How do you prolong the life of the OLED screen?

[Deleted member 681657]

To my understanding OLED screens suffer from burn-in when they are turned on and warm. If this is correct, then certain actions like playing the Switch in heldheld mode in the summer, while charging or overclocking or a combination of them make it age faster. Game with static UI elements burn them into the screen.

Generally I ignore all the above and play as I please because a YouTuber's experiments indicate it will last thousands of hours and there's no point having an OLED screen if you're too afraid to use it. Is it worth taking steps to make it last longer?

 

[hippy dave]

Keep it turned off, preferably still sealed and unused in the original box.

I guess OLED tech has improved over the years (eg since the Vita days) because I haven't heard of anyone having problems with their Switch screen, so I'd not worry and get on with enjoying it.

 

[RAHelllord]

If you want to prolong the life but still use it it's best to just play it at the lowest brightness setting you're comfortable with. The tech has come a long way since the first models and burn-in will now take much, much longer than with the older AMOLED displays. That said you won't be able to completely prevent it, that's just the nature of the tech.

If you're curious how long it's roughly going to take then I can recommend checking out the little series Wulff Den has made with one of his launch day OLED switches, that's been effectively permanently on since then, at the highest brightness level, and constantly displaying the exact same screenshot from BOTW.

After two years:


After one year:

 

[Deleted member 681657]

Sounds like burn in will only be an issue if you play in handheld mode in bright places for hours every day for years. I can imagine this eventually happening to children with lots of free time and no personal TV to play on but most of us will have moved on to newer hardware before it happens.