After two years and over 6,000 hours, Monitors Unboxed's long-term OLED gaming monitor test shows increasing burn-in

We've been tracking various long-term OLED monitor burn-in tests in our own mini meta series of reviews over the last two years. Until now, the message has been pretty consitent. OLED burn-in is real but barely a problem. Now, at the two-year mark, there's arguably a subtle shift in the narrative that needs to be recorded. Burn-in does appear to eventually become more problematic. How problematic? That's a subjective call.

The latest data point comes from YouTube channel Monitors Unboxed, which has uploaded its latest 24-month update. As before, Monitors Unboxed's testing represents something of a worse-case scenario for OLED wear thanks to primary usage that majors on static productivity apps for around 60 hours a week with Windows in Light mode, but with a dark taskbar.

The idea is that few measures have been taken to reduce burn in, instead the monitor has been used much as any LCD display might be. Again, all the testing is based on the MSI MPG 321URX QD-OLED, which I reviewed way back in early 2024 and uses a Samsung QD-OLED 32-inch 4K panel. All told, Monitors Unboxed's testing is now at the two-year mark with over 6,000 hours of uptime.

For the most part, the Samsung panel continues to show progressive but very gradual degradation over the six-month, 12-month, 18-month and 24-month assessment periods. Most obviously, there's a faint line down the centre of the panel due to multitasking with two application windows, plus some burn-in along the bottom due to the taskbar.

But there are some nuances. At 24 months, Monitors Unboxed found the beginnings of icon-specific burn-in along the taskbar at the bottom of the screen. It's only slight and the details of the icons can't be made out. But they are just visible against some backgrounds.

When it comes to the mechanics of how this all works, it turns out that it's the green subpixels that take the biggest hammering, with the least wear visible from the red subpixels. This causes a very slight colour temperature shift over time from 6,441K when new to 6,341K at 18 months.

However, at 24 months, the colour temperature had somewhat reverted to 6,386K. This could be the pixel compensation cycles doing their thing. But, whatever, this is only a small drift in colour temperature that is unlikely to be subjectively noticeable.

Similarly, some regression in visible burn-in when viewing certain colours was actually found. In other words, in some scenarios, it's less visible. Monitors Unboxed reckons this is probably down to overall panel wear causing the contrast across areas of the screen to reduce.

Speaking of overall wear, the channel measured maximum full screen brightness over the test period. For the first 18 months it remained at 243 nits. At 24 months, it fell very slightly to 238 nits. Again, that's not enough to be visible, but it does indicate a long-term trend.

At this stage, the main remaining question is whether panel wear might accelerate in future. Well, that and the extent to which any given user might be bothered by the burn-in exhibited thus far.

While this test is being presented as a worst-case scenario, I suspect most of us would at least find that our typical usage would make for pretty harsh conditions when it comes to, say, taskbar burn-in. So the reality would likely be some light burn-in that's just about visible in certain conditions.

Personally, I think that's a marginal result. It's not a definite deal-breaker for long-term OLED ownership. But if you'd paid $1,000-plus, let's say, for your OLED screen, I don't think being a little disappointed at noticing ever more visible burn-in at the two-year mark would be unreasonable.

In the end, this is a subjective call. Burn-in is real, it's noticeable, but it's not catastrophic. The point at which it becomes unacceptable will ultimately be down to personal preference. But that in itself is arguably a bit of a result compared to where we were five-plus years ago where the assumption was that OLED almost certainly wasn't suitable for daily computing. Today, well, the verdict is rather more nuanced than that.