Screen Burn-In Test

A screen burn-in test fills the whole display with one flat color at a time so that anything left behind by previous content has nowhere to hide. On a healthy panel each color looks completely even. Where burn-in has set in you will see a faint ghost of whatever used to sit in that spot — a taskbar strip along one edge, a channel logo in a corner, the outline of a game HUD — usually most visible on a mid-gray or white field.

The distinction that matters is between image retention and true burn-in. Image retention is temporary: the ghost appears after a static image has been on screen for a while and fades on its own once the panel displays varied content, sometimes within minutes and sometimes over a day. Burn-in is permanent, caused by the organic pixels in an OLED panel ageing at different rates because some were driven harder than others. If a ghost is still there after the screen has shown moving content for a long stretch, it is burn-in rather than retention.

Run through every color and check the areas most likely to be affected: the top and bottom edges where system bars live, the corners where logos and timers sit, and the center where subtitles appear. White and mid-gray reveal darkened patches best, while the red, green, and blue fields show which color channel has worn unevenly — a common pattern on OLED panels where the blue subpixels age fastest.

This test finds burn-in, it does not repair it. Permanent wear cannot be reversed by software. Manufacturer pixel-refresh routines can even out mild retention, and reducing static bright elements helps prevent further wear, but a visible ghost that has become permanent is a hardware matter for warranty support.