What Is Burn-In?
Burn-in is permanent damage to a display where pixels that have shown the same static content for a long time become dimmer or differently colored than surrounding pixels. It's most common on OLED and plasma panels because each pixel is a separate organic light-emitter that degrades with use. Common culprits: taskbars, news-ticker chyrons, game HUDs, TV channel logos. Modern QD-OLED and WOLED panels are far more resistant than early OLED TVs, but not immune. Uneven aging shows first in dark scenes, so after checking for ghosts it is worth running a shadow detail test to see whether your panel's near-black steps are still distinct.
Burn-In vs Image Retention
"Image retention" (IR) is temporary — the ghost fades after a few minutes or an hour of normal use. "Burn-in" is permanent — it never fades. This tool can help you tell them apart: run the full color cycle at fullscreen for 10 minutes. If the ghost disappears, it was IR (no real damage). If it's still there after 30 minutes, it's burn-in. For the full fade-or-stay test, the recovery refresher step, and a clear RMA decision tree, see our guide on OLED burn-in vs image retention and how to recover it.
The Scrolling Refresher
Scroll mode displays a moving vertical bar pattern across the whole screen. For OLED panels with mild short-term retention, leaving this running for 4-8 hours exercises every pixel evenly, which can help the dimmer cells "catch up" and reduce the visible ghost. This is essentially what your OLED TV does in its overnight pixel-refresh cycle — but you can force it on-demand through a browser. It won't fix permanent burn-in.
