Some articles you read and react with, “Duh” and this is one of them: YouTuber Ruins Nintendo Switch OLED screen after running it for two years straight:
Youtuber burns Zelda image into Nintendo Switch screen. OLED outperforms nearly every other screen type, like LCD or VA, thanks to its high contrast ratio, low power consumption, and high color accuracy, but it is vulnerable to burn-in where certain sub-pixels get dimmer and dimmer. WULFF DEN tested if Nintendo’s OLED screen would suffer from burn-in by leaving a screenshot from The Legend of Zelda for two years.
Dude, really? Did this WULFF DEN (yelling capitals for emphasis or to emphasize the stupidity?). No, not going to link to WULFF DEN’s obviously dumb experiment, because that just gives more attention to something that’s clearly whoring for exactly that. Then what’s the point of this article about it? To reiterate that you can damage *any* screen, including and especially OLED screens by leaving them turned on with the same image for long, long, long periods of time? No human being gamer is playing Legends of Zelda for two years straight, so the conditions are bogus to begin with.
If you want to buy an OLED screen for gaming, whether PC gaming or a Nintendo Switch OLED, don’t live in fear of burn-in. I’m using a 4K OLED TV for PC gaming and absolutely, positively adore it. Great experience. I don’t leave it on all day with the same desktop image or TV logos to even be an option for burn-in. OLED screens are amazing. Yes, they’re more expensive, and new types of OLED using quantum dots will make them even better (see: 2023 Nobel Prize for Chemistry Awarded for Quantum Dots used in Higher End OLED 4K TVs)
To play devil’s advocate, here’s another bad idea: leave an OLED screen exposed to direct sunlight for an extended period of time (no, that’s a joke, don’t ever really do this). It’s a scientific certainty that damage will occur. So, don’t leave your Switch OLED sitting in the dash of your vehicle on a sunny day. Even a not-so-sunny day. Just keep it in its case. Turn off your Switch or, you know, switch up the game you’re playing to get different images on that sweet OLED, if you’re going to play hours and hours and hours on end.
A search for “OLED burn-in” will result in articles anywhere from recent times to years old that talk in great deal about OLED burn-in and how to minimize it through user behavior. What is annoying about this stunt is that it’s trying to prove that OLED burn-in is a real thing, when most common sense gamers already know this is true. And it’s not doing it for something as altruistic as protecting gamers.