Helping Avoid OLED Burn-in and Flicker – Exploring the Latest Asus OLED Technologies for 2025

January 31, 2025 Simon Baker

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Disclaimer: this article includes sponsored promotion, but all content, opinions and commentary are our own.

Index

Introduction

OLED monitors have been around for a couple of years now and the benefits of this technology are obvious – near-instant response times, super-high refresh rates, amazing motion clarity for gaming, per pixel level local dimming with no blooming or halos, amazing black depth and a basically infinite contrast ratio. But they aren’t perfect, and there’s one particular long-standing concern that some users have which is around image retention and the risk of image burn-in. This can be a concern to those who want to use their monitor for more than dynamic content like gaming and videos; with the risk increasing the more you use static content like office applications and web browsing.

One other less talked about issue some people are concerned about is visible flickering when using VRR (Variable Refresh Rates) in gaming, an inherent challenge with OLED panels unfortunately as well that can be problematic to some users.

Tackling these issues has been a focus of monitor manufacturers since OLED panels were first adopted in the monitor segment, and at the forefront of this right now we feel are Asus who have introduced various “OLED care” and Anti-flicker features during this time, and who this year are introducing some new technologies that look to improve the situation even further for their new and future OLED monitors. In this article we will take a look at the existing approaches and the new technologies being introduced this year, and consider what this means for those considering purchasing a new OLED display.

Reducing the Risk of Image Retention

To help mitigate the risk of image retention and burn-in monitor manufacturers have introduced a wide range of features that can help protect the panel over time. Whether that’s scheduled panel cleaning cycles that help refresh and clean the screen after prolonged periods of use, or feature that dim the brightness of common elements like logos or taskbars for instance, which could often be the areas where image retention appears. There’s a wide range of “OLED Care” features and approaches used in the market and these tend to vary between different display manufacturers.

Asus told us in a recent discussion that they are other monitor manufacturers are becoming increasingly confident in the longevity and robustness of OLED panels, and in the performance of OLED care features. This allows OLED monitors to be positioned more for a range of uses, not just for gaming as they have generally been until now. For instance Asus have OLED monitors available in their ProArt professional range, and others like Dell even announced a monitor in their office-oriented UltraSharp range recently.

Asus ProArt PA32DC uses a 32″ OLED panel for a professional monitor

Some of this is driven by improvements from the underlying panel manufacturers Samsung Display (QD-OLED) and LG.Display (WOLED) in areas like panel structure, power consumption, heat dissipation and other longevity-enhancing measures. This tends to improve as each year rolls by and each new generation of OLED panel technology is introduced. It’s a huge area of focus with OLED panels across all the segments of course, not just for monitors.

The Asus ROG Swift PG32UCDM includes a custom heatsink and graphene film for optimal panel cooling

Other aspects are driven by the display manufacturers themselves and will vary from one to another. Asus for instance add their own custom heatsink to their OLED screens which not only negates the need for an active, and potentially audible, cooling fan; but also helps dissipate heat which in turn helps protect the panel against burn-in. Heat is one of the main causes for image burn-in. Other approaches like adding a graphene film behind the panel can also help in this regard. Graphene is the thinnest and strongest nanomaterial in the world, and has high thermal conductivity to help effectively dissipate heat. Asus included this on their 32″ ROG Swift PG32UCDM monitor for instance.

Asus used a graphene film panel with their ROG Swift PG32UCDM to help dissipate heat

OLED Care

Asus have been gradually adding additional OLED care features over the last year. If we go back to July 2024 when we reviewed their 32″ ROG Swift PG32UCDP it included the following, fairly common technologies:

Pixel cleaning – Recalibrates the screen when the monitor has been active for several hours―a process that takes just a few minutes and activates automatically when the monitor is turned off.
Screen move (aka pixel shift) – Pixel locations are slightly shifted periodically to help prevent burn-in, and users can choose between several movement levels or turn it off altogether if they find it distracting during their usage.
Screen saver (aka ASBL) – Automatically dims the screen after a short period of inactivity to reduce brightness and therefore the risk of burn-in. Useful if you move away from the screen potentially, although sometimes it could kick in when you’re using the screen for static content.
Auto logo brightness (aka Logo brightness adjustment) – Automatically detects static onscreen logos and similar elements and reduces their brightness to reduce the risk of image retention in those areas.

Pixel cleaning
Screen move
Screen Saver
Auto logo brightness

Pixel cleaning

Screen move

Screen Saver

<strong>Auto logo brightness</strong>

OLED Care+

Later in 2024 they added some new features for their 27″ ROG Swift PG27AQDP which were referred to as their “OLED Care+” technologies, including the following new additions:

Taskbar detection – Dynamically detects the taskbar and reduces brightness around it to avoid burn-in. This can be useful instead of auto-hiding the taskbar all the time, something we personally find annoying.
Outer dimming control – the Asus documentation says that this feature automatically identifies and adjusts the brightest areas of the screen to reduce the risk of burn-in. We found on the PG27AQDP that it seemed to activate the LG.Display CPC (Convex Power Control) feature which dims the edges of the screen. This seemed to be quite drastic and noticeable at the time in real content and on the windows desktop, producing a fairly noticeable vignetting effect. This has perhaps been updated now for later screens.
Global dimming control (called Local Dimming Control in the OSD menu on this model) – Dynamically adjusts the overall brightness of the display to reduce the risk of burn-in

Taskbar detection
Outer Dimming Control
Global Dimming Control

Taskbar detection

Outer Dimming Control

Global Dimming Control

New ‘OLED Care Pro’ features for 2025

In 2025 Asus have added even more new features for their updated ‘OLED Care Pro’ feature-set, which we’ve seen already on their 27″ ROG Swift PG27UCDM monitor. The newly added features are:

Target mode – Dims the entire screen, except for a selected pinned window, which maintains its current brightness setting
Boundary detection – Dynamically detects the boundaries of black bars, reduces the brightness in those areas, and slightly shift pixels near the borders.

Target mode
Boundary detection

Target mode

Boundary detection

You can also control all these OLED Care settings via the Asus DisplayWidget software which makes it easy to customise your settings.

Neo Proximity Sensor

The biggest change this year to Asus’ OLED Care features is the addition of the new ‘Neo Proximity Sensor’. This highly sensitive TOF sensor allows users to set their preferred usage distance. When the user steps out of range, the monitor will switch to a black image (i.e. turn off the pixels) to reduce the risk of burn-in, and restores on-screen content when you return to it. You can also customize the detection distance quickly and easily too via the OSD menu.

When you move away from the monitor, it will turn itself off after a short period of time

You can customize the detection distance via the OSD menu

We’ve been saying for a while in our OLED reviews that a motion / proximity sensor would make sense on these panels to help mitigate the risk of image retention, and it’s great to see them being added to new screens. Asus did add a motion sensor to their PG32UCDP last year as well, although it lacked the customizable distance sensor that is offered from the newer Neo Proximity Sensor.

Warranties Reflect the Confidence in OLED Longevity

Most OLED monitor manufacturers (including Asus) have introduced 3-year warranties that include burn-in cover, showing their faith in OLED panel performance and various OLED care measures over time. With monitors having been available for a couple of years now, they will have a good feel for customer returns and issues which will have given them real-world data on durability. This 3 year warranty is a long period of time in which you can use the screen as you would normally, and understand if it’s likely to cause you any problems.

It’s recommended to leave as many of the OLED Care features enabled as possible to help mitigate risk, and use new features like the Neo Proximity Sensor too which seems like a no-brainer. Providing you are sensible in your usage and make use of the provided care features, OLED monitors should be more robust than they used to be, and many people need not worry about this issue. We’re not saying it’s not still a risk because it is, but it’s better than it used to be a few years ago.

OLED VRR Flicker

VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) flicker is a very tricky area to quantify and measure on a monitor but all OLED panels can suffer from VRR flicker in certain situations, it’s an inherent challenge with these panels. But whether or not you will experience that or see it depends on many factors. Whether you will experience flicker can depend on the screen itself, your system and graphics card, the game you’re playing, the type of scene in that game, your settings, and also the frame rates you are achieving in the game. A large number of variables as you can see.

Large swings in frame rates within the VRR range seem to commonly trigger flicker though, especially in darker scenes and often on loading screens. Frame rates vary naturally over time as you play a game, and VRR tech like NVIDIA G-sync and AMD FreeSync follow the lead of your GPU in real-time to display every frame as soon as it’s ready. Ordinarily, this results in smooth animation and tear-free images. But when frame rates fluctuate wildly, you might start to notice flickering with an OLED panel, particularly in the black and near-black regions of the screen, where small changes in gamma are most visible. For example, if there’s a region of the display showing shadowy content at roughly 5 nits, there may be obvious flicker if the refresh rate should suddenly change.

Asus OLED Anti-Flicker (2024)

To try and help combat this Asus introduced an anti-flicker feature on some of their OLED monitors in 2024, designed to help reduce flickering in VRR situations. It did this by offering 3 modes to choose from in the OSD menu, which can be used to restrict the active VRR range during gaming and therefore help avoid those large potential swings in frame rate that are one of the common causes of flicker.

Example marketing image for the 27″ 480Hz ROG Swift PG27AQDP

The ‘Off’ mode leaves normal VRR operation and the standard VRR range available on the monitor. Using the ROG Strix XG27AQDMG as an example, that screen has a standard VRR range of 40 – 240Hz. If the frame rate drops below 40Hz, then LFC (Low Framerate Compensation) is also used. Asus also provide two other modes via the OSD menu for that model. The ‘Middle’ setting restricts the VRR range to 160 – 240Hz on this screen, while the ‘High’ setting restricts it even further to 200 – 240Hz. In both instances LFC is also disabled.

Example VRR Range with ROG Strix XG27AQDMG monitor

Off = 40 – 240Hz (with LFC)
Middle = 160 – 240Hz (no LFC)
High = 200 – 240Hz (no LFC)

This can certainly help reduce the large frame rate swings and in various testing shows some decent reductions in VRR flicker. As we said earlier, this really does vary based on a number of other factors so it’s hard to completely eliminate the flicker, only offer settings and modes to help reduce it if you were to experience problems. This feature last year was exclusive to Asus screens and it’s a welcome approach; with other manufacturers not really focusing on providing these kind of options at this time. Although as awareness of VRR flicker improves, we expect other display manufacturers to consider similar features.

OLED Anti Flicker 2.0 (2025)

Building on the original OLED Anti-flicker feature from 2024, Asus have this year introduced their new ROG OLED Anti-Flicker 2.0 technology which they say minimizes onscreen flicker by up to 20% compared to previous-generation panels. We have seen this enhanced technology featured already on their new 27″ ROG Swift PG27UCDM and it offers two improvements to help reduce visible flicker which we spoke to Asus about at CES 2025 at the start of January:

A newly added ‘Luminance Compensation Algorithm‘ examines the brightness of the image during variations in frame rates and refresh rates and adjusts the luminance to help reduce visible flicker. On their website image above based on their own factory measurements, you can see it helps reduce the sharp brightness peaks and reduce the variations in brightness overall.

Asus tell us that this unfortunately cannot be added to any previous OLED monitor via any firmware update, it will be exclusive to new and future OLED monitors in their range. It apparently involves a new panel technology co-developed in a partnership with the panel supplier, in this case Samsung Display as the PG27UCDM uses a QD-OLED panel.

Secondly Asus have updated their ‘Refresh Rate Cap’, the original feature offered last year on previous OLED monitors, to now offer wider VRR ranges at each setting, while still mitigating flicker by avoiding large swings in frame rate. This range has been optimised now to avoid unnecessarily strict VRR range caps.

There’s still 3 modes available so far, the above photo is from the PG27UCDM which is the first model to feature OLED Anti-flicker 2.0. The ‘Off’ setting still gives you access to the full adaptive-sync VRR range of 48 – 240Hz on this model, with LFC used if necessary below 48Hz. The ‘middle’ setting has been extended significantly compared with the XG27AQDMG example earlier, now offering an 80 – 240Hz VRR range with LFC also used. The ‘High’ setting has also been extended to 140 – 240Hz, but this time without LFC being used.

Example VRR Range with new ROG Swift PG27UCDM monitor

Off = 48 – 240Hz (with LFC)
Middle = 80 – 240Hz (with LFC)
High = 140 – 240Hz (no LFC)

Additional steps to avoid VRR Flicker

One additional step you can take if you experience VRR flicker is to use a frame rate limiter like the one available in the NVIDIA Control Panel. This will give you more consistent FPS in most scenarios by preventing your frame rate from soaring too high one moment only to drop in the next. It’s common to set a maximum frame rate that’s slightly below the maximum refresh rate of your monitor. If necessary, you can drop it even further. Either way, you’ll end up with frame rates that stay within the variable refresh rate range of your display. You can also pair this approach with Vsync enabled inside your game for a smooth visual experience. Another more drastic approach of course if you really find VRR flicker a problem is to simply disable G-sync / FreeSync and play games without it.

Summary

Image retention / burn-in and VRR flicker remain a challenge for OLED panels, but improvements are certainly being made which is pleasing to see. With the continued focus from the panel manufacturers on longevity and durability, this should continue to improve in time. It’s great to see a big focus on these areas by leading display manufacturers like Asus too, with their hardware and software approaches helping to alleviate concerns further. All backed by an extended warranty that includes burn-in cover, you should be able to buy with confidence. The expansion of OLED Care features and settings over the last year or so, including useful monitor options like taskbar detection, logo dimming, border detection etc is also welcome. We like the inclusion of proximity sensors as well which seems like a perfect fit for an OLED screen when you might leave it alone at any point. The burn-in risk can’t be eliminated fully, but if you’re careful and use the available features, the risks should be less than they were in the past.

VRR flicker also remains a challenge, and it’s good to see Asus acknowledge this and develop measures to help reduce its impact. Investing the time and effort to improve things is very welcome and we’d like to see more display manufacturers look in to this area as well.


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