Dead Pixel Test
Free · No signup · Works on any screen
Screen burn-in test.
Run a free burn in test on any OLED, AMOLED, or LCD screen. It floods your display with solid colors and grey slides — plus a plain white screen — so any faint ghost image stands out wherever bright content used to sit. Works the same on a monitor, a phone, or a TV.
What is screen burn-in?
Screen burn-in is permanent discoloration — a faint “ghost” image left behind after the same static content sits on a display for too long. It's mostly an OLED and AMOLED problem: on those panels every pixel makes its own light, so pixels that stay bright for hours (a logo, a status bar, a game HUD) wear down faster than the ones around them. Eventually they can't match their neighbors, and the shadow shows through on everything. A quick display burn in test makes that wear obvious long before you'd catch it in normal use.
It's worth separating two things people lump together. Image retention is a temporary after-image that clears on its own in minutes or hours; burn-in is permanent. Running a burn in test screen by screen is the easiest way to tell them apart — if the ghost fades as the colors cycle past, it was only retention, not real burn-in.
How to run the burn-in test
Launch the fullscreen test.
Hit Start Burn-in Test. Your screen fills edge-to-edge with a solid field and begins auto-cycling through the burn-in slides — no clicking needed.
Watch each solid field.
The test moves through white, black, red, green, blue, and three shades of grey. The grey and white screens do the heavy lifting: a full white screen burn in test brings out dark shadowing, while grey exposes uneven patches. Look for anything that's a slightly different tone or shows the outline of something that used to be on screen.
Tell burn-in from retention.
Let the colors cycle for a few minutes. If a ghost image fades, it was temporary image retention. If it stays fixed in the same spot on every color, that's burn-in.
OLED vs LCD: which screens burn in?
Burn-in almost always means OLED and AMOLED, because their self-lit organic pixels physically age with use. That covers most modern smartphones, high-end TVs, smartwatches, and a growing number of premium laptops and monitors. If you own one, it's worth checking every few months. The same OLED screen burn in test runs anywhere — open this page on the device itself, and an iPhone burn in test takes exactly as long as one on a 65-inch TV, with nothing to install either way.
Traditional LCD and LED-LCD screens don't burn in the same way — they share one backlight, so individual pixels don't age unevenly. What LCDs can show is temporary image retention or, rarely, stuck pixels. If you're on an LCD and see a persistent mark, run the dead pixel test first — if it changes or disappears, it isn't burn-in.
Can you fix screen burn-in?
When a burn in test OLED panels turn up a permanent ghost, the honest answer is that true burn-in can't be fully reversed in software — those pixels are physically worn. Mild cases and plain image retention are a different story: they often improve when you “exercise” the pixels, cycling them fast through colors so the tired ones and their neighbors even back out. Try the pixel repair tool — leave it running over the affected area for 10–30 minutes.
To prevent burn-in in the first place: lower screen brightness, turn on your device's built-in pixel-shift or screen-saver features, hide persistent taskbars and HUDs, and avoid leaving one static image on screen for hours at a time. A few minutes of moving, full-color content now and then keeps pixel wear even.
FAQ
Burn-in test questions.
How do I test an OLED widescreen monitor for burn-in?
Open this page on the monitor itself, hit Start Burn-in Test, and let the solid colors fill the panel edge to edge. Because the slides auto-cycle, you can step back and scan the whole width at once. On an ultrawide, check the far corners and the strip along the top where a taskbar usually lives — that's where an OLED monitor burn in test tends to reveal the first faint shadowing.
What is the purpose of a burn-in test?
A burn in test isolates uneven pixel wear that's invisible during everyday use. Flooding the screen with one solid color at a time strips away all the busy detail that normally hides a faint ghost, so any permanently discolored area — or temporary retention — jumps out. It's the quickest way to confirm whether a mark you noticed is actually burn-in.
Is a burn-in test reliable?
For what it's built to do, yes. A full-screen burn in test dependably surfaces retention and burn-in that busy content or a shared backlight would otherwise mask, and the grey and white screens are the same fields technicians rely on. It won't put a number on how bad the wear is, but if a ghost shows on the solid slides it's real — and if nothing appears, your panel is almost certainly clean.
How long does a burn-in test take?
A basic screen burn in test takes under a minute — just long enough to watch each solid color pass once. If you're trying to separate burn-in from temporary image retention, let the colors cycle for five to ten minutes and see whether the ghost fades. There's nothing to gain from running it for hours; if a shadow is still fixed after a few minutes, it's burn-in.
Can burn-in be fixed?
True OLED burn-in can't be fully undone, because the pixels are physically worn. Mild cases and image retention are different — an OLED burn in test that only turns up faint or temporary ghosting often responds to rapid color-cycling, which our pixel repair tool does. It's always worth a run before you file a warranty claim.
How do I check for screen burn?
Set your brightness to medium in a dark room, then run the burn in test and watch the plain white and grey screens closely — the method is identical for a phone burn in test or a desktop panel. Screen burn shows up as a faint, fixed pattern (often a logo or bar outline) that stays in the same spot no matter which color is displayed. If the mark moves, changes, or disappears as the colors cycle, it isn't burn-in.