How to use it
- Turn screen brightness up and the room lights down a little.
- Press Start full screen and step through the fields with a click, tap or the arrow keys.
- On each one, look for anything that is not perfectly even: faint outlines, darker bars along an edge, a ghost of a logo in a corner, or a tinted patch.
- Try the Custom gray slider as well. A shape that is invisible at one level can be clear at another.
Look at where your screen shows the same thing for hours: the taskbar or dock, browser tabs, status bar and navigation buttons on a phone, a TV channel logo, or a game HUD.
Burn in or image retention?
- Image retention is temporary. A faint ghost of what was on screen stays for a while and fades after minutes or hours of varied content. It can happen on OLED and on some LCDs.
- Burn in is permanent. On OLED, each pixel wears a little as it lights, and pixels that show the same bright image for a very long time wear faster than their neighbors. The pattern of uneven wear stays for good.
To tell them apart: note what you see, use the screen normally with varied content for a day (or run the slow color cycle in the burn in fixer), then test again. If it faded, it was retention.
OLED and LCD guidance
OLED (many phones, recent TVs and some monitors): burn in is a real, if slow, risk. Most OLED TVs and monitors run a pixel refresh or compensation routine, often automatically in standby after use, so leave them plugged in after switching off. Many also have a manual pixel refresh in the menu, which you should use sparingly and as the manual says. Hiding static elements, auto hiding the taskbar, a dark mode and moderate brightness all spread wear more evenly.
LCD (most monitors and laptops): permanent burn in is rare. What people see on LCDs is usually temporary image retention, or uniformity problems that were always there. Those are not burn in:
- Backlight bleed: bright patches at the edges or corners on the Black field in a dark room.
- Clouding: blotchy lighter areas in the middle of a black or very dark gray field.
- Dirty screen effect: smudgy vertical or horizontal bands on mid gray, most visible when something pans across.
For a full uniformity and bleed check, use the screen test.
Found burn in? What to do next
- Check whether it fades: use the screen normally for a while, or run the slow cycle in the burn in fixer for 10 to 30 minutes.
- On an OLED TV or monitor, run the built in pixel refresh once, following the manual.
- If it stays, check the warranty. Some makers cover OLED burn in for a set time and some do not, so read the terms for your model.
- Buying used? Run this test before you pay. Burn in on a used phone or TV is easy to miss in a shop.
Questions
How do I check for screen burn in?
Show flat gray and solid colors in full screen, with brightness up, and look for faint shapes that do not belong: taskbars, logos, status bars or menus. Dark and mid gray show it best.
Can burn in be fixed?
Temporary image retention fades on its own and a color cycle can speed that up. True OLED burn in is permanent wear: no website or app can undo it, though a pixel refresh can even out some mild cases.
Do LCD screens get burn in?
Rarely in the permanent sense. LCDs can show temporary image retention, and they can have backlight bleed and clouding, which are different problems that this test also shows.
Which color shows burn in best?
Usually mid to dark gray, around 20% to 50%. Solid red, green and blue help too, because wear is often uneven between the subpixel colors.
Does this test cause burn in?
No. Each field is shown for as long as you look at it, and the test info box hides when you stop moving the mouse. Do not leave any single image on an OLED for hours, including this one.