OLED TV for gaming seems absurd to me, am I dumb?

[Deimos F]

Here's a scenario: You buy an OLED TV, you buy a Nintendo Switch, and you buy BotW.

You play BotW for 100+ hours.

 

... burn-in?

 

It sounds like an absurd idea to me, shelling out that amount of money for an OLED and risking burn-in. Yes the stats are great on paper, but who wants to risk having Link's health bar burnt into their screen once they move on to the next game?

What am I missing here? To me it seems buying an OLED for anything that's not 100% movie watching seems like a gamble. No?

[Bombastinator]

22 minutes ago, Deimos F said:

Here's a scenario: You buy an OLED TV, you buy a Nintendo Switch, and you buy BotW.

You play BotW for 100+ hours.

 

... burn-in?

 

It sounds like an absurd idea to me, shelling out that amount of money for an OLED and risking burn-in. Yes the stats are great on paper, but who wants to risk having Link's health bar burnt into their screen once they move on to the next game?

What am I missing here? To me it seems buying an OLED for anything that's not 100% movie watching seems like a gamble. No?

Tests have been done on this.  It’s a does or doesn’t thing. My understanding is qoled changes the algorithm enough that while leaving your machine on day and night for a few months might still damage one, they’re a lot more resilliant.  One can do the same sort of thing with just video by hitting pause. I don’t think that one is totally safe while the other is totally dangerous.  Both of them have something of a continuum to them.

[tikker]

You can see for yourself with RTINGS' burn-in experiment: https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/real-life-oled-burn-in-test

 

They've gotten better with recent models, but yes static UI elements will burn-in eventually if you use them often enough, watching only letterboxed movies only will give you a worn-out centre with comparatively fresh top and bottom rows.

 

You can mitigate it by consuming varied content and not driving at a constantly insane brightness in Vivid mode, for example, but even the Netflix logo will burn-in from your time spent on the screen showing it if you do that enough. In the end it's simply inherent to OLEDs.

 

I've watched plenty of movies on my C9 over the 2 years or so since I got it. I mostly watch mo vies, but also gamed on it with static UI games (like Nioh 1&2, Elden Ring) and no noticeable burn-in yet.

 

28 minutes ago, Deimos F said:

What am I missing here? To me it seems buying an OLED for anything that's not 100% movie watching seems like a gamble. No?

That OLED simply isn't for you if you only play one or a handful of games with the same static UI elements for hundreds or thousands of hours over the years (remember that OLED burn-in is cumulative; 1x 300 h or 300x 1 h has pretty much the same effect).

[BobVonBob]

With modern OLED technology burn-in while gaming is only a big concern if you only play a single game with very large and bright static elements at high brightness, and even in that scenario you're unlikely to get visible burn-in for months, potentially years. Yes burn-in is scary, but modern OLEDs aren't even close to as fragile as plasma or even many CRT screens were.

[porina]

Everything wears out over time, even regular LCDs. I have an early gen LCD TV, and when I retired it from main use there were noticeable brightness variations across the display. A wide gamut IPS display I originally bought for photography use was later mainly used to view Youtube videos as a 2nd display had burn in of the thumbnails shown to the side when watching windowed. A higher end Dell LCD display where I used to work had the Windows lock screen logo burn in after some years. I don't see the risk with OLED to be that much worse to make it unusable for gaming. I have a B9 and so far there is no noticeable variation after over 2 years. Content is mix of Youtube, Twitch, and gaming. 

[Colty]

Considering the new Switch is an OLED with no burn in mitigation techniques, I'd say it's totally fine. Modern phones with static UI? Also OLED. 

Me and the GF play a lot of "SoulsBorne" games with constant UI elements, I played a fair amount of COD for a while, we watch a lot of 4:3 content (risking uneven wear of the inner pixels), and I haven't noticed one issue after a little over a year with a lot of use. 

OLED is absolutely the best display you can get right now. The new Samsung QD-OLED you can buy has issues (source) that are encouraging me to stick with my CX and/or later upgrade to a Sony or LG QD-OLED since Samsung is putting BestBuy mode filters on "FilmMaker" mode. 

There is nothing else like being in a pitch black room watching an OLED movie that's properly mastered. 

[vetali]

You wont experience burn within 100 hours of gameplay on a newer OLED. You are also opening menus, viewing cutscenes, using a scope, etc. that break up the HUD. I probably dumped 70 hours of Halo Infinite on my C1 with no HUD burn in. 50 hours of Minecraft Dungeons which has a harsh static HUD, no burn in. I also watch a lot of sports that usually have a static score bug. No burn in after a year due to commercials breaking it up Only thing I would be worried about is using it as a monitor on my PC. Gonna wait to see how QD-OLED matures before I move up from my C1 in a few years.

[Bombastinator]

4 minutes ago, vetali said:

You wont experience burn within 100 hours of gameplay on a newer OLED. You are also opening menus, viewing cutscenes, using a scope, etc. that break up the HUD. I probably dumped 70 hours of Halo Infinite on my C1 with no HUD burn in. 50 hours of Minecraft Dungeons which has a harsh static HUD, no burn in. I also watch a lot of sports that usually have a static score bug. No burn in after a year due to commercials breaking it up Only thing I would be worried about is using it as a monitor on my PC. Gonna wait to see how QD-OLED matures before I move up from my C1 in a few years.

May want to get a screen saver for that in case the thing doesn’t sleep and gets left for hours at a time on the same screen.  Screen savers haven’t been a thing for many years but back when CRTs were everywhere they were as well.

[Stahlmann]

Burn-in is not something that's gonna happen in a few hundred hours or if you forget to turn off your TV once. It's accumulated wear on the pixels that happens over THOUSANDS of hours. It's highly unlikely to be a problem with gaming. I've been using an LG OLED for over 2.5 years now with hundreds of hours of gaming and even more hours in movie watching and there is absolutely no image degradation or burn in.

 

The burn-in risk that many people associate with OLED is greatly exaggerated. And (imo) a small downside compared to the many advantages OLED brings to the table.

[Bombastinator]

Apparently burn in is less of a problem than it used to be for newer designs.  Still an issue but less of one. It’s not the fundamental technology, but apparently software mitigation stuff that apparently also applies to games.  The big worry with games is static stuff like health bars.  Apparently this has been mitigated somewhat.