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Nintendo IT Technology

YouTuber Leaves OLED Switch on for 3,600 Hours To Test Image Burn-in (inputmag.com) 54

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Does the Nintendo's larger and more vivid Switch suffer from the image-burn in that has crippled several devices with such display? An unusual and unexpected comprehensive test hasoffered some answers. InputMag: After 3,600 hours of subjecting an OLED Switch to the the same image -- one that was ripped from The Legend of Zelda: Breathe of the Wild -- Wulff Den, a YouTuber who specializes in gaming videos, concluded that the device is finally, surprisingly, showing faint signs of burn-in. As reported by ArsTecnica, the damage is minor -- on a white screen, like the Switch's main menu, there was a faint "blue ghosting," that appeared following the six-month experiment. But as, Wulff Den himself points out, "It's still a little subtle. It's not anything that I would do an RMA request for." The experiment began as soon as the OLED Switch was released, when Wulff Den decided to find out whether users would have to worry about burn-in. The YouTuber left his OLED Switch on, displaying the same image and set to its full brightness, without any interruptions aside from the occasional check-in. After 1,800 hours, or three months, the project yielded negligible effects -- white pixels were slightly dimmer but Wullf Den noted he most likely wouldn't have noticed, if not for relentlessly monitoring the changes during his test.
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YouTuber Leaves OLED Switch on for 3,600 Hours To Test Image Burn-in More

YouTuber Leaves OLED Switch on for 3,600 Hours To Test Image Burn-in

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  • how dat work? (Score:3)

    by cstacy ( 534252 ) on Thursday March 10, 2022 @09:16AM (#62343459)

    How does "burn in" work on an LED screen? There isn't any phosphor getting hit with an electron beam, like in a CRT. What exactly is "burning" ?

    • Re:how dat work? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Ormy ( 1430821 ) on Thursday March 10, 2022 @09:27AM (#62343495)
      I don't know for sure but I know that normal LEDs tend to fade with age and use, likely that OLEDs will be no different. Sub-pixels that are at high output for much longer than others will be visibly faded compared to others. Yes it's not literally "burning in" like a phosphor does but it has a similar effect so the old terminology is still used. Such continued use of out-of-date terminology is not at all unusual.

      • Such continued use of out-of-date terminology is not at all unusual.

        I like the cut of your jib.

        • Lol, touche!
          Can we expect a fusillade of similar rejoinders?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cstacy ( 534252 )

          Such continued use of out-of-date terminology is not at all unusual.

          I like the cut of your jib.

          Couldn't hear you: the phone was ringing and I was listening to a loud record. OK, I admit it wasn't a phonograph. It was something I taped.

      • Re:how dat work? (Score:4, Informative)

        by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday March 10, 2022 @10:07AM (#62343617)

        LEDs don't tend to fade with age and use as much as they fade with heat. If LEDs suffer from fading it is because it is being pushed to its limits which typically happens for higher brightness LED lighting products. The underlying technology itself however is insanely stable and things like power LEDs on equipment should be no dimmer now than they were in the 70s when you first bought the equipment.

        OLED on the other hand has some technological limitations, namely the "organic" component. Both in terms of how internal moisture reacts with charge as well as OLED displays being very small localised heat sources, and how organic material breaks down. OLEDs do fade with age even when not in use for this reason. Also the organic compounds used to make the different emissions have different levels of recombination effects (power converting to light being reabsorbed and generating only heat). This is most prominent in blue OLEDs which is also why many displays have larger sized blue pixels than red or green, to try and limit this damage. Blue would otherwise "burn in" far faster than any other colour.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Ormy ( 1430821 )
          I had wondered why status LEDs last forever but LEDs for illumination last a few years at best. Of course the reason is blindingly logical and obvious when someone says it. Thanks for correcting me and for the useful info.

      • Degradation is very different in both technologies.

        A LED screen employs LED diodes in the sides of the screen to provide white background light. Then, it is filtered (RGB components) and an LCD is used to modulate the brightness of each component in each subpixel (note the LCD is similar to the typical 7-segment display in watches). LED fading would only decrease the brightness of the screen, and would be general, not localized.

        By contrast, an OLED screen has one LED per subpixel, directly generating the co

        • A LED screen employs LED diodes in the sides of the screen to provide white background light.

          No, that's an LED-backlit screen. Looks like you got your knowledge of what different kinds of displays are from one of those garbage articles written by some fuckface for fifty cents for some garbage website which wants more "original" content to raise its pagerank. What you're talking about is a kind of LCD screen, not a kind of LED screen. LED screens emit light directly with LEDs, that is literally their defining characteristic.

          By contrast, an OLED screen has one LED per subpixel

          That's a characteristic of LED displays in general which include mini-LED, m

          • No, that's an LED-backlit screen. Looks like you got your knowledge of what different kinds of displays are from one of those garbage articles written by some fuckface for fifty cents for some garbage website which wants more "original" content to raise its pagerank. What you're talking about is a kind of LCD screen, not a kind of LED screen. LED screens emit light directly with LEDs, that is literally their defining characteristic.

            It's understandable that one would be confused about the difference between LED and LCD displays given all the bullshit marketing terms specifically designed to confuse consumers by disguising products as things they aren't, but this is Slashdot, not CNET...

            It doesn't work this way. Language belongs to everyone and means what everyone says it means. There is a long history of LCD and LED displays being defined as LCD panels with CFL and LED backlighting respectively.

      • Correct me if I'm wrong. But aren't OLED monitors and the things we call LED monitors two fairly different sets of technology, the main difference being the backlight (the LED part) in an LED monitor (which uses LCDs for doing the actual color display)? In an OLED monitor, the illumination and the display are combined. An OLED monitor resembles more a set of colored christmas lights. Each dot (pixel or subpixel) is itself an organic LED. So the burn-in in an "LED" monitor would be different from the burn in

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          Correct me if I'm wrong. But aren't OLED monitors and the things we call LED monitors two fairly different sets of technology, the main difference being the backlight (the LED part) in an LED monitor (which uses LCDs for doing the actual color display)? In an OLED monitor, the illumination and the display are combined. An OLED monitor resembles more a set of colored christmas lights. Each dot (pixel or subpixel) is itself an organic LED. So the burn-in in an "LED" monitor would be different from the burn in

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's due to fading. The individual LEDs fade with age.

      Most TVs compensate for this when they are in standby mode, by measuring the degradation of each LED and adjusting the drive strength to compensate for it. I imagine the Switch does something similar.

      • > Most TVs compensate for this when they are in standby mode, by measuring the degradation of each LED and adjusting the drive strength to compensate for it.

        No kidding. That's useful knowledge - thanks.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Indeed, many people seem not to know this but it is important to leave your OLED TV on standby from time to time so that it can recalibrate its pixels.

          That's also why when people do these long term tests they usually do something like 23 hours on and 1 hour standby.

    • OLED screens work by having individual organic LED light cell for each subpixel. All lightings degrade over time. Organic stuff degrade faster. Since each subpixel are emitting light individually, their wear-outs differ unless what you display is always a plain universal color of white / gray / black. When some OLED cells wear out significantly faster than their neighbours, they will look dimmer to the eyes, thus the burn-in.

    • Not LED, OLED.
      It comes down to brightness: OLED has no backlight, each pixel is individually lit. Overuse of one pixel can result it that pixel having a different brightness level over time. With static images, overuse is in a region and a pattern. Creating a shadow of the burnt in image.

      This is a simplification of my simplified understanding. Anyone who knows better, please correct me.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Syberz ( 1170343 )
      It's not so much burn IN as it is burn OUT. Each pixel is formed out of 3 LEDs of different colors, a static image means that one of more of those LEDs will be very bright for a very long time. With extensive usage, the red or green LED might not be as bright as they used to so the image appears bluer than usual since the blue ones remain at full brightness.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Organic LEDs use materials that are not very stable. These materials degrade faster or slower, depending on color and brightness.

  • Link to the video perhaps? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Ormy ( 1430821 ) on Thursday March 10, 2022 @09:32AM (#62343507)

    Of course, rather than link to the actual video, Slashdot editors prefer to link to someone else's clickbaity piece about the video, that itself doesn't even link to the video.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaC5RbGAeVo

    • The video is literally embedded at the very top of the article.

      Article being things that Slashdot links to. Slashdot tried video posts briefly a long time ago. It didn't go well.

      • I've noticed that with aggressive ad-blocking and script-blocking extensions, embedded videos sometimes don't show up on a page (usually if the page is scripted to not show content until after an ad has loaded or played). That's what may have happened to OP.

        Kudos to Wulff Den though. He displays the crown jewels (shows the slight burn-in on the screen) in the first 45 seconds. Most videos I've seen lately will force viewers to watch them drone on and on about other things, and only reveal the now-clickba

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Ormy ( 1430821 )

          That's what may have happened to OP.

          That is exactly what happened.

          Kudos to Wulff Den though. He displays the crown jewels (shows the slight burn-in on the screen) in the first 45 seconds. Most videos I've seen lately will force viewers to watch them drone on and on about other things, and only reveal the now-clickbait subject at the very end of the video.

          100% agree

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • They could have even put "Wulff Den" in the title. Who cares what video hosting platform he uses?

  • I had Samsung S3, and it got some annoying burn-in..
    I upgraded to S8, hoping that they fixed that problem. Well, the burn-in was much worse. I saw the buttons of Waze permanently burned on my screen just after 4 months of use.
    (I think it was fixed in newer models. Not sure though)

  • I can't wait for micro-LED so we can finally get displays that are both bright and practically immune to burn-ins.

    • What makes you think they are immune to burn-in? LED suffer dimming over time as a result of heat exposure (including internally generated heat) which is an ongoing problem R&D is being poured into trying to solve for micro-LED.

      There's nothing wrong with OLED. There's only something wrong with you if you think a good use of your portable console is to force it to display a single image for 6 months straight.

      No other person has burnin problems.

      • OLED burn-in problems are real, but they're also really more of a problem on older OLED displays because they had noticeably shorter lifespans. However, they're also a problem on cheaper OLED displays (like ones used on most cellphones) because they're based on older tech.

        It's not a surprise that Nintendo waited until they could get an OLED display with a decent lifespan before using them in products, they have always had fairly high standards for hardware quality.

        • However, they're also a problem on cheaper OLED displays (like ones used on most cellphones) because they're based on older tech.

          No, not older tech. Cheaper to manufacture tech. A large problem related to burn in is the purity of the organic matter and how it degrades by heat. Fundamentally the tech of more burn-in resistant displays is no different.

          And they can get truly horrid. I have a small 32x128 display from Aliexpress on my power meter. The top part of the screen shows the IP address. Those pixels are almost completely dead and the thing is only 3 years old. I'm normally of the opinion that even cheap tech has a place, but I'm

    • Don't be so angry at the state of the art. We live in amazing times.

    • I think the true king of display technology is dual layer LCD. Unfortunately the manufacturers seems unable to solve the cost-profit problem.

      An ideal dual layer LCD panel contain an extra layer of LCD to control the brightness of pixels individually. Assuming a single layer of LCD is 1,000:1 in contrast, a dual layer LCD will be capable of 1,000,000:1 contrast in theory. True black is achievable without any risk of burn-in.

      Unavoidable disadvantage of such tech: The backlight need to be a lot stronger t

  • screen savers are for.

    Of course back in the day when we had CRT displays (and nobody was upset about that) we just turned the display off, but these days people are too lazy to do that..

    • But do we really need screensavers?

      Let's look at this. 6 months 24h/day.
      Let's assume you sleep and work leaving you 8 hours. I'm going to guess you eat and shower (I hope anyway) so lets reduce that to 6 hours. That's literally 2 years. And then to get this level of burnin you're going to need to spend those 6h a day for 2 years staring at a static image which ... can I recommend a picture frame and a photo print from Staples, it's cheaper?

      Even without a screensaver and in the hands of a serious gamer the n

    • we just turned the display off, but these days people are too lazy to do that..

      These are probably the same people who whine they can't read New York Times articles.

  • I simply chose to ignore ALL "burn in" chatter and bought myself a LG 65" C8. No problems to date.

  • It is true that in the 20th century, screen burn in was an issue.

    But they solved in decades ago. For those of us older than millennials, it can be easy to forget that "We live in the Twenty FIRST century!" That used to be code for the future, now it is simply a description.

    Time has moved on and problems we once thought were huge are gone. There is no longer Acid Rain. The Ozone hole is closing. The USSR is gone.

    Oops. Well, the last one may be coming back, but you get the idea.

  • Bear in mind that many of the original and collectable NES boxes are still in service--since 1983. How many hours is that?

    • How many hours for NES? Probably not a whole lot after 1990...

      Remember - the problem isn't raw age, but hours of use.

    • How many hours is that?

      Probably closer to 150 days than you think. Contrary to this contrived example...
      - Not everyone is able to game 24 hours for 150 days straight.
      - Not everyone who games does so by watching a static screen with high contrast.
      - Not everyone believes that a wireless portable battery powered device will have any hope in hell of still functioning in 2061 much less give a damn about whether the display will suffer from burn-in.

  • If you have been to a casino you will see it. The slots are powered on 24/7 for years and there are areas that don't change like logo's, boxes and windows that show credits or wins or progressive amounts. Sometime you can get into a bonus and the entire screen will change but there are clear outlines from the main screen.

  • After 1,800 hours, or three months

    1,800 hours at 24 hours per day = 75 days = 25 days per month

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