This burn in test fills your screen with even greys and solid colors, the backgrounds where burn-in and image retention are easiest to see: a faint taskbar, a TV channel logo, a game's health bar or a phone keyboard that should not be there. Use it as an OLED burn in test on QD-OLED and OLED TVs, monitors, laptops and phones, or as a screen burn test on an LCD, in any browser. A timed retention check holds a checkerboard for three minutes and then turns grey, so you can see whether your screen holds on to an image and whether the ghost fades.
How to check a screen for burn-in
- Set brightness to your usual level. Faint marks are easiest to see at medium brightness, not at the very lowest.
- Turn off Night Light, Night Shift, True Tone and blue light filters, which tint the greys.
- Press Start full screen test. Grey 50% comes first. Look where your fixed screen elements sit: the taskbar or dock, the status and navigation bars on a phone, desktop icons, browser tabs, channel logos and game interfaces.
- Press Space for darker and lighter grey, then white, red, green and blue. Burn-in often stands out more on one color, because each color of sub-pixel wears at its own rate.
- Mark any shape with M and a click, or a long press on a touch screen.
- Step to the last pattern, Retention check, and leave it for three minutes. The screen turns grey on its own. A faint checkerboard that fades over the next few minutes means the screen shows image retention.
On a phone that cannot hide its status bar in the browser, press Save image on the grey patterns and open the images in your photo app, which can show them edge to edge.
Burn-in, retention or something else?
| What you see on grey | Does it last? | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| A faint ghost of what was on screen a moment ago | Fades within minutes or hours | Image retention |
| The shape of a taskbar, logo, keyboard or game display | Stays after a restart and days of use | Burn-in |
| A darker or tinted band with a sharp edge | Stays | Burn-in, often from a bar or panel that never moves |
| Faint vertical or horizontal bands on dark grey, shaped like nothing on your screen | Stays, but not from use | Panel uniformity, not burn-in |
What causes burn-in
On an OLED, every sub-pixel makes its own light and slowly dims with use. When the same bright element stays on screen for hours every day, those pixels wear faster than the rest, and the difference shows as a faint shadow of the element on an even background. High brightness and static content speed it up. LCD pixels do not wear like that, but the liquid crystal can hold a pattern after a long static image, which fades again on its own.
A taskbar, logo or game display shows on grey
That is burn-in or stubborn retention. Run the retention check, then use the screen normally for a few hours and test again. If the mark is still there after a panel refresh, it is burn-in.
- Run your screen's panel refresh, described below. It can reduce light burn-in.
- Hide what never moves: auto hide the Windows taskbar or the Mac dock, and use a screen saver or a short screen off time.
- Lower brightness for desktop work and save high brightness for films and games.
- Check the warranty. Several makers now cover burn-in on OLED monitors, often for two or three years.
A ghost that fades within minutes
That is image retention. It is common on IPS LCDs after hours of a static spreadsheet or game, and on OLEDs right after a bright static image. It needs no fix: normal, changing content clears it. If you want it gone faster, a full grey screen or a few minutes of video helps.
Bands or a tinted patch on dark grey
Faint vertical stripes on 10% grey are a known trait of many OLED panels near black, and VA panels show a similar dirty screen effect. They come from the panel, not from use, and they do not get worse the way burn-in does. Judge them in dark films and games rather than on a test pattern alone, and use the backlight bleed test on an LCD to check the edges.
Panel care on LG, Samsung and other OLEDs
- LG OLED TVs run a Pixel Cleaning cycle of a few minutes when you switch the TV off to standby after every 4 hours of use, and an hour long cycle after every 2,000 hours. You can start one by hand under OLED Care in the General settings (Support on 2021 models), called Pixel Refresher on older models. It takes about an hour.
- Samsung OLED TVs have Pixel Refresh under Panel Care in the General & Privacy settings, along with Pixel Shift and Adjust Logo Brightness, which dims static logos.
- OLED monitors from Dell, Samsung, LG, ASUS and MSI have a pixel or panel refresh in the on screen menu and run it in standby. Most also offer pixel shift and taskbar or logo dimming.
- Phones have no manual refresh. Their software already works to limit burn-in, so automatic brightness, dark mode and a short auto lock time help the most.
Keep OLED TVs and monitors plugged in at the wall, so the standby cycles can run. Start a manual refresh only when you can actually see a mark, since the automatic cycles already do the routine work.
Checking a used phone, TV or monitor before buying
Burn-in is the first thing to check on a second hand OLED. Show the grey screens, look along the status and navigation bars of a phone and the bottom and corners of a TV, and check the red screen, where worn areas often look slightly darker or tinted. Then run the pixel test for stuck and dead pixels, and the full screen tester if it is a computer monitor.
What this test cannot do
A browser cannot measure pixel wear. It shows the even fields that make wear visible, and your eyes do the judging. Camera photos of grey screens often show bands and moiré that are not visible in person, so judge by eye and photograph only what you can see. Flashing tools such as a stuck pixel fixer help stuck pixels, not burn-in, so do not expect them to remove a burned in logo.
Burn-in test questions
How do I check my OLED screen for burn-in?
Show a full screen mid grey at your normal brightness and look for shapes that should not be there, like a taskbar, icons, a channel logo or a game's health bar. Check the red, green and blue screens too, because burn-in can show more in one color.
What is the difference between burn-in and image retention?
Image retention is temporary: the ghost fades within minutes or hours of showing other content. Burn-in is permanent wear of the pixels that showed the same bright element for a long time, so it stays after a restart, a panel refresh and days of normal use.
Can OLED burn-in be fixed?
Light burn-in can sometimes be reduced by the screen's own panel refresh, which evens out the wear. Strong burn-in is permanent, and the only fix is a new panel. Check your warranty first, because several makers cover burn-in on OLED monitors.
Do LCD screens get burn-in?
Not in the OLED sense, because an LCD's pixels do not wear out with use. LCDs can show image retention, a ghost of a static image that fades on its own, most often on IPS panels after hours of the same picture.
Will a burn-in fixer video remove burn-in?
No. Flashing colors cannot restore worn OLED pixels. Any changing picture helps image retention fade, so a video can seem to work on retention, but plain normal use does the same job.
How long does it take an OLED to get burn-in?
It depends on brightness and how static the content is. With varied content most people never see it. With the same bright taskbar, logo or game interface on screen for hours every day, marks can appear after months to a few years.