You might recall a story we ran earlier this year about a 1,800-hour Switch OLED burn-in test. It was done by the graphic artist and content creator Bob Wulf over on his YouTube channel the Wulff Den. At the time, there was “no noticeable burn-in”.
He’s now posted an update over on YouTube, and in this video, he reveals how the system finally has some signs of burn-in. It’s happened after about six months and roughly 3,600 hours. Again, that’s the Switch running a still screen of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild day in, day out, on the one screen, and it’s taken that long to show some signs of ghosting.
So what’s the verdict, there’s nothing to worry about if you are planning on buying an OLED Switch:
“Is this something you should worry about, definitely not…this took me 3,600 hours to get to this point and it’s been on this screen the whole time at full blast, that will take somebody years to do in one particular game, and again that game needs a UI element or something that doesn’t move on the screen, and that particular element needs to be on the screen for 3,600 hours a little modicum of ghosting. Even if you’re playing specifically Breath of the Wild…I don’t think this is ever gonna be an issue.
“If you’re worried about buying an OLED Switch for this reason, you have nothing to worry about.”
So, there you go – you really don’t have to worry about getting burn-in on your Nintendo Switch, at least in the immediate future. Although this experiment has already proven there’s nothing to worry about when it comes to this system’s OLED panel, Wulff intends to keep going to see “how much worse it could get” and how long it will take for the system to get to an unplayable state.
Wulff thinks it’ll probably take around another 1,800 hours before the burn-in could potentially become “game-breaking”.
He’s also tested the battery, as the system has now been on the charger for the entire time. When it was running exclusively on battery after 3,600 hours – it could still last for 8 hours on maximum settings.
“So, if you have worries about leaving it on the charger for too long, that’s not anything to worry about, either.”
How is your own Nintendo Switch OLED model going so far? Have you encountered any screen-related problems? Leave a comment down below.
