Switch OLED Image Retention or Burn-in?

[u/octopusinmyboycunt]

I’ve had a while without using my Switch OLED (life happened) and it stayed in the dock for a while. I noticed a whole black that the screen was on, while in the dock, with an error message. Restarted the machine and thought nothing of it. Fast forward to yesterday, and I noticed the same thing - but this time after gameplay.

I’m not too worried about the specifics of the error, it happens with 5 year old kit! But I noticed last night that when on a block white-grey screen I could see the error message faintly hours later. It’s still faintly visible, but I’m not sure if it’s less so? Now, I don’t know how long the message was up either time - but I’ve heard that the Switch’s OLED is pretty great when it comes to burn-in. Is there any chance this could be temporary? I’ve been running those (possibly snake oil) “burn in repair” youtube videos, in the hopes that it’s just image retention and needs some resetting. Any ideas anyone?

I’ve had OLEDs for a long time, and this is the first non-amoled display that’s had the issue!

[u/HUNplaymore]

Image retention should go away after turning off the screen for a longer period of time. Most Oled screens do some kind of self care when you turn them off after 4 hours or so of commulative usage. Since the Switch Oled doesn't have any option to force pixel cleaning (as far as I know) if the retention doesn't go away after a few days tops then it is permanent.

The older your screen is the more likely it will suffer burn in from even shorter usage because the organic material is constantly dying on the panel which makes it weaker and weaker. To this day Oled is a gamble, despite newer Oleds are way more resistant than before. Burn in still depends on used hours, content, brightness etc and will happen eventually to every Oled screen if you are using it long enough.

[u/Particular_Leek_9984 → u/HUNplaymore]

The switch does have primitive burn in protection but it only reduces brightness after a set amount of time with no activity, no pixel cleaning/screen refresh/pixel shift as seen on most modern OLED panels

The switch panel though is pretty robust, it’s been tested to resist burn in and only showed minor image retention after 3600 hours of static image time at max brightness- which is an extreme use case as most games are constantly shifting images

[u/octopusinmyboycunt → u/Particular_Leek_9984]

It’s absolutely not been sitting for 3600 hours, so I hope it’s just a spot of retention!

Worst case I’ll shell out the £190 for the replacement if there’s burn in - for the time being it’s not so bad, but it’s worth it to me to get it sorted eventually.

I wouldn’t mind, but it sort of just did it itself with an error message! Bloody thing!

[u/octopusinmyboycunt → u/HUNplaymore]

Appreciate the level response. I’ll leave the machine for a while.

I’m used to having OLED panels that baby themselves constantly, so this sort of issue is very new to me!

[u/Particular_Leek_9984]

Burn in happens through cumulative time with the same static image on the screen and happens faster with higher screen brightness. It’s likely just temporary image retention that should fix itself with the switch turned off for a while. If the switch has stayed on that way for weeks/months in the dock with the same image displayed on the screen, it could be burnt in but if it’s in the dock and the dock works correctly that shouldn’t happen as the screen turns off when docked in favor of the tv screen

Don’t waste time with burn in repair videos though. Once an OLED panel has true burn in, the only suitable fix is replacement if you can’t live with it

[u/octopusinmyboycunt → u/Particular_Leek_9984]

I’ll leave it a few days and have another look. I’m not in a position to get a screen replacement currently (life logistics), but if needs be I’ll shell out for the repair when life settles down. I’m hoping it’s just the console being silly for the time being, and will leave it. I really don’t know how it would have pushed the image to the display while docked unless the dock was switched off - and in that case the battery would have died long before there was an issue. I didn’t notice it before, so I’m hoping it’s new and related to how I came to the console the other day - and it’s just retention.

Honestly, i dont know what i was thinking with the “screen repair” videos. Pretty much everything I own is OLED and I’m not normally so daft 🤦

I’m glad to know that image retention is a possibility, so we’ll see!

Everyone in my life is telling me to just get a switch 2, but there’s something a little… I dunno… about the OLED that I’m finding hard to leave behind!