OLED screens run the biggest risk, but with a little common sense you can mitigate the issue. If you're shopping for a new TV or monitor, you may have heard that OLED offers some of the best picture quality available today. While OLED TVs often cost a premium compared to budget and even mid-range LCDs, you get excellent contrast, vivid colors and deep blacks in return. However, there can be one major caveat to the display technology: the possibility of permanent image retention or burn-in.

An OLED display is made up of millions of tiny organic light-emitting diodes. Unlike an LCD, which relies on a backlight, each pixel in an OLED generates its own light and can be dimmed or turned off independently. But while this granular control provides excellent contrast and deep blacks, it also means that individual pixels can wear out independently of each other. Each time you use an OLED display, these pixels undergo some infinitesimal amount of degradation, translating to dimmer light output over time.

Practically speaking, the OLED display continuously varies the brightness of each pixel and sub-pixel to reproduce colors. Over time, some pixels experience more wear than others and become dimmer. Eventually, the difference in brightness becomes noticeable enough to our eyes. Burn-in occurs when some pixels appear brighter than those that have experienced greater wear, creating a persistent outline or ghosting of previously displayed content. Static elements like channel logos have a higher potential to cause OLED burn-in, since the sub-pixels in that region wear out unevenly. This is why OLED displays aren't the best choice if you exclusively watch news or sports channels for several hours each day.

If you end up buying an OLED TV, you can still take several steps to prevent rapid burn-in. One of the most consequential accelerators for burn-in is brightness. High brightness levels place greater strain on the LEDs, causing premature wear. The organic material used in an OLED panel also degrades faster when exposed to heat. Running an OLED display at maximum brightness for extended periods can result in noticeable burn-in. The solution is simple: head into the TV or monitor's settings menu and lower the brightness setting.