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OLED Burn-in Check

Check an OLED for burn-in — and tell permanent wear apart from temporary image retention.

Mid grey. The most revealing field. Uneven wear shows here first.

On any of the fields, could you see a faint ghost of something you have been watching?

How this test works

Six full-screen fields are cycled, starting with mid grey because uneven emitter wear shows against a mid-tone long before it shows against white or a saturated colour. Dark grey, white and each of the three primaries follow, since the red, green and blue emitters age at different rates and a channel-specific fault only appears on its own colour. Then comes the question the whole tool exists for: whether the mark is still there after the panel has shown varied content for ten minutes. A ghost that clears is image retention — a temporary charge effect, harmless, common on both OLED and LCD. A ghost that survives is burn-in, which is permanent physical wear. Telling someone the first one is the second is telling them their screen is ruined when it is not.

What the results mean

Image retention
A temporary ghost that clears on its own once other content has been shown. Not damage, and not what burn-in means.
Burn-in
Permanent uneven wear of the emitters. Nothing reverses it; pixel-refresh cycles compensate for uniform ageing, not for a pattern already worn in.
Mid grey
The most revealing field, which is why it comes first. Differential wear shows against a mid-tone before it shows anywhere else.
Blue field
Blue emitters age fastest on most OLED panels, so blue often shows wear before red or green.

Common problems and fixes

I see a faint ghost of my taskbar
Check whether it clears with varied content first. If it does it is retention. If it does not, that is early burn-in, and hiding the taskbar is the single most effective thing you can change.
The mark cleared after ten minutes
Then it was image retention and there is nothing to fix. If it keeps returning in the same place, look at what is static there — that is the early warning that real wear could follow.
My LCD shows a ghost — is that burn-in?
No. LCDs get image retention, which clears, but they have no self-emissive pixels to wear unevenly. Burn-in needs OLED or plasma.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between burn-in and image retention?

Time. Retention is a temporary charge effect that clears once other content has been displayed; burn-in is permanent differential wear of the emitters and does not fade no matter what you show. This test asks you to check after ten minutes of varied content precisely to separate them.

Can burn-in be fixed?

No. A panel's own pixel-refresh cycle evens out uniform ageing and slows further divergence, but it cannot restore emitters that have already worn unevenly. Reducing peak brightness and removing static elements slows what remains.

Is OLED burn-in covered by warranty?

It varies and it has been changing. Several manufacturers who previously excluded it entirely now cover it for a limited period. Worth checking rather than assuming, since the assumption used to be correct and increasingly is not.

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