rest between each five-hour block. This playback regime was designed to simulate watching the TV for five hours per day. Something interesting was discovered during testing; the worst type of content for causing burn-in was gaming and news of the sort that leaves static logos or maps on the screen all the time.
RTINGS admits that its test scenarios are extreme, but anyone who likes to watch channels with a permanent news ticker, The Weather Channel, or plays Battlefield all the time can certainly match this test in real-world usage at home. The tests conducted were also run on the TVs at different brightness levels. The TVs that played gaming and news content had burn-in that left logos on the screen constantly after only 4,000 hours of use. LG, however, claims burn-in won't be an issue for at least 30,000 hours.
The big take away here is to vary the content you watch on your OLED TV and be sure you don't run it with the same network logo or map on it each time you turn it on. LG certainly isn’t the only company that has had issues with screen burn-in on OLED devices; Google had a burn-in issue with its Pixel 2 XL when it was first released last year. RTINGS is continuing the LG OLED C7 TV tests and updates its tests weekly.
(Image via RTINGS)
