Comment by data-ottawa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by data-ottawa | Hacker News Reader

I was hoping for OLED or dual-OLED based monitors, especially for this price point but I’d want this slightly lower than the XDR price. Sequoia+Tahoe seems like they’ve been laying the groundwork for OLED macs — removing the menu bar background and making text dynamically change colour, moving/cycling backgrounds, liquid glass reducing the effect of static UI elements, etc.

I personally wouldn’t buy a new LCD based display anymore at this price. There are flaws inherent to the technology that affect all of my recent Apple displays (Studio Display, M1 Pro iPad, M1 Pro MPB, M4 Pro MPB). After using OLED TVs and OLED iPhones for years, it’s very difficult to look past LCD’s issues (edge yellowing+dimming specifically affects all my Apple screens more than I am happy with).

There are no reviews/studies on long-term aging of Apple’s LCD displays, so all of this should be taken with a grain of salt, maybe my devices are just unlucky.

I don’t know if the Pro XDR line is better or how that would carry over to the Studio XDR. I haven’t seen many complains about the Pro XDR, but the Studio Display form factor has a different cooling design which would affect longevity.

I will say I can never go back from retina resolution text, and that alone has made the experience of Studio Display good. If we could get OLED it would be perfection. I think I would have to see the XDR in practice to be convinced, but 120hz requiring a whole new computer does make it a non-starter for me.

Along similar lines, there's no way I would buy an OLED at this price point. If I'm dropping $3k on a monitor, it needs to be a technology that lasts, not a technology that wears out over time.

I bought an LG 32" 4k OLED for $999 and it's hands down the best display I've ever used. No burn in even with lots of static browser/terminal windows for days and days. The fact that it's $3k and _not_ OLED is insulting.

I believe these monitors are meant for professionals, which means it is going to be used in bright office buildings. That means running the display at high brightness which is the worst case for OLED since they degrade faster at higher brightness. Quoting wikipedia:

> A US Department of Energy paper shows that the expected lifespans of OLED lighting products goes down with increasing brightness, with an expected lifespan of 40,000 hours at 25% brightness, or 10,000 hours at 100% brightness

Maybe so. OLED comes with a risk, but I've run mine at 70-75% brightness with no issues. I probably drive mine ~2,500 hours per year, so if we make it 4 years that is a huge win in my book for something I stare at all day long.

Plus, coding at night on OLED just makes me want to write more code. It's great.

Current gen OLEDs almost don't wear out (saying this as an OLED owner). To see the wear you need to have a completely black room and the wear is unnoticeable unless you're specifically looking for it. You don't need to spend 3k, 1k is enough.

Ah, you should update wikipedia then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLED#Lifespan

> In 2016, LG Electronics reported an expected lifetime of 100,000 hours

23 years for an older generation OLED seems fine to me, I don't understand the problem here?

The US Department of Energy report from the same year reports far lower numbers, which I'd be more inclined to trust since they are impartial / not trying to market a product.

True, but those numbers are from 2016, 10 years ago. For a more apples to apples comparison see [1] [2] [3].

[1] https://youtu.be/H43wnV-v7V0

[2] https://youtu.be/RbEgQrigiLc

[3] https://youtu.be/AZfwHcMLorY

In my case, 3205 hours of use:

- 428 pixel cleans

- 1/3 brightness (my room is pretty dim and I often code during the night)

- static control on

- pixel shift on

- apl low

- sub-logo dim on

- corner dim on.

During the day I am not able to see any burn in. During the night it's unnoticeable unless you're looking for it. And it's only visible on gray backgrounds, unnoticeable during normal use. My phone (Nothing Phone 2) fails to capture it no matter how hard I try (even during the night).

The only issue I had was at 2417 hours and it was vertical white stripes like this: [4] but they were completely gone after a manual pixel clean. No issues since. I am never going back, worth every penny I spent.

[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/gigabyte/comments/1gyv1db/fo32u2_ve...

That doesn’t sound very reassuring. 3205 hours, or a little over a year at 8 hours a day. Be generous and call it two years of use. You’re babying it with low brightness, dynamic dimming, etc. etc. and the fact that there’s anything, even if you have to “look for it”, is not a good sign.

I've been having it for 1y 4mo.

> You’re babying it with low brightness

That's the same brightness I was using on my IPS. And if you watched the videos then you'd know that those people use OLEDs at "almost max brightness" and see no burn in.

> dynamic dimming

Such features are unnoticeable during normal use and most of them are defaults.

> the fact that there’s anything, even if you have to “look for it”

Again, this is only noticeable if your room is completely black and you're staring at gray content.

To counter your argument, you have a much worse backlight bleeding on IPS, which is very but very visible during normal use. To quote you: "the fact that there's anything, is not a good sign".

It's weird how you call OLEDs bad but completely forget about IPS downsides, and I'm not gonna even start on VA.

At the current state, OLED wins.

I _have_ watched those videos and they show burn-in after an alarmingly short amount of use. My current IPS monitor has been going strong for the past decade. I expect monitors to last at least that long. Get back to us about your burn-in after 8.6 more years.

Adding one more reference, here is a recent post to /r/monitors showing burn-in after 2 years of constant use: https://www.reddit.com/r/Monitors/comments/1pf0tmi/here_is_m...

And as a personal anecdote, I've experienced burn-in on my pixel 3a after 2 years. When switching to a full-screen solid grey, you could clearly see the bottom button bar with the home/back buttons.

> I _have_ watched those videos and they show burn-in after an alarmingly short amount of use.

Debatable, it's not what those content creators say, and I definitely wouldn't call it alarming if it requires you to stare at gray background in a dark room. It isn't even half as bad as IPS backlight bleeding or VA angles. Different people have different standards. You don't have to buy it if you don't like it.

> Adding one more reference, here is a recent post to /r/monitors showing burn-in after 2 years of constant use

Pixel clean cannot run if the monitor is constantly receiving signal.

Also show me an IPS after 2 years of constant use. The backlight can degrade as well.

[edit] Furthermore, 3 year warranty covers your burn in, so I guess they would happily replace your monitor once the burn in normally visible. [/edit]

> Get back to us about your burn-in after 8.6 more years.

Feel free to ping my email (@gmail.com) at that time.

> I've experienced burn-in on my pixel 3a after 2 years

2019. My Nothing Phone 2 is from 2023. I've been having it for 1y 8mo+ and experienced zero burn in on the same gray test. For reference, I don't use automatic brightness and it's almost full-brightness all-day (except evenings).

> it's not what those content creators say

Quoting one of your videos: "After 21 months, seeing these artifacts is certainly annoying". If I spend $3k on a monitor, it should _not_ be annoying after 2 years.

Also "If your primary monitor use case is productivity, you likely have up to 3 years of decent usage under normal conditions before burn-in starts to become a concern". I almost exclusively use my monitor for productivity, and it definitely needs to last more than 3 years.

> Pixel clean cannot run if the monitor is constantly receiving signal.

True, but pixel clean works by burning-in the rest of your (sub)pixels so that they are evenly burned. Therefore what you are seeing in that photo is permanent degradation of those (sub)pixels. The clean will smooth it out so it doesn't look bad, but those pixels will never be as bright again. That portion of their life is spent. It is an unavoidable part of how OLED works.

I agree that emissive displays are the future. But OLED is not the way to get there.

> Quoting one of your videos: "After 21 months, seeing these artifacts is certainly annoying". If I spend $3k on a monitor, it should _not_ be annoying after 2 years.

Why are you insisting to spend 3k? I've already said that 1k is enough. Also he said "but generally speaking it hasn't been a noticeable problem in most tasks". In the same productivity scenario, with a gray background, IPS backlight bleeding would've been even worse (unless you win the lottery and there's little to no bleeding). RTings showed this on many monitors (unfortunately they paywalled everything due to AI [1]).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DshOOs39vA

> It is an unavoidable part of how OLED works.

True.

> OLED is not the way to get there.

I'm not a screen scientist so I'll refrain from making a statement like this. I don't have anything to add. I guess we'll see how it pans out in the future.

Edit: I bought my FO32U2P mostly to reduce eye strain. 4k 240hz with nice colors is also a very neat upgrade.

Also my gf used to use Samsung A40 which is also from 2019 and there's no burn in. The only issue I see is slow response times, however she upgraded in 2022 and again a few months ago.

> If I'm dropping $3k on a monitor, it needs to be a technology that lasts, not a technology that wears out over time.

I bought my OLED TV when fearmongering was the highest, and it still works perfectly with zero burn-ins. So it is definitely possible. I bought the tv 8 years ago.

Yeah my LG C9 looks great, minor dimming where the captions are, but that’s it.

In the 7 years since they’ve gotten better, with micro lens arrays and stuff to improve brightness without heat causing faster decay.

RTINGs has some great content on TV longevity, but I haven’t seen anything for monitor workloads.

Dimming reduces total brightness over time and shifts color balance away from neutral. Latest "Pro" displays from Apple now have built-in support for calibration but only with high end calibration equipment: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mchl628f5edf/...

The implementation is great, since it doesn't add fix up profile on top factory calibration, but actually fully replaces factory calibration internal LUT. It worked wonders to completely fix my M1 MBP screen that got noticeably tinted over time. I don't mind brightness reduction since I almost never use it at more than 200 nits, usually around 100. Nominal 1600 leaves lots of buffer for decay over time.

I've had similar issue my OLED TV with the same fix. Got my LG C1 calibrated as well and it looks fantastic again.

It's a shame there are no iOS or Android phones that support calibration out of the box. Some iPads support subset of pro display calibration software (called fine tune calibration), but still lack full recalibration support.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com