The Phawx's Steam Deck OLED Burn-In Experiment Has Begun

Probably one of the few things that everyone thinks about when it comes to OLED panels is burn-in. This is a phenomenon where, on panels like OLED, having static elements on the screen for a long time can cause the image to leave an overlay-like residue, keeping the image on the screen even when it isn't being shown anymore.

While this is worrisome, most OLED panels have made burn-in much harder to get on your panels, but it could still happen. So, the question remains: Could the Steam Deck OLED realistically suffer from burn-in? Well, our good friend and handheld expert, The Phawx, has taken it on as a mission to find out, and we will be following along for this journey!

For reference, The Phawx is a Youtuber who has been around for quite some time, covering devices, reviewing handhelds, and discussing their future when new tech and advancements seem to be coming about. Seeing him take on this million-dollar question will provide a ton of insight into the panel and exactly what you will be able to do without damaging it.

For this experiment, he has also created his own little "game" in Unity, which is designed to test different brightness levels for both SDR and HDR content. It's an extremely cool little program to perfectly test how burn-in and different levels of brightness can and will affect the OLED panel the Steam Deck uses. He even details how SDR and HDR brightness affect the battery (the sweet spot for HDR is 50% brightness). Of course, he goes into more detail in his video, and we encourage you to watch it yourself!

This test could take hundreds or even thousands of hours, so it will be a very long test, but we will be covering it every step of the way. Since The Phawx is also a friend of SteamDeckHQ, we will be able to ask him some questions and get some more up-to-date information directly from the source as it is all unfolding!

A big thank you to The Phawx for the opportunity to talk to him as this is unfolding, and we can't wait to see what the results of his experiment are.

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