oh
hi I'm Linus Sebastian and you may
remember me professing my love for LG's OLED displays in YouTube videos like
every other monitor is dead to me and my
endgame gaming TV well now that I've
been daily driving one for the past few months I'm going to show you everything
wrong with it and hopefully how to fix
it what about
thanks Jamie but you know I would never
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when I reviewed the 48 inch LG C10 earlier this year I loved it so much
that as soon as David got his own and returned mine I dumped my old monitor
setup and put it in my office and all of
the great stuff I said about it still holds up it's high refresh rate and
unbeatable pixel response times make it among the best gaming displays on the
market and it's Inky blacks and great color performance make it super
comfortable to use for everything else be it movies spreadsheets the wipes
that is why I'm still gonna have an affiliate link to it below but before
you click on that this burn-in is a result of snapping my
Windows into the four corners of my display a pretty common thing to do on
such a large Monitor and Wendell from level one Tex who has been daily driving
one of these for longer than me has also hit some snags
it is amazing but what's not amazing is that I'm starting to see signs of burn
in it's unsettling it's just enough to be
unsettling yeah mine too
but LG thought of that and maybe just
maybe we can fix this with the feature that's built into every OLED display
that I'm aware of but LG calls pixel Refresher
start now hopefully that works I guess
we'll find out soon enough but while it's running let's talk about
burning a little more because there's a lot of mixed messages out there
including from us on the one hand you've got manufacturers like LG saying it's
not a problem and on the other hand you've got Tech experts like Wendell
saying I would say that with heavy use you know six eight ten hours a day you
can only count on these things lasting about a year maybe two what's the truth
as usual it's somewhere in between but
to understand why we need a bit of background to start with the term
burn-in is a relic of the CRT days when
your monitor was as big as a microwave and your TV was the size of an oven
it's also a total mischaracterization of the problem because burn-in refers to
ghost images that were quite literally burned into the luminescent phosphor
coating on the back of the glass of those older style displays here's an
example that is so extreme that the DMV stopped having to even turn the TV on
anymore but we continue to use this term because even though the mechanisms are
different the behavior of modern displays can be very similar so whether
you're talking about a CRT LCD plasma or
an OLED if you display static or
non-moving images for extended periods of time you might eventually see them as
ghosts that haunt your other content
so this type of image retention can
affect nearly all direct view modern displays the only difference is How
likely you are to encounter it for LCDs
which make up the majority of TVs and monitors today we could more accurately
describe this phenomenon as image retention because it's typically caused
by the liquid crystals losing their ability to easily return to a relaxed
State we don't talk about it much though because it's pretty uncommon unlike
lttstore.com we talk about that all the time look at this great desk PAD as for
oleds each pixel of an OLED display actually each RGB subpixel is an
individual light source and like LCDs
they're controlled by thin film transistors that can get stuck on which
is why the retention on my screen appears as a bright spot rather than a
dark spot the thing is that this can happen way sooner than on an LCD since
Illuminating a subpixel takes More Voltage and that's not all the O and
OLED means that each subpixel is organic and from the moment it turns on it is
deteriorating and the brighter each one
of those little candles burns the faster it will dim
now obviously this gradual weakening isn't going to be too noticeable if
every pixel gets used exactly the same but How likely is that to happen in the
real world so to combat this educated OLED users can employ a number of tricks
to extend their lifespan I've been running this monitor super
conservatively my OLED brightness has only been around 60. I left on the uh
you know the logo compensation thing where it tries to detect a logo or you
know like the start menu and it's like oh let me move that around a little bit those are some good tips lowering the
brightness overall means that each pixel isn't blasting out as much light wearing
itself out logo compensation tries to surgically dim static elements on the
screen like sports score bugs or news channel logos and Screen shift or pixel
shift takes the whole on-screen image and tries to kind of move it around by a
few pixels every so often in hopes of at least softening the transitions between
the more burned out pixels and the less burned at once but as you saw when we
began this video even a few months of use was enough for me to overcome all of
those protections my brightness by the way was usually set to 80 and I also
have pixel shift and Logo compensation enabled let's take a look at our results
shall we
wow okay hold on
yes yes a lot better but this kind of thing
doesn't work forever the pixel refresh
function of the display does help when you turn it off it's supposed to
automatically do that on its own but I think it's kind of diminishing returns
at this point text in in certain areas are not quite as sharp as it used to be
and uh I've got this sort of weird red splotch in the middle of the screen
because you know so much stuff is going on in the middle of the screen great
and even if pixel refresher works
perfectly for you there are some daily use problems with these TVs that we
should have caught in our review one inconvenience is that they don't handle
Auto Wake from sleep the way that a monitor does so you'll have to manually
turn it on every time you sit down at your computer but that one's pretty
minor compared to the auto dimming issues that Barnacles has been
struggling with now I understand why LG is doing this
remember the whole burn-in thing but when you've got three displays all side
by side by side something as simple as dragging a window across a border can
cause one or more of the TVs to suddenly
change their brightness from I think I can see it to eye searing
now I on the other hand am only running one 48 inch display and I only have to
do my little brightness dance when I'm reading or editing a large document for
an extended period of time so given that burn-in is a much larger concern for me
I'm content to leave the auto dimming alone but if you absolutely cannot
tolerate it there does appear to be a fix and there it is
that's right we've got it this is the LG
service technician remote that can supposedly access menus that are hidden
using the regular consumer one allploof said was play with it
shall we okay well I mean key okay you
can do just regular stuff like change in input it's a p-check
oh crap well now what man how much do I
miss having buttons like this instead of just having an input button that you
have to click a bunch of times just HDMI
too HDMI one dedicated buttons
I kind of just want this remote to just be this remote
okay can I UNP check it
sound check oh picture check picture check and sound check that's what it is
man there's so many buttons on here what's P only
LG service remote password Here We Go
voice according to Reddit it's a zero four one three what's so special about
that date LG and look how smart this is see the IR emitter is uh angled such
that it'll just work if you're just like holding it like this and looking at it
that's awesome menu
oh hello this all looks like the regular
menu whoa hi in tart whoa and then we want
OLED TPC enable off
wow hi
oh look at that HDR on off just like that I guess normal
is auto man this is the kind of thing you could really get into the weeds
tuning and by the way it would void the heck out of your warranty so if you ever
did need to get any kind of servicing done or even update the firmware on your
TV it is strongly recommended that you return all of the service menu options
to normal and then do it otherwise I
take no responsibility for your stuff breaking all right
and we're back
is this is this brighter than before
this looks terrible just a sec Houston we definitely have a problem over in
Vivid mode and what I wonder if that's why it looks like crap this still
doesn't look quite right it's horrible
and then the second I change this to HDR
I bet it's fixed yep and perfect now
I am going to plug it into my laptop
real quick come on
still looks like absolute dog crap it's doing something to the incoming signal I
have no idea what we're gonna put this all back to default exit okay now we are
going to do a factory reset I think I found it I think I found it I think it
was just super resolution see I thought that was off but I wonder if it's just
like a stupid thing where it was turned on then turned off because we are
in SDR right now and this looks fine
all right good it's back to normal factory reset and then
changing settings even though the changing them back doesn't break it
again seems fine we need to move on because none of what we've talked about
so far supports LG's position that burn
in is not a problem let's talk about that the thing is the
oleds on my desks are not the only ones in my life and the 77 inch G10 in my
living room has actually been there for about as long as Wendell has been daily
driving his C10 and in spite of being used daily for not just movies but also
games which are notorious for burning in static elements like speedometers life
bars you get the point it shows no signs
of burn-in whatsoever and you'll actually find plenty of similar
testimonials from users online so it's
clear that oleds absolutely can live long healthy lives doing what they do
best absolutely crushing other Technologies with their image quality
they just clearly require a level of TLC
that other display Technologies do not which means as much as I agree with
Wendell I love OLED oh my goodness this
is like living in the future with this kind of display technology G back to you
Steve
because it's that's just my random thoughts back to
you Linus I'm gonna have to be more careful who I invite to be a guest on
the channel I'm also gonna have to be more careful about my display
recommendations going forward because even though by the way the service menu
thing does appear to have worked these TVs are clearly best suited for
customers with more typical home theater use cases and they are only suitable as
monitors for deep pocketed enthusiasts who are willing to accept either the
downsides like the auto dimming or the cost of replacing them ever so often
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necessary in store only well that was fun I am pleased with the
results of the pixel refresher I am pleased with the results of the auto
dimming thing I'm done with you
uh by the way if you enjoyed this video maybe check out our video where we fixed
a dead CPU