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A little while ago, I was on the hunt for a new laptop. Eventually, after an arduous search, I found a laptop that ticked all my boxes the ROG Zephyrus G16. It had great performance despite being very thin and light, the battery life was good, and I enjoyed typing on the keyboard. It was almost perfect.

However, one thing bothered me: the OLED screen. While an OLED screen is a selling point and a sought-after feature for many laptops, I absolutely despised the screen on the G16. I disliked it so much that I ended up returning the entire laptop, and now recommend any programmer to think twice when considering a laptop with an OLED screen.

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By Samarveer Singh

Addressing the elephant in the room: screen burn-in

The infamous downside to OLED

[an image showing burn in on a laptop screen]

If you are familiar with OLED screens, then you are most likely aware of OLED burn-in. Over time, spots on the display that show static images degrade and become permanently visible. For most people, it isn't a problem. When using your laptop for gaming or content viewing, there isn't much that can burn in. This and the fact that many laptops have built-in burn-in prevention, most people are completely fine.

However, as a programmer, I don't use my laptop for gaming. I spend my time browsing the web and programming in IDEs, which exposes my screen to a lot of static content, such as search bars, task bars, sidebars, and scroll bars. And while using dark mode is a very good way to prevent this, it raises another issue, dirty grays, which will be discussed later. Even Lenovo acknowledges the risk of burn-in while programming.

The stress of OLED burn-in is also something that I would rather not experience. Even though there are many ways to prevent it, the thought of potential burn-in is forever in the back of my mind when using an OLED laptop. If I buy a laptop, I shouldn't need to constantly worry about something bad happening to it a common sentiment shared by others who dislike OLED.

PWM flickering is no fun

Avoid OLED if you think you may be sensitive

[An image showing PWM flickering on a Lenovo Legion]

OLED brightness is controlled by constantly turning the screen on and off, kind of like a strobe light. This is known as PWM flickering. While most people aren't bothered by this, a small percentage are. When using the G16, I had some eyestrain that became really painful and bothersome the longer I used it.

The lower the brightness, the higher the PWM flickering. Not knowing this, I used the G16 at an extremely low brightness and ended up with a migraine that lasted five hours.

There are definitely ways to avoid this though. There exists 3rd party software that controls brightness by dimming display color to give the illusion of lowered brightness. To completely eliminate PWM flickering, it is recommended to keep your actual screen brightness at a very high value and then use the dimming. However, this drains the battery as the screen is still at that high brightness, which goes against my desire for a laptop with good battery life.

"Dirty grays" are not great for dark mode users

The color gray is way more prevalent than you think

[A picture of an OLED laptop with a gray screen]

Another thing that bothered me while using the Zephyrus G16 were the "dirty grays". Instead of a solid gray, there were many different-colored pixels mixed in. As a result, grays looked like they had a layer of noise on top of them. This was very jarring coming from LCD displays and I really hated it.

Again, for most people, this wouldn't be an issue. If you are buying a very powerful laptop, you are most likely not going to be using it for heavy browsing. However, many of the applications I use have either a dark mode or a light mode. Dark mode makes everything on your screen gray, subjecting you to these "dirty grays," and light mode is bad for burn in.

Interestingly enough, while I did see numerous complaints about these "dirty grays" online, when I went to my local Micro Center, none of the OLED laptops on display had them (though they did have burn in). So after some time, the "dirty grays" must go away, but how long it takes is unknown to me.

By itself, the "dirty grays" are something that I would most likely learn to live with. Sure, it would be an annoyance, but there are trade-offs with everything. Combined with all the other OLED downsides though, I quickly realized the OLED experience wasn't for me.

OLED is taking over

I am aware that many people love OLED. That is completely fine. In fact, I would definitely recommend most people get an OLED. People aren't overreacting when they say nothing rivals an OLED screen's color and deep blacks (except maybe the MacBook Pro's Mini-LED). I just have a specific use case for my laptops that isn't tailored for OLED screens.

However, OLED is quickly becoming the default option for laptop screens. While there are definitely laptops with LCD screens, they are usually very low-end and underpowered laptops that wouldn't be able to handle my workflow, or extremely overpriced. In fact, the search for a good LCD laptop was so difficult, I ended up switching to a completely separate ecosystem and got myself an M5 MacBook Air instead.