We purchased an LG 55" C7P from Best Buy last year in August as our primary viewing TV for our family room. The picture has been spectacularly beautiful, defined, and colorful with great blacks and gray / shadow handling (especially with 4K movies and streaming content!), but now less than a year later it has noticeable burn-in and color banding with certain content and color shades on the screen. OLED light and Contrast settings are nowhere near maximum (80) and brightness set to 50. As a family of four, we view a variety of content including DVD / Blu-ray / 4K movies, broadcast TV and streaming content, and even some Playstation gaming. I do watch Fox News pretty regularly which is what is most prominently being retained and burned into the screen (logo and info bar at the bottom) but again, we do use it for a variety of other content regularly. I am also seeing noticeable color banding in certain scenes / under certain conditions that were not there before, both horizontally and vertically. I guess the fact that it took almost a year for these issues to become noticeable and to show up to varying degrees is telling of the variety of use we put it through, but it seems any content that you view frequently (news channels, games with areas of the screen that change little if any, etc) and just regular wear and tear on the OLED can be taxing on the pixels and screen in general, and will at one point or another yield similar results as I see others mentioning similar issues on other websites and A/V forum searches. I can also somewhat notice a difference in the overall brightness of the screen and "pop" of the colors under the same lighting and viewing conditions as I recall a year ago using the same settings. LG claims 100,000 hours of use before overall brightness would be half of what it originally was when new, but now I don't believe it. Between all of us, we use it about 10 hours per day on average and some days for days at a time has gotten no use while away on vacations and just life happening. Mind you that the unit has a screen shift and pixel refresh function that runs automatically after 4 hours of constant use after being shut off or can be performed manually, which I have done periodically before and after the issue appearing with no improvement of the symptoms.

Fortunately for us I purchased the 4 year extended warranty from Best Buy and would never buy any video unit in this price range without it because it explicitly covers burn in and other issues and defects that LG either seems to deny or tend to not cover as "not typical use" or based on "viewing habits". I contacted Best Buy Magnolia support and they sent a tech out that confirmed my issues, and while there evidently LG provided him with a "service bulletin" procedure to perform that after completed would take up to 45 DAYS to address the issue. Both the tech and I found this to be utterly ridiculous so I addressed it with the Magnolia store manager. He advised that per the extended warranty terms they have up to 30 days to repair it otherwise they have to replace the unit or refund the value of the unit. Since the C7P has already been replaced with a C8 model a few months back the store manger agreed that after the 30 day attempt time period (we all know it is not just going to go away) he would refund me our original purchase price. The tech documented this in the service notes as we were all on speakphone discussing the issue and I have everyone’s names and contact info to handle this accordingly.

We are now only a couple of weeks from this occurring so I have been shopping around and doing research on what I am going to replace it with. Considering we are not going to change our viewing and use habits to accommodate the OLED’s unfortunate technical shortcomings, I am pretty reluctant to go with a newer C8 LG OLED or any OLED for that matter as the likelihood of us running into the same issue is concerning even though the C8 SUPPOSEDLY has “better” resistance to burn-in and the other issues we have experienced with ours along with a better processor. One thing is for sure, they must be having more than expected issues with the OLEDs because the protection plans have gone up in price considerably since I bought last year (4 year for $299 last year vs. 5 year for $499 this year, no 4 year available).

That leaves pretty much Sony and Samsung. To my eyes so far, the Samsung QLED (Q8FN / Q9FN) is the better of the two in overall picture quality and color, as compared to the Sony non-OLED offerings, but you lose Dolby Vision support with the Samsung. Not a deal breaker but would be nice for Samsung to support it. The C8 of course looks great in the store but I have to say that with the 2018 models, even the blacks on the Samsung QLEDs are very OLED like, at least in the demos I have seen. I am also considering moving up to a 65” as I can just manage it in the room that I have available for the TV and the viewing distances and angles are not a problem for us either but still undecided on that. If I had to pick one right now, I’d go with the Samsung 65” Q9FN.

Just wanted to share our experiences with the LG OLED and to see what others have purchased and your experiences have been recently with the currently available TV technology or if there is even an upcoming product release I should be aware of in considering a replacement.

quote:

Originally posted by Dtech:
Just wanted to share our experiences with the LG OLED

Sorry for your troubles but thank you for taking the time to share this with us. This is something I doubt anyone would be told at a store.

I love my 8 year old Panasonic Plasma, and if I needed to replace it I go with the QLED technology right now. OLED across the board, while still having great pictures, are still fighting the burn in issues.

Dtech, bummer. Gee you would think they would last a lot longer.

My Vizio is about the same age and I have a dark Shadow in couple places on my screen.

I hope it is not the wave of the future.

We have used Samsung since our first flat screen, and have had zero issues; consider looking there next after this gets resolved.

My 48” LG turned 4 last week and promptly developed a screen flicker, sound but no picture but for a half second. We had a two year extended warranty but no dice. Replaced it with a 50” 4K HDR. The thing talks to me in set up mode. I hadn’t shopped TV’s for awhile and was glad to see how the prices have come down.

I recently bought the LG 55 B series OLED. I had been in the electronics industry for years. The picture reminded me of the Pioneer Elite plasma, only with a lot more pop. I picked it up at Best Buy and got the warranty as well. The salesman I had was a Sony Specialist. He showed me the differences between Sony, LG and Samsung. I had the sales man show me 4K and and non 4K feeds. On a different day the LG specialist took me between the brands and models as well. Both the salesman were pretty well read on the products. I was surprised to see that. Frankly I couldn’t justify the difference in price between the the Sony and the LG brands solely on picture quality.
The picture as you know is great.
For how you use your tv the Qled probably makes the best sense. The new Samsung’s are excellent. I have owned plasma as my main tv in the past. I had some retention at one point but I used the wipe and it went away. Thanks for posting this. I will be more mindful on I how I use my own tv. The banding you described would drive me crazy. I am glad to see they are standing behind the extended warranty. They make you jump though hoops to take advantage of what you paid for.
On a side note, did you have any audio gear hooked up to it? Did you use the HDMI ARC?

Too bad about your TV problems. I recently went shopping for a new TV, needing a larger one than my 9 year old 43" Panny plasma. I looked into the LG OLED, but the burn-in issue was one I did not want to revisit. I went with the 55" Samsung QLED and I'm very pleased with it so far. Not too much into the "smart" features, but otherwise a fantastic TV.

Thanks all. Appreciate all the comments and glad to be able to share.

Bob at the Beach...yes, I have a Denon 3400H A/V receiver with a 5.1 Klipsch speaker surround setup and I use HDMI eARC for the TV input to stream Netflix and Amazon directly from the TV's native apps for those streaming services. Works beautifully. My UHD 4K player is an Oppo UDP-203 (yes, I heard about their decision on future hardware they announced back in April, but still glad I have it, it is fantastic, just no streaming apps).

Make sure you keep pixel shift on and even run the pixel refresh manually maybe once a week depending on your viewing habits. Also mind backing off maximum settings for brightness, contrast, and OLED light. I suspect in their more recent firmware updates, LG has likely done some tweaking to how frequently the set does pixel maintenance to itself to help avoid or put off burn-in as long as possible. Based on my experiences, make sure not to watch stations with static images/logos or have extended gaming sessions for more than two or three hours at a time per day before giving the pixels a "rest" and viewing some other content for a while and mixing it up. Keep in mind that just turning the set off won't really do as much as one would think to avoid the burn-in if you watch the same thing over and over and just turn it off or at least as most of your viewing or use. Those pixels will eventually wear out faster than the others with certain color backgrounds / environments even though it could take months or maybe even a couple years depending on how much use they get. I know not all panels are exactly alike so some may be less prone to it than other as luck of the draw. Again, based on my experience, there is no way I would recommend an OLED to someone that was going to primarily watch static logo networks / content most of the time or as a primary video gaming display with unchanging areas of the screen, not even as a computer monitor for that matter. Image retention, even if it is not “permanent damage” with mixed viewing is something OLEDs will show and you will have to come to terms with it to one degree or another. I have an LG non-OLED 4K monitor for my PC that I am very happy with so far. Unfortunately, at this time, LG's non-OLED TVs do not appear to compete as well with the offerings from Samsung and Sony.


I had the opportunity to spend a couple of hours at Best Buy yesterday afternoon and invested some time to watch the three or four sets that I am considering for an extended period of time to really appreciate and analyze the differences. So far, I am still leaning towards the Q9FN but because the 65" is the smallest they make in the 9 series so far, it is quite a step up in price, even when considering a $2000 credit coming my way. The Q8FN is quite nice as a cheaper alternative to the Q9FN, and no One-Connect box to deal with, but I could definitely see a slight but still noticeable difference in the picture between the two. It would just be a matter of justifying the added price to yourself since once you get it home you won’t have the competing set right next to the other to be able to nit pick and ho hum about this shadowed area or this slight color shade difference, or this detail difference, etc. some of which could simply be mitigated or eliminated with settings tweaks on a specific set.

Interestingly enough, a close second place consideration is the Sony 900F. It just so happens that their Sony rep was there in the store while I was there and I asked her a ton of questions. She could see I was really investing time into what I was doing and was really forth coming with advantages (image processing and great color / strong blacks) and disadvantages (one of them being viewing angle). This is important to me as we have a sectional in our main viewing area and we are somewhat spoiled with the OLED's superiority in this respect. Fortunately, by going with a larger TV you can somewhat mitigate the viewing angle issue because there is physically more of the TV to be in front of even if you are a bit off center.

For those looking to buy from Best Buy, I highly recommend you go straight to a Magnolia rep, at least for the sets that they can sell you (which is most of the mid and high-end models) as not only can they potentially work with you on price adjustments and discounts on the A/V equipment whether or not what you are looking at is on sale (just ask), they also seem to offer better pricing on the service plans as well as opposed to what Best Buy openly advertises to the public. I also ran into my original Magnolia rep that I bought all my equipment from last year last night and he’s been great in pointing out and helping me with a lot of things and price adjustments as already mentioned and is also involved with helping me handle the warranty issue. Definitely good to have someone like that on your side.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Dtech,

Wow...Sony just upped the ante and this was just posted today! ( I would definitely consider the Z9F 65"!)



Looks like Sony did not like their product info being leaked a couple of days before the release date (7/31). Glad I got to see the video though. Hope it goes back up when it is officially released.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Dtech,

I have two Sony A1E OLED's - 65" in the living room and 55" in the master bedroom.

Both use 2017 LG panels. The 65" has banding that became noticeable on Sony's dim green background that pops up when there's no signal. This is what is referred to as the 5% and 10% gray banding that people on the forums test for. It's likely that it was always there and took me 6 months or more to start seeing it. All OLED's have some level of banding, just depends how bad it is.

I thought about contacting Sony, but I believe they would say it's "in spec" because you can't see the banding during actual program content (except in very dim scenes with film noise or maybe panning). And a replacement panel could be better/same/worse.

Color uniformity on bright solid color shots is nearly perfect and I have no burn in. Sony has pixel shift on by default, and Sony's peak brightness is a bit lower than LG (I think to prevent burn in). However, I am careful not to leave it on news channels with fixed position banners and logos.

Also I keep it in "Standard" mode and not "Vivid", not sure what the LG equivalents are.

The 55" doesn't have significant banding though. Bought in December versus June for the 65.

One other issue I had with the C7 back in early May which seemed to heal itself after a couple of days through it performing its pixel maintenance was I had a whole row of pixels go white from top to bottom all of a sudden while watching a movie on a cable TV movie channel and turning the TV off and back on did not help. It first appeared like the whole row of pixels had just gone bad all at once and I called and set up a service appointment with Magnolia service. The next day when I turned the set on after leaving it off overnight, the single bright row had turned into a column of pixels about a 1/4 inch wide that was only slightly off in contrast to the rest of the screen but otherwise showing the visible content in the column. Then the next day after that, the screen was back to normal with no trace of the pixel issue so I called and cancelled the service call. Again, after a couple of days of it doing its powered off maintenance, it seems like it was able to heal itself and have not seen it happen again since then. Wanted to share this as well in case this happens to anyone.

As for the color / picture settings on the LG OLED, it has multiple presets as well as numerous individual settings for each type of content it recognizes. For instance, when playing Dolby Vision the LG automatically stores different settings that are adjustable and specific to that content as opposed to HDR10 and regular non-HDR content. That way you don't have to manually change to different presets if you don't want the same settings for everything you watch or do. They did a great job in providing that feature. You just have to go in and adjust the settings when playing the different content and the settings are retained and used whenever you play that content.

FWIW we have the 'burn in' problem and have found that LG knew of the problem and have since fielded a Oled unit with a fix for the problem.
Yes, we are screwed; The new units should be okay.
LG Oled is still the best unit out there.

Actually, even the newest OLEDs are not necessarily "OK". Aside from the already implemented pixel shift and pixel refresher technologies, the newer ones evidently have a software algorithm that allegedly works by determining which parts of the screen are static, and then by reducing the brightness of just those areas by up to 40%. This means those areas of the screen will be more protected from short term image retention and long term damage, but it also means that depending on the content, it can introduce some picture quality issues like the colors will not look as vibrant as they should or may appear off in shade in those areas, or the panel as a whole may not appear as punchy and colorful as it could be otherwise. For those wanting to avoid the burn-in it will help, but it is also a forced compromise of the picture to address an inherent technological weakness. I haven't really found any evidence that the 2018 OLEDs are using updated or different pixel luminescence materials than the 2017 models.

LG was definitely well aware of the issues with OLED design and use. It is clear by how their warranty specifically states that burn-in is not covered. Generally speaking, if a product warranty specifically excludes certain things not related to obvious abuse of the product, they are essentially acknowledging a known potential weakness in their product. They have even now dedicated a page on their website to addressing the issue as I'm sure they have been inundated with inquiries and concerns. LG is banking on those using most of the units sold in such a way that it won't sour them in the near term, giving them the time to continue R&D to improve the OLED technology while helping fund it with the sales from the current level of the technology. They need to sort it out soon though, because with even better QLED technology and microLED technology on the visible horizon (think all the strengths and individual pixel lighting control of OLED with none of the weaknesses, and better brightness levels with pixels that do not degrade much if at all over time), OLED could very well end up being a relatively short lived bridge technology or a niche TV alternative like plasmas as microLED becomes more mainstream a few years down the road. Either way, this is good news for the TV manufacturers and consumers alike, except for those that end up with problematic TVs and no extended warranties to fall back on when they were expecting their TVs to last longer or not have issues.

One thing is for sure, as long as the economy stays relatively healthy, the next few years is going to mean a lot of new TVs sold, for a lot of different reasons, some of which will include people replacing their dimming and worn out OLEDs for newer, better OLEDs, further advances in QLED technology, and the more widespread availability and affordability of microLED based TVs.

My advice to anyone buying an OLED, make sure you don't buy one without buying an extended warranty that covers any and all problems the TV might have or develop for at least 4 or 5 years.

I concur. I wouldn't purchase an oled until they resolve their quality issues (ok not quality, just a a natural byproduct of leaving an image on for too long).

All oled (and led) tv's will exhibit burn in, but oled are just not there yet in terms of mitigation.

They also have a shorter lifespan, but the blue oled will have 1/10 (or even less) the lifespan than its counterparts. Fine if you upgrade every few years, but bad if you tend to keep tv's until they die. LG claims 100k for its oled tv's, yet the blue oled will only be half as bright within 5 years of regular use. Blue oleds are crucial to generate an accurate image.

Samsung and Sony are the only choices in the hd arena, but the cheap 4k screens without smart features are pretty good for the money if you don't care about the blackest blacks and super sharp images.

Didn't know they suffered from that - even my old ST60 series Panasonic plasma still hasn't exhibited burn-in.

Sony announced some new tv's today, too bad they are a ways off from purchasing:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...ssions/#4a969fb9363c

I'm starting to save up for the 65" Z9F non-oled which looks impressive. Currently have a ks8000 Samsung as the main tv and it only looks great if you are directly in front of it.