OLED Screen Burn-in, in 2 Minutes
Why do OLED screens experience burn-in?
Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED or Organic LED) is a popular screen technology used in everything from TVs to smartphones. They boast a high dynamic range, bright colors, true blacks, and faster response times when compared to LCD technology.
LCD, the technology most used in lower-end technology and most computer monitors use a single large backlight to push light through to the display. Each pixel on an LCD is on another layer that blocks certain wavelengths while letting others through. This produces the image we see on a screen. This design allows LCD panels to last a very long time, about 60,000 hours or 6.8 years of continuous use.
OLEDs on the other hand are more expensive to produce and thus are only typically seen in higher-end products. The main component in an OLED screen is the Organic Emissive Layer. This layer is an organic carbon-based layer capable of emitting light. Comprised of millions of ‘pixels’ that individually emit light, the layer works by injecting electrons (from the cathode layer) and removing it (from the anode layer). As electrons pass through the material of the Emissive Layer slowly degrades. Over time the panel will die, but that usually takes around 100,000 hours of continuous use (or 11.4 years)for newer panels according to LG (the primary supplier of most OLEDs for TVs). The issue is however is with something called screen burn-in.
Burn-in occurs when specific pixels on the emissive layer degrade faster than others. This often occurs with static sections of an image on the screen, like for example the Windows taskbar at the bottom of your computer or the navigation buttons on your android device. Since that part of the screen never changes, pixels that emit bright colors from that area will degrade much faster than the rest of the screen that's constantly changing. This eventually causes permanent damage known as burn-in. This is one of the reasons, OLEDs aren’t as popular with computer monitors as they are on TVs or smartphones, since there are usually more static areas on a computer screen than there would be on a TV.
Manufactures, also do have methods of preventing static images from causing burn-in. Techniques like image shifting moves parts of the image around very quickly. This wouldn’t be noticeable to you or I but they prevent the area from experiencing burn-in by reducing the amount of light emitted from an area. Another way is to use local dimming to dim bright parts of the image that sustain the same level of brightness for a prolonged time frame.
Screen burn-in with today's technology isn’t as big an issue as it once was in the technology's early years but it’s still important to understand that these things can occur. The best advice is to avoid leaving the panel on overnight if there are any static sections of an image. Besides that, they perform extremely well and are currently the best technology for accurate color reproduction, at least until we see more of Micro-LEDs.
