- A 3-year test on OLED TVs showed that burn-in is very unlikely during mixed viewing.
- Edge-lit LCDs seem to fail before other TV types in testing
- No clear correlation between price and longevity however
When I was a teenager, I devoured scary stories, but nothing I read was as scary as the story about burn-in OLED. You probably know it too: it’s the story of someone who buys one of the best OLED TVs and sees the logo of their favorite channel, or the HUD of their favorite game, burned into the screen forever. But like many cautionary tales, the likelihood of that happening these days may be lower than the stories suggest.
In any case, this is what the results of an ongoing study carried out by Rtings say. People there ran more than 100 TVs at maximum brightness for three years, racking up 18,000 hours of viewing time on each. And while some OLEDs have indeed encountered problems, LCDs have had much more serious problems.
Look on it
How do OLED and LCD TVs handle almost 20,000 hours of viewing?
Current testing has demonstrated several things, including that low-end edge-lit LCD TVs seem to fail sooner than LCDs with better types of backlighting: the models tested suffered from warped reflector sheets, cracked light guide plates, and burned-out LEDs due to the heat they generate – although it’s important to note that these tests run the TVs at maximum brightness, which isn’t necessarily how you would operate at maximum brightness. the house. This makes it a TV torture test.
By November 2025, 20 of the 100 televisions whose testing began in 2022 had completely failed, and another 24 had experienced partial failures. The site has published all the details of these failures and partial failures here.
What about OLEDs? Rtings found that the WOLED and QD-OLED TVs worked “extremely well”, and although burn-in developed during the torture test, it shows only one logo on the screen for the all the time, this “is not really a problem in case of mixed use”. Every OLED tested developed burn-in, but previous testing found that unless you’re constantly watching content with static logos, you’re unlikely to experience issues with 2022 or later models.
It’s also worth noting that 18,000 hours of battery life is way more than most people will watch before upgrading their TV: if you watched TV for three hours every day, it would take you over 16 years to reach that number.
So what does this mean for potential TV buyers? Even though many entry-level TVs have broken down over time, Rtings found no direct correlation between price and longevity. But he found that OLEDs tend to be the most reliable and least edge-lit LCDs, so if you’re in the market for a new TV, then the OLED or LCD with local dimming zones may be the better buy.
Good news! In our guide to the best TVs, we only recommend options that fit this bill.
The best TVs for every budget
Follow TechRadar on Google News And add us as your favorite source to get our news, reviews and expert opinions in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!
And of course you can too follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form and receive regular updates from us on WhatsApp Also.
