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pedromoss 10 hours ago [-]
I have never had a great experience with OLED on larger screens, whether monitors or laptops. In smartphones, OLED burn-in is much less of a practical concern because of pixel-shifting and other mitigation done by the OS. The use of phone is mostly switching between apps, watching videos, texting, and making calls, rather than displaying the same text for hours so that makes sense. I still prefer IPS LCD for monitors and laptops because text looks crisper, which matters if you spend hours reading or working. OLED makes more sense to me for watching movies and other video content. In my opinion, Apple did it correctly, MacBook uses a Mini-LED backlit LCD, so you get a quality display with HDR while also having sharp text, and you don't have to worry about burn-in issues. There is MicroLED[1], which promises to combine OLED-like blacks and response with better longevity by avoiding screen burn-in issues. At the moment, it seems no major manufacturers are providing it because of cost and other factors.
The issue with text on OLED panels is typically due to the sub pixel layout, they tend to use different sub pixel layouts to traditional monitors which causes issues with subpixel rendering and can make text look blurry or have color fringing.
However, recently you can now get OLED panels from LG with RGB stripe sub pixel layouts (matching traditional monitors) which eliminates this problem and text should be just as good as an non-OLED display.
mkozlows 6 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I'm using one (the Alienware 3926), and it's fine. You'd never know it wasn't IPS except that it's better off-axis and has vastly better blacks and no light bleed.
dylan604 5 hours ago [-]
That sounds like something someone would write a driver for that then installs a rootkit
chrysoprace 7 hours ago [-]
I have many criticisms of Apple and their hardware, but the Mini-LED screen on the M1 MBP I had at a previous job was stunning. I was in the market was a Mini-LED monitor last year and ended up settling with an IPS LCD in the end due to the lack of premium high-refresh 1440p options at the time.
spider-mario 9 hours ago [-]
Yes, the rumours of an upcoming MacBook Pro switching to OLED fill me with dread.
Danox 4 hours ago [-]
You will like Tandem OLED which is the screen that is used on the large screen, iPad Pro’s made by LG.
Tandem OLED solves the problem of burn-in, but it cost more than standard OLED on large screens which is why Samsung didn’t want to supply Apple so Apple went to LG.
powersurge360 11 hours ago [-]
I had the dell ultrawide OLED monitor from their Alienware sub brand. It burned in enough within three years that I was able to get it warrantied. While it was away, I auditioned a miniled Samsung G7 with the intent to sell the repaired Dell if I liked the Samsung. Surprisingly, I found the uneven lighting and colors to be more disappointing out of the box than a three year old OLED panel with burn in.
OLED is unfortunately consumable but it is the highest fidelity consumer panel tech you can get atm. The MiniLEDs in Apple’s MacBooks are reasonable substitutions, albeit subject to blurring. I haven’t seen any other non-OLED compare.
Yea, and that’s part of the struggle. There are so many dishonest standards printed on displays. Rooting out which HDR standard guarantees _true_ HDR is a similar rabbit hole.
kalaksi 10 hours ago [-]
Have you had IPS panels? I have a similar Alienware ultrawide monitor but with IPS panel. IPS still remains my favorite. Didn't dare to get OLED for computer monitor since I expected burn-in over the years. OLED could maybe have a little bit better colors, but I got LG's OLED TV a few years back and was a bit disappointed to see that the image isn't perfectly even (more clearly visible with grey image) and sometimes with dark areas there's some kind of barely noticeable weird edge effect. Kind of like the OLEDs just lighting up after reaching some threshold. And some other very minor effects like little uneven flickering of a fire in a dark scene.
powersurge360 10 hours ago [-]
I have used IPS, and a good IPS is certainly more affordable and more durable but it just doesn’t stand up to OLED, to my eyes. The uneven grays are a known fault in OLEDs but imo the raised blacks in IPS and IPS glows are worse compromises.
Still, I probably would work on an IPS if I didn’t have limited desk space and needed my monitor to pull double duty for entertainment as well.
kalaksi 10 hours ago [-]
Right, almost forgot IPS glow. I have probably gotten a bit accustomed to it and if I'd use OLED monitor for extended period, I'd probably start noticing issues with IPS more. That said, I think this current IPS panel is also better than some other Dell IPS monitors I've used at work previously and has less noticeable glow.
kuerbel 10 hours ago [-]
I have an iirc 8 year old oled tv from LG. It has terrible burn in, especially red was hit hard. I wonder how true rgb might compare. The picture quality is probably worse, but if it holds up longer than oled it might be worth the trade off.
teirce 6 hours ago [-]
One anecdote for another - I have an LG CX which released in 2020. It's on basically 24/7 (rotating photos through a Chromecast when not actively in use), occasionally I'll turn it off at night. It does regular pixel cleaning on its own that sleeps the panel for a few minutes.
I've not seen any burn-in.
All of these burnout 'tests' I've seen (this one, and RTings as well) purposefully use static content and are basically abusing the panel in a way that is specifically advised against. I find them pretty useless for anything not an office TV on the wall running CNN 24/7, which I will never be doing myself.
I don't think anyone familiar with the tech will deny using these panels in such a way will cause burn-in, even the test here:
> ...static desktop content such as web browsers, document editors, and spreadsheets, along with creative apps like Photoshop and Premiere. We don't recommend using an OLED monitor like this. These displays are best suited to content consumption[...]
I think it's pretty avoidable on a TV, the real issue comes from what you need out of a desktop monitor. I have a Dell/Alienware (Samsung QD-OLED Panel) that's about a year old without any visible issues, but it's still early to tell in that case.
The tech has gotten better, but the problem still very much exists.
eyegor 3 hours ago [-]
This one isn't really a "burnout test" though, that's just what they call it to get clicks. They're just using an oled monitor as their primary for daily work. This represents a pretty normal use case, it isn't a torture test like what RTings does. I don't see a world where I'd buy a monitor and not use it for static content the majority of the time.
cubefox 9 hours ago [-]
I thought LG uses color filters (or quantum dots) with the same OLED color for every sub pixel. Which would mean individual colors can't age differently. That would only be possible for RGB OLEDs. But even for RGB, you would assume red degrades the slowest, because it has the longest wavelength and therefore the least energy.
babypuncher 10 hours ago [-]
I've been seeing people go crazy over these new "RGB" mini LED panels and as an OLED user for almost 10 years now I just don't get it.
The first thing I do to test any LCD panel is fire up an episode of Star Trek: The Next generation. Invariably, one of two things happens as soon as we are presented with an exterior shot of the Enterprise
1. LCD backlight bleed makes space look dark grey/blue instead of black as originally intended.
2. The localized dimming kicks in, presenting truly black space, but rendering the stars (which are smaller than the smallest local dimming zones) super dim or nonexistent.
These latest generation RGB local dimming LCD panels being touted as OLED killers still fall under the 2nd scenario, they don't actually fix the problem at all. LCD is functionally a dead end when it comes to picture quality.
sensanaty 7 hours ago [-]
I might just be super used to IPS panels, but I have literally never noticed nor cared about the backlight issues, and to me knowing that my monitor won't be e-waste within 3 years is still worth it even if the picture quality is a tad nicer
jck86 9 hours ago [-]
And I will still happily take the LCD "dead end" over the regressive burn-in OLEDs.
kalaksi 10 hours ago [-]
Touted by who, though? Proper reviews and tests will catch such things quickly.
mldbk 5 hours ago [-]
I have an ASUS ROG Swift OLED PG27UCDM, a 27-inch 4K OLED.
I’ve owned it for 13 months now and it’s been nothing but positive. To be clear about my use case: I don’t watch movies on it, I don’t game much (maybe 10 hours a month), and most of the time it’s just a browser or a few terminals on screen. For terminal work, this monitor is a blessing. In a fully dark room, only the text glows, nothing else, and it’s genuinely enjoyable to look at. I haven’t noticed any issues with text rendering either: at 27 inches, text is crisp from 50–70 cm away, and the pixel density is more than adequate. I suspect the 30+ inch OLEDs are where text clarity starts to become a problem.
Apollorider 5 hours ago [-]
OLED in a dark room feels like magic, it's like the windows are just floating in the air
Exoristos 7 hours ago [-]
At my age or with my history of close screen work, how a screen effects eye fatigue is my only concern. With a bad or standard-issue screen I'll have eye and head pain immediately. For this, I haven't found anything better than high-quality IPS. Maybe others have had different experiences.
noir_lord 5 hours ago [-]
Indeed, people tell me that 4K/144Hz 28" IPS is overkill and yeah I can see it, 2560x1440 would be acceptable but my eyes aren't what they where and I'm astigmatic and a decent quality IPS for something I stare at for hours a day is well worth the (slight) cost premium over 1440.
bigmadshoe 6 hours ago [-]
Interesting, I have the same issue and never thought to change monitor. I think mine is already IPS, but how do you know the quality from the specs? What actually matters for eye fatigue?
Exoristos 6 hours ago [-]
I look for high refresh rate and high nits. Also bearing in mind there are various ways some manufacturers fudge IPS. So I tend to stick with a make I know.
Exoristos 6 hours ago [-]
Resolution obviously plays a big part, but for me 1440 is fine.
olyjohn 3 hours ago [-]
Are there any monitors that have a resolution somewhere between 1440 and 4k? I want more pixels than 1440p, but don't necessarily want to go to 4k and have to scale everything... I've tried looking and there doesn't seem to be much if anything.
bigmadshoe 3 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure if you're on a Mac, but I've found the scaling to be a non-issue on my 27" 4K monitor. There are various 'use as' resolution options untied to the actual display resolution (basically: make the UI appear as though I'm running at this lower res, but with higher dpi). For me running 4k with 'use as' set to 1440p is perfect.
jacquesm 5 hours ago [-]
> So I tend to stick with a make I know.
Which is?
originalvichy 9 hours ago [-]
My simplest solution to this is buying a TV panel. If all your OS-level and panel-level mitigations fail, and any burn-in bothers you too much, just sell it on the used market. I specifically bought an LG C-series 42" OLED TV for my gaming/work monitor use, and if/when burn-in becomes unbearable, I'm certain it can be sold to someone for a reasonable price. They'll likely use it as a plain TV and sit too far away to even notice any burn-in. Might be more difficult to pull off if you buy gaming-oriented smaller panels, so I advise against that.
Tuna-Fish 7 hours ago [-]
Note that the LG takes regular screenshots, uploads them to their servers, and sells them. If you don't allow it on the internet, it saves the screenshots to internal storage and uploads once it is connected. If you don't attach it to the internet, or give it permission to upload them, and later sell the screen to someone who does do that, all your data is uploaded then.
I would not resell a LG tv that has been used for anything but content consumption.
avalys 5 hours ago [-]
That’s a rather outrageous claim! Do you have evidence for this?
Is it perhaps the case that LG TVs do not literally do what you suggest here, i.e. upload literal screenshots of what might be private, confidential or proprietary information and sell those screenshots, and that you are being hyperbolic or repeating without verifying unsubstantiated claims made by someone else?
Also the LG pc monitors use the windows driver install process to auto install malware on your computer.
Avoid LG at all costs.
himata4113 11 hours ago [-]
I feel like OLED burn-in is a solved problem. I picked up the greatest and latest from ASUS 1 year ago and compared to my oled from 5 years ago, there's zero visible burn-in and there's zero compensation cycles (that I can see, which is a huge upgrade compared to previous generations). Actually my old "monitor" is now a TV and all the burn-in from desktop use has disappeared.
edit: I put up a very aggressive version of grey which used to expose full on black spots on the older OLED and I can only see a very faint line where there is a full white bar from one of the applications I use, actually I think that's just my vision since I can't see it anymore.
Danox 4 hours ago [-]
There are two different types of OLED. The cheap version, which is the most prevalent, and then there is Tandem OLED, which is more expensive and eliminates burn-in guess which one the industry sells the most of? With regular OLED burnin and all the other weaknesses of standard OLED are not taken care of most users have chosen to live with it. for the sake of a decent screen for playing games.
Seems like it really isn't though. The TechSpot findings show the inverse burn-in line down the middle, subpixel disparity, and brightness deterioration. I think you can argue the latter two aren't big deals for casual users but the line down the middle of the screen seems pretty galling.
They show a barely visible line down the middle after three years of intense usage. If I were planning to use my OLED monitor that way (I am), seeing those results wouldn't dissuade me at all (they haven't).
nnevatie 10 hours ago [-]
It is not a solved problem. Play some games in HDR on a daily basis and their HUDs and character portraits will burn in. As simple as that. I have an AW3423DWF that did just that after 2.5 years of use.
malfist 7 hours ago [-]
How many hours are you playing the same game to get burn in? I've never managed that
chrysoprace 6 hours ago [-]
Factory games like Satisfactory and Factorio see players with thousands of hours on the games and those have static HUDs that would likely burn in.
pizza234 10 hours ago [-]
I have an Alienware and it took a while to burn-in, I think I noticed for the first time after around a couple of years.
AFAIK, burn-in is inherent in the technology; there's only mitigations.
dgllghr 18 hours ago [-]
I wonder what Apple will do about this for their upcoming (?) OLED MacBook Pros
GeekyBear 10 hours ago [-]
The tandem OLED screens they use on the iPad Pro stack multiple OLED layers on top of each other and reduces the brightness of the layers.
The brighter you run OLED, the more burn in you get.
The QD-OLED standard they tested in TFA is also supposed to be more burn in resistant, but they still saw burn in over time.
Danox 3 hours ago [-]
Tandem OLED costs more the bigger the screen and that is the reason why they’re not more prevalent in PC land.
It is also the primary reason why Apple, with its native monitors being 5K and 6K, cost more and unfortunately a nasty side effect raised its head 5K and 6K require more info running down the cable, and that is the primary reason Apple moved over to Thunderbolt 5, 5K or higher at 120hz requires thunderbolt five if you want to use a single cable.
asdff 14 hours ago [-]
Menubar is going to be a killer
Gigachad 6 hours ago [-]
I’ve got an Apple Watch Series 6 that has had an always on clock face for 5 years. In the flashlight mode in the lowest brightness I can see burn in, but nowhere else can I see any sign of burnin.
So oled burn in is not a totally solved issue but it’s not a big enough deal for me to care when the literal worst case scenario of an always on clock face does not cause real issues after years.
nomel 9 hours ago [-]
It would be amusing if they enabled autohide by default, for those models.
amelius 11 hours ago [-]
Not release it, as Apple only releases technology that has been perfected.
brokenmachine 2 hours ago [-]
Their consumer dementia field is certainly working well, if that's what you think.
Screw us all with another fashion trend for terrible displays, just like when they switched to high-glare screens.
heroiccocoa 11 hours ago [-]
Glossy displays are much better for image quality in light-controlled environments than matte. I cannot understand the love for matte display coatings, maybe you just live in a sunnier climate and want to work outdoors? I would never buy hardware with a matte display over glossy, given two equivalent choices. You just lose so much clarity and pop to basically rub a layer of vaseline over your monitor, diffusing the nice image quality into something oily/grainy looking.
kps 11 hours ago [-]
I'm diurnal. I have windows (not Windows®). I don't live in a basement. I don't control the lighting where I work.
simoncion 10 hours ago [-]
> I cannot understand the love for matte display coatings...
Most folks cannot prevent every source of light from shining behind them. In my apartment, even sunlight leaking around curtains and indirectly illuminating the Landlord Standard White walls was image-damagingly bright on the handful of glossy-screened monitors I tried.
If you have total control over the lighting situation in your room, then, yeah, glossy screens can work... but most folks want to be able to use their computers and televisions in a wide variety of lighting conditions. [0]
> ...something oily/grainy looking.
I guess you've only seen bad AR coatings. The difference in image quality between the glossy screens I tried and the matte screens I have and have been continuing to use for the past great many years wasn't all that large... and the bonkers reflectivity of the glossy screens nuked what little difference there was.
[0] Most folks also don't like so much looking at their ugly mugs during dark portions of a program... glossy screens are -while not as bad as a mirror- so incredibly reflective.
cassianoleal 11 hours ago [-]
I have for years wanted Apple to offer a MacBook with a matte screen. Now with a Framework I couldn't go back to the impossible glare.
ortusdux 11 hours ago [-]
And if a few years from now they come out with a better screen, you can self install it in a 15 minutes.
john_alan 11 hours ago [-]
They do, it’s called Nano-texture.
bookofjoe 8 hours ago [-]
FWIW upcoming Duo has nanotexture.
cassianoleal 11 hours ago [-]
Too little, too late. With the growing enshittification of macOS and the Apple ecosystem in general, I couldn't be happier having made the move back to Linux on a Framework laptop, after almost 2 decades.
KerrAvon 11 hours ago [-]
It's available and it works well. Staring at one right now. I don't like it better than glossy for my use, but if I spent a lot of time outdoors with it, I probably would.
When did they switch to high glare screens? I thought that was the original style for Apple.
seemaze 11 hours ago [-]
Apple has offered matte screens for the majority of their timeline. Matte screens were available on portable computers from ~1989-2009, and as high end option from 2009-2013. The nano texture was introduced 2019 and has been available to varying degrees until present day.
So it was really only about 6 years in the last four decades that matte was not available. I always advocate for more matte options.
Uncle_Brumpus 11 hours ago [-]
It was with the first generation of unibody macbooks in 2008, if I remember correctly.
I have a Powerbook G4 with a nice matte screen, and I distinctly remember the first generation of non-unibody MBP also having a similar matte screen.
So it's been a while. 18 years with glossy screens.
bookofjoe 8 hours ago [-]
Oh! You brought to mind my beloved 2004 17" PowerBook with the pulsing light: I loved that machine. I tried to use it recently but it's hopeless: only a couple websites come up.
GeekyBear 10 hours ago [-]
Back in the PowerBook days, Apple shipped matte screens by default.
The magazine reviews made a big deal about the matte coatings of the day making the screen a little dimmer, so after years of being dinged on the reviews, Apple finally dropped them.
Retr0id 9 hours ago [-]
I've had an LG B9 OLED since late 2020, and I use it relatively infrequently (maybe like 2h per week on average, mostly movie or TV show content, rarely anything with fixed UI or logos). It does have some noticeable non-uniformity but but only when it's on a uniform dark-grey screen. When it's displaying actual content, it's not visible (unless your content happens to be a uniform dark-grey screen).
The burn-in pattern is a sort of inverse vignette, where the edges of the screen are brighter than the centre. Presumably, the middle of the screen sees more action in general.
ram1500natrluvr 9 hours ago [-]
I have a B7 from 2017 with a similar usage pattern as yours and it still presents movies and shows wonderfully. I think most people use theirs quite a lot more though.
dcl 8 hours ago [-]
Just bought a new ASUS 32" OLED with the stripe RGB subpixel pattern... Looks like I'll have be more careful with burn in than I thought.
daymanstep 12 hours ago [-]
Doesn't every display technology have issues with burn in? I have a VA monitor that has burn in as well, even though many have claimed that VA doesn't get burn in
craftkiller 11 hours ago [-]
My 12 year old IPS monitor still has no burn-in. I grew up in the age of necessary screensavers, I ain't going back.
paimapi 11 hours ago [-]
I have multiple 10+ year old VA monitors that don't have any burn-in. I imagine it depends on usage.
simoncion 10 hours ago [-]
I have a VA monitor that I bought in ~2019 with -according to its service menu- just under 40,000 hours of backlight-on time. It has some small hemispherical darkening along the top of its left edge that you can only notice when that portion of the screen is bright but has zero burn-in. [0] I use it for both video gaming and ordinary computing tasks.
[0] This darkening corresponds to nothing I've had on screen... it looks like the sort of minor backlight or diffuser (or whatever it's called) failure you tend to see on middle-aged monitors.
bob1029 10 hours ago [-]
It looks to me like it might not be worth worrying about this anymore. If you've ever owned a plasma TV you would be rolling your eyes at these comparisons.
cellular 4 hours ago [-]
Yeah i had to turn my brightness up to 1000 to barely see the vertical line of burn in.
I'll never again worry about OLED burn in!
bookofjoe 8 hours ago [-]
My 2007 Pioneer Kuro Elite 50" plasma still displays a perfect, deep, gorgeous picture that sometimes looks to be almost 3D, so much so that I won't replace it with a new 4K TV until it finally dies. If it ever does....
dcl 8 hours ago [-]
We had a Pioneer Plasma Elite and played LOTS of PS2/PS3 games on it, we had no burn in as far as I could tell?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroLED
However, recently you can now get OLED panels from LG with RGB stripe sub pixel layouts (matching traditional monitors) which eliminates this problem and text should be just as good as an non-OLED display.
Tandem OLED solves the problem of burn-in, but it cost more than standard OLED on large screens which is why Samsung didn’t want to supply Apple so Apple went to LG.
OLED is unfortunately consumable but it is the highest fidelity consumer panel tech you can get atm. The MiniLEDs in Apple’s MacBooks are reasonable substitutions, albeit subject to blurring. I haven’t seen any other non-OLED compare.
Still, I probably would work on an IPS if I didn’t have limited desk space and needed my monitor to pull double duty for entertainment as well.
I've not seen any burn-in.
All of these burnout 'tests' I've seen (this one, and RTings as well) purposefully use static content and are basically abusing the panel in a way that is specifically advised against. I find them pretty useless for anything not an office TV on the wall running CNN 24/7, which I will never be doing myself.
I don't think anyone familiar with the tech will deny using these panels in such a way will cause burn-in, even the test here:
> ...static desktop content such as web browsers, document editors, and spreadsheets, along with creative apps like Photoshop and Premiere. We don't recommend using an OLED monitor like this. These displays are best suited to content consumption[...]
I think it's pretty avoidable on a TV, the real issue comes from what you need out of a desktop monitor. I have a Dell/Alienware (Samsung QD-OLED Panel) that's about a year old without any visible issues, but it's still early to tell in that case.
The tech has gotten better, but the problem still very much exists.
The first thing I do to test any LCD panel is fire up an episode of Star Trek: The Next generation. Invariably, one of two things happens as soon as we are presented with an exterior shot of the Enterprise
1. LCD backlight bleed makes space look dark grey/blue instead of black as originally intended.
2. The localized dimming kicks in, presenting truly black space, but rendering the stars (which are smaller than the smallest local dimming zones) super dim or nonexistent.
These latest generation RGB local dimming LCD panels being touted as OLED killers still fall under the 2nd scenario, they don't actually fix the problem at all. LCD is functionally a dead end when it comes to picture quality.
I’ve owned it for 13 months now and it’s been nothing but positive. To be clear about my use case: I don’t watch movies on it, I don’t game much (maybe 10 hours a month), and most of the time it’s just a browser or a few terminals on screen. For terminal work, this monitor is a blessing. In a fully dark room, only the text glows, nothing else, and it’s genuinely enjoyable to look at. I haven’t noticed any issues with text rendering either: at 27 inches, text is crisp from 50–70 cm away, and the pixel density is more than adequate. I suspect the 30+ inch OLEDs are where text clarity starts to become a problem.
Which is?
I would not resell a LG tv that has been used for anything but content consumption.
Is it perhaps the case that LG TVs do not literally do what you suggest here, i.e. upload literal screenshots of what might be private, confidential or proprietary information and sell those screenshots, and that you are being hyperbolic or repeating without verifying unsubstantiated claims made by someone else?
https://www.reddit.com/r/LGOLED/comments/1lnup1s/if_you_use_...
Avoid LG at all costs.
edit: I put up a very aggressive version of grey which used to expose full on black spots on the older OLED and I can only see a very faint line where there is a full white bar from one of the applications I use, actually I think that's just my vision since I can't see it anymore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H43wnV-v7V0 The only question is whether or not you want to live with the weaknesses.
At least for OLED TVs, rtings.com has been running burn-in tests and has noted that supposed technological improvements on OLED longevity haven't really done much: https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/oled-burn-in-not-improved-as...
AFAIK, burn-in is inherent in the technology; there's only mitigations.
The brighter you run OLED, the more burn in you get.
The QD-OLED standard they tested in TFA is also supposed to be more burn in resistant, but they still saw burn in over time.
It is also the primary reason why Apple, with its native monitors being 5K and 6K, cost more and unfortunately a nasty side effect raised its head 5K and 6K require more info running down the cable, and that is the primary reason Apple moved over to Thunderbolt 5, 5K or higher at 120hz requires thunderbolt five if you want to use a single cable.
So oled burn in is not a totally solved issue but it’s not a big enough deal for me to care when the literal worst case scenario of an always on clock face does not cause real issues after years.
and their butterfly keyboards
and the iPhone antenna issue
and Apple Maps (especially on launch)
and this fun artifact: https://www.theregister.com/on-prem/2006/08/24/hindenbook-re...
Most folks cannot prevent every source of light from shining behind them. In my apartment, even sunlight leaking around curtains and indirectly illuminating the Landlord Standard White walls was image-damagingly bright on the handful of glossy-screened monitors I tried.
If you have total control over the lighting situation in your room, then, yeah, glossy screens can work... but most folks want to be able to use their computers and televisions in a wide variety of lighting conditions. [0]
> ...something oily/grainy looking.
I guess you've only seen bad AR coatings. The difference in image quality between the glossy screens I tried and the matte screens I have and have been continuing to use for the past great many years wasn't all that large... and the bonkers reflectivity of the glossy screens nuked what little difference there was.
[0] Most folks also don't like so much looking at their ugly mugs during dark portions of a program... glossy screens are -while not as bad as a mirror- so incredibly reflective.
https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/macbooks/the-new-macbook...
So it was really only about 6 years in the last four decades that matte was not available. I always advocate for more matte options.
So it's been a while. 18 years with glossy screens.
The magazine reviews made a big deal about the matte coatings of the day making the screen a little dimmer, so after years of being dinged on the reviews, Apple finally dropped them.
The burn-in pattern is a sort of inverse vignette, where the edges of the screen are brighter than the centre. Presumably, the middle of the screen sees more action in general.
[0] This darkening corresponds to nothing I've had on screen... it looks like the sort of minor backlight or diffuser (or whatever it's called) failure you tend to see on middle-aged monitors.
I'll never again worry about OLED burn in!