OLED displays are one of the most popular displays for a home theater setup, this is because they produce amazing images with their contrast ratio abilities and viewing angles. They have a fast pixel response time that makes OLED TVs ideal for competitive gaming too, but how reliable are these displays?
The reliability of your TV becomes a bigger question especially when you’re paying a lot of money for it, OLED TVs are known to cost the most so they aren’t ideal for the average consumer. Since they can cost a lot, you would expect your TV to be pretty reliable as well as have a fairly long lifespan, we’ll we’re going to figure that out in this post.
Answer: Lifespan-wise, OLED TVs can last pretty long, so they’re reliable in the sense that you can use them for many years. However, burn-in is still a massive issue, and it can only take you around 44 weeks of intense usage to notice severe levels of burn-in.
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OLED TVs Have A Fairly Long Lifespan
OLED TVs are pretty reliable lasting longer than most TVs except for QLED, you can expect your OLED TV to last up to 100K hours which is around 10 years of usage before you notice signs of failure.
This 100K number refers to standard usage, but if you heavily use your TV, you may find that you will have to replace your TV much earlier. This means watching TV on max brightness probably isn’t a good idea.
If you’re using your OLED TV conservatively, then 100K hours is a pretty long time, you will most likely replace the TV before you even notice signs of degradation.
However, with rigorous usage, this number is significantly shortened resulting in early degradation. You can start to experience image issues around 7000-9000 hours such as burn-in and less brightness.
If burn-in is a deal-breaker for you, then you can always go with a solid alternative which is QLED TVs, they do not suffer from burn-in and they have a much longer lifespan.
QLED TVs are also cheaper, so you’re technically getting more bang out of your buck, there’s no point in spending more money on a product that is more likely to fail quicker unless you really want those benefits.
Also Read: OLED Lifespan
OLED Can Suffer From Burn-In
As previously stated, burn-in is obviously a huge problem with OLED displays, this is because of how they work.
OLED displays will use self-illuminating pixels instead of a backlight, while this is better for contrast ratios, the problem is the pixels have their own lifespans. Since each pixel has its own lifespan, they’re susceptible to degradation at uneven rates.
Uneven rates of degradation within OLED screens are what causes burn-in, what causes the uneven rates of degradation are static elements such as TV show logos and other static elements.
The main problem is static elements which can be quite hard to circumvent, so OLED TV manufacturers have implemented methods such as pixel shift to reduce burn-in.
Most TVs will use backlights such as LED, QLED, and LCD displays, this means the chances of burn-in is essentially zero.
If you don’t want to worry about burn-in, picking up one of these displays may be a better option for you, just make sure to stay away from plasma displays as they’re even worse when it comes to burn-in.
Also Read: Is Burn In Permanent
What Are The Chances Of Burn-In?
The chances of burn-in purely depend on how rigorous you intend to use your OLED TV, for example, a more conservative user may never experience burn-in, whereas a more intense user may experience it pretty quickly. Since burn-in depends on usage, it’s fairly hard to determine the burn-in rate, but there have been tests that seem to have the answer.
There are two factors that come into the burn-in rate, the brightness and the type of content on the screen. Taking these two factors into consideration, we can predict when burn-in can be an issue.
For example, high-risk contact which includes a lot of static content, and setting the brightness to max settings will result in burn-in pretty quickly.
RTINGS have performed a rigorous test that documents the effects of burn-in, they’ve performed this test on 6 LG OLED C7 televisions, and they update their findings frequently. Within this test, they utilize both automatic and manual pixel refresh functions to keep the test as realistic as possible.
Within the test, around week 44, burn-in issues are starting to become pretty bad, but this is because they’re watching a high-risk program (LIVE CNN) and maximum brightness.
However, when using the TV conservatively and watching fairly low-risk content(Minor static elements) such as call of duty WW2, you pretty much will never experience any sort of burn-in even past 102 weeks.
OLED Vs QLED Vs LED Vs LCD Reliability
While OLED displays can be pretty reliable when watching low-risk content such as movies and certain video games, they can suffer when it comes to other types of content such as LIVE CNN.
OLED displays at max brightness will also experience accelerated burn-in effects, so you must use your OLED screen conservatively. When using it conservatively, you can experience a long-lasting reliable television.
QLED displays are pretty much the king when it comes to reliability, they have the longest lifespans of 100K hours + as well as not having any sensitive material inside compared to OLED displays.
QLED displays do not suffer from burn-in which is another benefit, so you can happily enjoy any type of content you want without worrying about burn-in.
LED and LCD displays have the shortest lifespans with LED lasting slightly longer than LCD displays. LED displays have a lifespan of around 60000 hours, and LCD displays have a lifespan of around 50000 hours.
Both LED and LCD displays are immune to the effects of burn-in since they do not use self-illuminating pixels, and they’re fairly affordable. This makes LCD and LED TVs ideal for someone on a budget.
Verdict
The verdict is that OLED displays can be reliable depending on how you intend on using the display. If you intend on watching a lot of high-risk content at maximum brightness, you can expect your TV to show extreme signs of burn-in as early as 5000 hours.
If you treat your OLED display with care, then your OLED display will never show burn-in or at least very small signs of burn-in. This includes reducing the screen time of high-risk content as well as not running your OLED display at maximum brightness all the time.
