You Can Stop Worrying About Your Nintendo Switch Screen Now

The Nintendo Switch and its newer OLED model have remained incredibly popular, but it hasn't stopped players from worrying about potential problems the console might develop. Among longstanding concerns over Joy-Con drift, fans have also feared that the OLED screen on the new Switch OLED might be more likely to develop screen burn-in.

Screen burn-in is a phenomenon that occurs when certain types of screens are subjected to persistent or frequent static images. After enough exposure, portions of the screen displaying the image can become discolored or worse. For example, viewers have widely reported having a CNN logo burned into their OLED televisions after watching the news channel for extended periods of time. 

Naturally, when players got their hands on a new, shiny OLED Switch, many were concerned that the newest Nintendo console would suffer the pitfalls found in other OLED displays. Thankfully, one dedicated fan has put the Switch OLED through some extensive testing and found that players won't have anything to worry about even after almost 2,000 hours of continuous play.

After fans were initially underwhelmed upon learning Nintendo's rumored Switch Pro was actually the Switch OLED, they shifted their attention to the new console's display. While initial concerns pointed to OLED's spotty history with static images and the colossal number of UI elements or menus that exist in video games, which would seem to naturally lend themselves to burn-in issues YouTuber Wulff Den has managed to set players' minds to ease. Wulff Den wanted to see how long it would take for the OLED Switch to run into these issues, but his endeavor turned out to be a lot more work than he expected.

Documenting his experiment in a YouTube video, Wulff Den confirmed that his OLED Switch showed little to no signs of wear, even after 1,800 hours of continuous display of a static screenshot from "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild." Therefore, Wulff Den believes that the vast majority of players have nothing to worry about. 

However, the YouTuber is still curious to see when Nintendo's new Switch model will start to experience burn-in. Wulff Den says in his video that he'll continue the experiment out of curiosity. The YouTuber has promised to provide an update if and when an issue presents itself — but he doesn't think that'll be for quite some time.