I’m seriously considering an MSI MAG monitor. Do I need to adjust my workflow? I do lots of desktop work on my computer and I really don’t want to hide UI elements. I also do some gaming of course. I’d say it’s 70% desktop work and 30% gaming (though it varies). Do any Lemmings have any experience in this matter? Thank you!
Optimum recently did a video on this. After 3000 hours his OLED got very faint burn-in of static UI elements. So it really depends on your use case.
If you’ll use it to game for a couple of hours a day after work, it’s probably gonna be 5 carefree years enjoying the wonderful OLED contrasts before you even start noticing burn-in.
If you (like me) need your monitors to stay on for the entire workday (and then some) - you probably won’t be comfortable with the idea of starting to get noticeable burn-in after only a year of use.
Anyway, that’s pretty much a dealbreaker for me and I’ll probably be getting a MiniLED monitor instead. (Switch&Click recently had a video about this.)
I also like to buy stuff that will last ages, there are still monitors I bought in 2012 happily serving some of my family members. Buying something that will expire even if cared after seems… wasteful?
Yeah, 3k hours is nothing. I’m an edge case, but I am on my computer most waking hours, and gaming most of the time. I have something like 5.5k hours of game time in Forza Horizon 5, which just turned 4 years old; I have several other games I play heavily too, like 900 hours of American Truck Sim in the last 2 years.
I’m in the ‘wait for prices to keep dropping’ boat, and my current monitor is fine other than ‘just’ being a ips lcd instead of oled or whatever else. But at that time frame, I’d be buying new units like every 2 years. That’s fucking insane. I expect like a decade of issue-free use from a monitor.
I know monitors aren’t RAM or SSDs, but given what is happening with computer parts, I want to steer away from wear-components to the extent reasonable.
I do still use SSDs because of the overwhelming advantage compared to HDDs, but I’m perfectly content with non-OLED monitors.
I feel the same way, we have TFTs at work that are 20+ years old and still working just fine.
Of course that’s super bad for manufacturers if you just buy one monitor every 20 years.
extremely dumb question, but why aren’t there screensavers that will invert the average pixel use when you’re not using it, opposite of safety, definitely not for office work, but home use?
OLED monitors typically have burn-in prevention and repair features built-in. They sometimes have a mode where the brightness can fade in and out depending on their use or one where pixels are triggered on and off repeatedly to help reverse existing burn-in.
It uses multiple techniques like that to balance and prevent burn in, called something like oled panel care. Its a very mature system now.
If the screensaver is saving the information of what a pixel has been on average, there’s all sorts of potential for leakage of sensitive information onto a part of the computer that shouldn’t have that information.
i mentioned that problem, definitely not for sensitive work. however, it’ll at best would leak what program someone uses regular by static UI elements. give some random noise (or an aesthetic variant) and it’ll be really hard to figure out what someone was doing.
definitely not for sensitive work.
I would argue that desktop software capable of doing this (storing and using past pixel values to calculate some sort of output) violates the principle of least privilege, so that an OS that supports this kind of screensaver being possible shouldn’t be used for sensitive data, even if that particular screensaver is disabled.
Better to harden the OS so that programs (including screensavers) can’t access and store the continuous screen output.
That’s one of the problems we have with Windows Recall. We don’t even want the OS to have the capability, because we don’t want that data being copied and processed somewhere on the machine.
I thought it’ll just keep a tally of the brightness of each subpixel. not like how bright they are at each point (ie, a recording), but just store their sum and how long was it “recording” to get the average of each pixel. still has a safety concern, but it’ll be hard to extract usable data, beyond which programs I’m using. make the running average for a week rather than a session, and the best you’ll guess is which program I use the most.
Yes, it’s still a problem. I’ve linked a video below of someone testing it do you get an idea if its going to be an issue for you. https://youtu.be/RbEgQrigiLc
I recently picked up a 49" MSI OLED monitor and it has a built program to prevent burn in. I’ve only had it for a week, but it’s so much better than 3 monitors imo. I used it mainly for work, and a little gaming. No issues with either.
I used to have a three monitor setup … One curved ultrawide 37" (I think) and two 24" (one on either side of the big one). The system was purely a personal setup - no professional use, though I did sometimes do maintenance on my servers from it. My setup was whatever media I was watching on the leftmost monitor, whatever game I was playing on the center, and any chat related windows (or other windows that might require supervision) on the right. I think. It’s been years since I had that setup - I might have reversed what the outer two did.
When I moved to my current home (3-4 years ago) I only bothered setting up the middle monitor, as I had no idea where the stands for the outer two were and didn’t want to bother mounting them. (Still haven’t.)
I don’t game on my PC much anymore. For what little desktop stuff I do it’s satisfactory. However, you may have gleaned from the above that I tend not to do one thing at a time. As such, now that I only have one monitor, I primarily play games in windowed mode unless I’m playing with a friend online. The windowed game goes on approximately the right half of the monitor, whatever I’m watching goes top left, chat windows mostly go bottom left (with some exceptions).
The only time I miss a multi monitor setup is when playing some games - mostly early access - that have their own ideas about the window mode. I’ve encountered a few that will respect my settings regarding resolution and mode, but insist on being dead center of the screen; some that didn’t even have a mode other than full screen; and some which would go windowed but only use the full resolution of the monitor, thus rendering the setting pointless for my use case.
Anyway, that’s pretty niche, I guess. If you don’t have a similar need one huge monitor is probably fine.
Is it really worth it in your opinion?
Just don’t use maximum brightness.
Most people use adaptive brightness.
Which actually means - don’t use bright rooms.
Eg floor-to-ceiling windows and OLEDs (even TVs) still don’t mix well at all (OLEDs strain to barely put out enough nits or even just not enough, have poor blacks bcs they reflect the general brightness of environment, and if you are a demanding user your OLED won’t last as long as other types of panels bcs either burn in, loss of brightness, or color changes occur).
It seems that most monitors do not have adaptive brightness and are not bright enough to discourage users from setting the brightness too high.
With my OLED I changed the display off time to prevent burn-in. So far no issues.
Have you changed your behavior at all to prolong its life? How long have you had it if I may ask?
I’m cautious and aware of the burn-in risk. So if I have something opened for too long that might burn in, I do a switch. But in the end it shouldn’t be too sensitive. For example the MSI I have has:
- Pixel Shift
The image is imperceptibly shifted by a few pixels in different directions at regular intervals. This prevents a sharp edge (such as a crosshair or UI bar) from permanently straining the same pixels.
- Panel Protect
Pixel Refresh: After about 4 hours of use, the monitor prompts you to take a short break (approx. 5–10 minutes). This equalizes the pixel voltages.
Panel refresh: A more thorough cycle that is performed after a longer period of operation (usually 1500+ hours) to homogenize the brightness.
- Static object detection (intelligent dimming)
Certain static content that remains permanently, e.g., Excel windows, is dimmed, for example, when working from home.
