The refreshed version of the Steam Deck with an OLED display received unanimous praise, including in our test. As is typical for an OLED display, it shows rich colors and enormous contrasts, and it also acts extremely quickly. One of the biggest concerns for OLED buyers, whether it's desktop or mobile displays, is the life expectancy of the new technology. The key word is “burn-in” and describes the (uneven) wear of the organic luminous layers of the display caused by static display elements, which leads to ghost images.
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Two YouTubers, Wulff Den and The Phawx, tried to simulate how vulnerable the Steam Deck with OLED display is to burn-in – although not necessarily with real-world scenarios to speed up the process. Wulff Den had the mobile game console permanently display a scene from the game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for over 1,500 hours and added a color bar. Phawx, on the other hand, used a self-created program that showed some lettering in different colors in SDR and HDR mode (normal and high contrast display) at different brightness levels for a good 750 hours. Both are worst-case scenarios in their own way, because unchanged image content, even at high brightness, places particular demands on the luminous layers. If the content is still monochrome, so that a luminescent layer wears off more, ghosting may occur even more quickly.
Easy phantom images from 750 hours
After his 750-hour test, Phawx observed that the white lettering on his test image was actually always easily recognizable. The brighter the display had to show it, the more pronounced the effect was. And where the colored lettering was, you could see a shadow if the screen showed that color over the entire surface.
Despite different methodology, Den Wulff comes to similar results. After 63 days or around 1500 hours, he also observed ghost images on his Steam Deck OLED. As expected, they were most pronounced where a black and white striped pattern appeared in his color bar; where the bright streaks had been could be seen on virtually any background. But as with Phawx, it also became apparent that individual colors faded due to wear and tear, meaning phantom patterns appeared in game scenes.
Assessment: In practice it's not that bad
Both testers also agree on their assessment: In practice, players shouldn't worry too much about burn-in, because playing the same game with the display elements unchanged and at very high brightness is probably the absolute exception. Among other things, both give the tip to operate the Steam Deck OLED at a brightness setting of 75 percent. The display no longer becomes brighter anyway, but only appears that way through digital post-processing.
We recently gave some tips on caring for organic displays in the article How to prevent burn-in with OLEDs and what the manufacturers promise and also tested nine OLED displays for the office and at home.
(bkr)