Screen Burn-in vs. Image Retention

If you can see a faint ghost of a logo or taskbar on your screen, the big question is whether it'll fade on its own. Two different problems look almost the same at first, and only one of them is permanent.

What burn-in is

Burn-in is permanent, uneven wear. On an OLED screen, every pixel makes its own light, and the materials that make it dim slightly with use. Show something that doesn't move in the same place for hundreds of hours, like a channel logo, a game's on-screen display or the Windows taskbar, and those pixels wear out faster than the ones around them. The worn area stays visible as a shadow because the pixels around it are simply brighter. Blue wears out fastest, which is why burn-in often looks like a warm or yellowish patch.

What image retention is

Image retention is temporary and goes away. It isn't wear: it's the screen briefly holding on to what it last showed. It appears after a still image has been on screen for minutes or hours, and it fades by itself once the screen shows varied content again. Both LCD and OLED screens can do it, and it isn't a fault. It's the screen settling back to normal.

How to tell them apart

Time is the test. Note exactly where the ghost is, then use the screen normally for a few hours, or leave a colorful, moving video playing. Image retention will be much fainter or gone. Burn-in will look exactly the same, in exactly the same place, and it shows up best over flat mid-gray areas rather than black or white. Run the Burn-in Check before and after, so you're comparing against the same pattern both times.

What you can actually do

For image retention, patience is the whole fix. For real burn-in there's no repair: the worn pixels can't be restored, and the "pixel refresh" or "panel care" routine on many OLED TVs only evens out mild retention, not real wear. What helps is prevention. Turn on pixel shift and any screen saver your TV has, hide the taskbar and use dark mode on an OLED monitor, and don't leave a paused frame or a game's on-screen display up for hours. Bear in mind that most manufacturers count burn-in as wear rather than a fault, so standard warranties often don't cover it. See the manufacturer policy comparison.

Burn-in is a different problem from a pixel that never lights up at all. If the mark is a single sharp dot rather than a soft shape, run the full test and read dead vs. stuck pixels instead.