Leading PC monitor makers Asus and MSI have said they’re now offering extended warranties to cover against burn-in on their high-end OLED displays. The first to do so was Asus, which announced a two-year burn-in warranty earlier this week, only for MSI to go one better and detail its own, three-year extended warranty to cover the same issue.
In a blog post explaining its decision to offer the extended warranty, MSI explained that consumers have a lot of fear when it comes to buying OLED monitors because, while they “have become the preferred choice for high-end gaming, the OLED burn-in issue has consistently been a major concern for all users.”
OLED burn-in is a long-standing worry for the industry, even though it is quite rare and is unlikely to be a problem for normal users. The most at risk are commercial customers who use their OLED monitors 24/7, such as displays at airports or in retail stores that continually show static images. Research by HDTVTest in 2019 demonstrated that the risk of burn-in is generally overblown, so long as users follow the manufacturer's guidelines and properly switch off their displays after using them. However, concerns about the problem persist to this day.
Although consumers are still worried about the potential degradation of their OLED monitors, manufacturers are clearly growing in confidence that they can prevent it from happening, no matter if they’re using a WOLED panel supplied by LG Display, or a QD-OLED variant made by Samsung Display.
Asus announced its extended two-year burn-in warranty on the quiet, slipping it into its product pages. It was first noticed by TFTCentral, which said the warranty covers new monitors such as the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDP, ROG Swift OLED PG32UCDM, ROG Swift OLED PG39WCDM and ROG Swift OLED PG49WCD, among others.
MSI was more vocal, publishing a blog post where it described how its new MSI OLED Care 2.0 technology proactively works to prevent burn-in from becoming a problem on its monitors. The company first revealed that technology last year, and the decision to only announce the warranty now suggests that it has had time to verify everything works as expected.
The company explained that MSI OLED Care 2.0 used techniques such as pixel shift and pixel luminance adjustments when the monitor is up and running, and pixel refresh when it’s on standby mode. This is similar to what TV makers like LG Electronics and Sony have been doing for some time already. MSI said it’s technology is able to detect potential burn-in problems, which are typically caused by static on-screen logos, UI taskbars and media playback boundaries. It reduces the luminance in these areas to help prevent burn-in, and it will also dim the entire display when it detects the user has disappeared somewhere.
MSI said its warranty applies to 2024 monitors such as the MSI MAG 271QPX QD-OLED, MAG 321UPX QD-OLED, MAG 341CQP QD-OLED, MPG 271QRX QD-OLED, MPG 321URX QD-OLED, MPG 491CQP QD-OLED and the MEG 342C QD-OLED.
The announcements continue a trend that has seen more and more OLED monitor manufacturers offer extended guarantees over burn-in as a way to entice consumers. Last year, LG Electronics confirmed that burn-in problems are covered as part of its two-year warranty for OLED monitors, while Alienware and Corsair have both recently announced three-year warranties to cover against burn-in. Now with Asus and MSI joining the fray, the industry will be watching to see if the likes of Acer, Gigabyte and Samsung can match those guarantees with their own warranties.
Check out this video to understand why the risk of OLED burn-in tends to be exagerrated:
