My favorite OLED gaming monitor can be ruined by burn-in — here’s how to prevent that

[admin]

OLED burn-in is the absolute worst. If you’ve recently bought the awesome Alienware AW3423DWF QD-OLED monitor, follow these steps to ensure your new display doesn’t get blighted by screen-burn.

My favorite OLED gaming monitor can be ruined by burn-in — here’s how to prevent that : Read more

 

[MurderBot]

You recommend refreshing the panel only every few days? That's insane. My DWF gives me a pop-up to run the maintenance software every 4 hours. And I generally do so. If you're seriously trying to encourage readers to prevent burn-in, this article is not great advice. It's like recommending an oil change only after after 25K miles if you are trying to extend the lifespan of your car's engine. The maintenance software is even more important if you are using the monitor for both gaming and productivity. It's indeed a great monitor but your burn-in advice is ill-advised.

 

[Wavshrdr]

What you both miss is that by doing the pixel refreshing, you are just wearing down the other pixels to match. The "cure" just accelerates the wear. Yes, it will make the difference between the pixes where the burn in has taken place to be less obvious but you just decreased the lifespan on the other pixels to compensate. Pixel refresh doesn't really "refresh" anything.

Oled is a terrible choice if you have much static content and are at risk of burn in. A mini LED would be a much better choice for most. I was seriously considering the same monitor, the Alienware AW3423DWF, but too many cases of burn in already showing up after 3-4 months and it doesn't sound like they are running the CNN chyron 24x7 either. I planned on using it for mixed use of some productivity work and gaming, which seems like that is a huge risk of burn in. Pixel refreshing will just wear out the entire display more quickly.

 

[dave.rara66]

While I appreciate the author's intentions, his advice was partially wrong - and it lacked some other crucial tips to prevent burn-in.

As the proud owner and early adopter of the first-gen AW3423DW, it's as good as the day I bought it and has been the most impactful upgrade I've ever made to any of my past rigs - except, perhaps, moving from an HDD to an SSD back in the day. The picture quality is stunning.

The pixel refresh is recommended after every 4 hours of use. You can choose the option to never see the pop up nag and instead just run it when the monitors sleeps/is turned off via the power button. That is, unless you hit 20 hours of continuous use.

The panel refresh is only meant to be used every 1500 hours and should not be part of a regular maintenance routine. I assume this feature is a necessary evil to maintain pixel uniformity, but surely it also (slowly) pushes the panel toward its inevitable end of life. I've used my AW3423DW a lot and still haven't hit 1500 hours after two years of daily use... but I'm at 1477 as I write this, so it's coming soon! The monitor will run it automatically.

I'm surprised the OP didn't mention (or possibly understand?) that he was not using proper OLED practices and caused the burn-in by leaving his tabs bar on continuously. Big no-no. Leaving anything static for too long will cause burn-in. One should be toggling to full-screen often to hide the tab bar, if you're not jumping around too much. A handy F11 toggle on a programmable mouse key works nicely. It's barely an inconvenience, and who doesn't appreciate the extra vertical space on a 3440x1440 screen, which is already challenged in that regard?

Also, one should be utilizing the auto-hide taskbar feature as well. The point is to eliminate as many unneeded static images as possible.

Two years later and not a dead pixel or hint of burn-in, thanks to a few simple tweaks. I will never go back to LCD, even if this thing dies in 4 or 5 years. I will buy another and consider this the cost of having the best of the best for my usage (surfing and gaming). Surely the prices will continue to drop from the premium I paid as one of the first kids on the block to own one. About $1500.

P.S. Despite the false claims that only the newer AW3423DWF can receive firmware updates, Dell released a downloadable update several months ago. It fixed the issue where some monitors would not wake up when the system was booted, forcing one to push the power button. It also added the option to disable the pop-up nag every four hours. Also, a few minor additions to the OSD.