Over 100 TVs and a small cadre of monitors have been put through the ringer by review heavyweights RTINGS.com, as its legendary longevity burn-in test crosses the two-year mark. Forcing the tested panels to endure nonstop uptime, simulating 10 years of average usage, the test has revealed some key truths about recent trends in consumer screens.
We first covered the test's 10-month mark findings back in 2023, when the burn-in was just beginning and the monitors tested still looked good as new. Now, the above picture paints a clear image of the failure and agony stretching across many panels at the end of their lifespans.
Monitors Tested and Other Major Findings
Three monitors have been part of the long-term research, joining the 24/7 torture test four months after the TVs began. The LG 27GR95QE-B, Alienware AW3423DWF, and Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 are a trio of OLED, 1440p, high refresh-rate monitors of 165Hz or higher that have all been subjected to testing. In contrast to the TVs, which have exhibited rising failure rates in recent months, all three monitors are still going, though burn-in has become incredibly obvious.
All three panels are now clearly showing signs of burn-in at the bottom row of the screen, where the CNN news ticker typically rests. Samsung's Odyssey OLED monitor has the CNN logo specifically burned into its bottom right corner. The LG panel is especially rough, also exhibiting clear evidence of the outline of a talking head in the center of the screen, and displaying colors with significantly less accuracy than either of the other two monitors. The burn-in becomes much starker when viewed in tandem with a look at the three monitors a few months into the test process.
Surprisingly, where most TV screens tested have seen a measured downward progression in their peak brightness values, the three monitors have held steady around their day 1 values. While both the LG and Samsung monitors experienced some fluctuation around the 3,600-hour mark, all three line graphs for these screens appear to be positively parallel with the x-axis. For a better look at these graphs, be sure to check the RTINGS.com written review.
Other noteworthy failures and observations in the test include a high occurrence of backlight failures, causing entire TVs to die. Where some screens saw large regions of their backlights completely die out, with the remainder staying lit, creating an odd half-on, broken look, many TVs in recent weeks of testing have had a single LED in the backlight die, causing the entire TV to be unable to power on.
For more stories of the test's crazy TV deaths, dying panel gore, and other general trends and observations, RTINGS.com's update YouTube video and written post both hold great value to consumers and panel trend followers.
The RTINGS.com test is not much longer for this world. As the TVs have been chugging for 28 months total and the monitors for 24, RTINGS observes that most of its testing stock is nearing the right edge of its bathtub curve, and the rate of catastrophic failures will continue to rise until the test becomes frivolous to run. When that final day and its final observations come, a great wealth of knowledge on the state of TV manufacturing will surely come to light.
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