Good morning
I did some research and yes burn in is a bit of a concern as apparently even as little as 24 hours of a static image can cause burn in. I’m not a young lad anymore so gone are the days of extended gaming though the worry is kind of there.
I have had reassurances from friends with OLED tv's that they not experience issues so I am put at ease slightly.
Also light reflection is an issue as I understand so TV placement will need to be planned a bit.
Staring off I though, new TV no big deal but now it’s getting a bit more complex the more I look into it hehe
I was leaning towards the LG CX though OLED burn in is making me nervous
You'll hear a lot of opinions on burn in from both sides, some saying it doesn't exist, some saying you can't ever have static content on, but I'll try and give you a brief overview of how the tech fundamentally works so you can get a feel for why burn in is a thing, but you don't need to worry about it.
How OLEDs Work
OLEDs are self emissive using organic material (hence the O in OLED). Consequently, each pixel has a finite lifespan. Due to manufacturing processes having variation in quality, even between pixels on a single sheet, some will last longer than others, but generally the tolerance is quite good (and usually gets better as a process matures).
How Burn In Occurs
Now, if you were to display a single red image on an OLED for a sustained period of time, you'd find that the red pixels will degrade, becoming dimmer over time. If you then switched to blue full screen image, you wouldn't see that issue, and it would be roughly as bright as when you got the TV. If you switched from blue to white, you'd find that there would be a noticeable shift in white balance where the red pixels can't provide as much light as blue and green.
This is what happens when you're displaying static images - the pixels displaying the static content degrade at a different, but constant, rate compared to surrounding pixels. When you switch to a full screen uniform colour, you can see this as burn in.
Technologies to Combat Burn In
LG and Samsung, the two primary manufacturers of OLED displays (phones and TVs) use different technologies to help combat this. One of them is pixel refreshing. When your display has been on for a sustained period of time, at the point of turning off the display, it undergoes a refreshing process. In real basic terms, think shaking an etch-a-sketch when you want to start again. That's not how it works, but similar principle.
Another technology is pixel shift. This is quite self explanatory, but essentially they shift the static images around slightly, to try and wear as large an area as possible, so that the burn in isn't as obvious, since it's blending it into the surrounding area. Think pressing down on foam - if you use the same force over a larger area, you won't dent it as much as using your hand, for example. Phones do this by moving text and static parts of the display around slightly, like the swipe to go home bar on iPhone X and above - it moves up and down ever so slightly throughout use.
So to conclude, burn in is a thing - it's an inherent part of the technology, but there are technologies that help combat this which do work. That being said, it is inevitable you will get it at some point, and due to tolerances not being perfect, some TVs will get it sooner/quicker than others. But this might be 5+ years away, at which point you're likely to buy a new TV anyway.
I exclusively game on my OLED, and even if there is burn in, I don't care, because the reasons I got the TV in the first place still hold true, and burn in doesn't affect the gaming experience.
