At 4,500 hours, MSI's OLED MPG 321URX is showing noticeable visual artifacts — intentional burn-in test shows the limits of monitor tech after 18 months of non-top use

Monitors Unboxed is continuing its lengthy OLED monitor stress testing video series with a burn-in update at the 18-month mark. The YouTube channel's host, Tim Schiesser, published a new video detailing all of the burn-in effects his MSI's MPG 321URX is now displaying after a whopping 4,500 hours of use. Long story short: some of the display's burn-in artifacts are now showing up during day-to-day use.

For those unfamiliar with the video series, Monitors Unboxed began stress testing an MPG 321URX almost two years ago to record the burn-in susceptibility of OLED displays. To do this, Schiesser replaced his LCD display at work with an MSI MPG 321URX OLED gaming monitor and is using it for day-to-day tasks such as writing scripts, video editing, and photo editing.

The stress Schiesser is putting on his 321URX is significantly more demanding than what most 321URX owners put their monitors through. No gaming is being done on the monitor, and the monitor is being used for 8 hours per day — 250 hours per month. Additionally, Schiesser is further stressing the monitor by running Windows light mode (with the taskbar set to dark mode), calibrating the screen to 200 nits brightness, and setting the screen to only turn off after 2 hours of inactivity.

According to Monitor Unboxed's latest update, the MPG 321URX being used for this stress test is now developing burn-in effects that are visible in specific situations during day-to-day use. A line that has been burning down the center of the screen for months is now becoming visible in game footage. At first Schiesser thought the issue was coming from video corruption from game footage he recorded through a capture card, but, after double-checking, he realized the artifacts he was seeing were coming from the monitor itself. The issue is subtle and hard to spot, but the monitor's burn-in issues have technically reached a point where they are affecting his viewing experience.

Other burn-in effects are also becoming more prevalent at the 18-month mark, though they are not visible during day-to-day use — not yet, anyway. Using a digital enhancement filter, Monitors Unboxed demonstrated that taskbar burn is becoming more apparent compared to the channel's last burn-in update (published at the 15-month usage mark), despite using dark mode specifically for the taskbar in Windows 11. Uneven brightness uniformity has also become more apparent since the 15-month update, thanks to multiple windows being used side by side. This issue is an extension of the aforementioned burn-in line, since the line is created from one side of the display having worse brightness than the other side.

Monitors Unboxed's latest update confirms that modern OLED displays will eventually reach a point where burn-in effects affect the day-to-day viewing experience. The good news is that this subtle amount of visible burn-in took a long time to build — over 4,000 hours of use, all while running a workload composed almost entirely of static desktop windows.

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.