When it comes to buying a new TV for the home, there are many options available, both new models and for the home. second hand marketThe latter is clearly cheaper.

This category includes both refurbished and refurbished and used by other users in their homes. from store screens Those who want to liquidate their stocks to start selling new season models with LCD and OLED technology.

At this point, the question may arise: Is it worth buying one of these TVs on display, even if they give me a guarantee? The answer is complex and depends first and foremost on the type of technology the television has. LCD models are generally OK, while OLEDs are very different.

OLED TVs: maintenance of the panel

abbreviations OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) stands for “organic light-emitting diode” and represents a significant evolution in panel technology for high-end televisions, distinguished by the self-illuminating capacity of each pixel.

Unlike LCD displays on OLED no need for backlight This brightens the different layers of the panel forward, which means there is no longer any background light that causes bloom problems or halos around bright images on dark backgrounds, and we also get deeper and purer blacks.

In addition, as we have seen in other cases, OLED televisions offer viewing angles very close to 180 degrees with virtually no color degradation, loss of contrast, brightness or sharpness, and their characteristics response time is amazingalmost instantaneously, in well under 1ms, which translates into very fast image transitions without streaks, streaks, blur and other issues of LCD technology.

However, not everything in OLED is an advantage. The technology, which has developed considerably in the last two or three years, has a lower brightness capacity compared to LCD and possible retention and/or burn-in of the image which may turn off some users.

Although the situation has improved a lot since the first TVs sold by 2016-2017 and manufacturers have implemented improvements in panels with more durable subpixel structures and algorithms for pixel stability control.

However, all these measures They work with “normal” use of the TVsomething that doesn’t usually show up in store display models they work all day and they are often turned off directly from a power strip or public switch, preventing pixel restoration processes from starting.

Also, when they unbox a new TV at a store, they usually install it in “store” mode and with all its hardware. maximum panel brightness in “live” mode making it look good when exposed to full light, repeat forever, same video all day. This, along with the previous point, signs that will never show up in the house or will take many years, if it shows up here and then we buy it, no matter how bargain it is, we will be disappointed.

How to tell if the TV is overused

There may be several situations here that more or less emphasize the risk of wearing a panel in certain areas. for example there are hours of television use. One that has been used for 100 hours is not the same as one that works best for 3,000 hours.

Cinema mode, games, live etc. Like the regularly used configuration, it is not the same and will not have the same effect on the panel.

Example of LG OLED65C9 TV’s advanced menu showing 1694 hours of use

Therefore, whenever possible, take a look at the panel usage timesomething that we can achieve by going into the hidden menus of many televisions and that we talk about in depth in this article.

This way we can get an idea of ​​whether there is a TV or not. running for months if it’s on a store shelf or closed for example, a scratch, a problem with the packaging, etc. If it comes from another type of replacement due to a secondary defect, such as

Something we can do to see the status of the panel play some private video in this task, as I put it in these lines. The idea is to reproduce certain color patterns across the screen, and if there are areas with burnt pixels, we will see some kind of shadow on the panel with the figures of the logos marked.

If we don’t notice anything strange, that means we don’t have this problem on our panel for the time being, but we still wouldn’t know if any pixel already has some kind of degradation, because is cumulative.