Burn in of OLED's is a known problem August 12 2012 Add your comments !

[Kiriakos GR]

I do not feel like to have invent the wheel by writing this presentation or mini research.
And honestly I can not even admit that I have solid answers in all.

But I believe that I did my best so to stay as close to true facts as possible.

Feel free to add your comments.

[Phyllomedusa]

I do have some "burn in" as well on my U1253B. The Bargraph (what a surprise ) and the Battery Sign and "CHarging" script are the most affected areas.
I forced myself not so worry about it as I don't recognize the contrast loss in normal operation and so at this point it is not that important for me.
One thing that would help to prevent it would be easily fixable in a Firmware update. In logging mode, keep the display brightness changeable......

When I setup the meter for logging in bright daylight I have the Display brightness at its highest level and start it. Well when the logging mode runs I am not able to alter the brightness. That means it is eating up energy for nothing

We already had a short talk about burn in via PM and I think when the meter is logging and the Display could be dimmed or even shut-off it would help a lot in these cases.
I may write an email to Agilent and ask about it for an Firmware update.

Kiriakos: Could you try / have you tried if the display brightness is changeable in logging mode?

ADD: I will be home monday evening again and have access to my camera. I will then take a picture of my display after about half a year of normal use (about 3-4 times a week for a few hours) to compare. Maybe it would be interesting if the burn in / contrast loss is a linear or exponential action. So does it mean it keeps going to burn in that fast or will it slow down as the Organic material itself is already a bit decayed and not that active anymore.

[Kiriakos GR]

1) When I setup the meter for logging in bright daylight I have the Display brightness at its highest level and start it. Well when the logging mode runs I am not able to alter the brightness. That means it is eating up energy for nothing

2) Kiriakos: Could you try / have you tried if the display brightness is changeable in logging mode?

Well I have no idea about the display brightness selections on the U1253B.

Even so the U1273A offers three choices about display brightness,
you can select the preferable as default in the setup menu, and at every power-up the meter uses automatically the selected one.

Alternatively you can alter or decrease the brightness by pressing the light/setup button repeatedly.
And this works in all measuring modes other than Min/Max and Data logging.

It seems logical to me to select up front the brightness level before entering in those special modes, and so I do not have a complain about that.

Personally I think as good idea the addition of one more lower in brightness selection,
So the three to become four, and yes the idea is more power saving when the meter works as data logger.

But from another point of view, if the theoretical fourth brightness level it is incapable to offer a significant gain about increasing significantly the battery life, then it could look pointless about having it. 

In some questions only the Agilent engineers haves the answers. 

[Phyllomedusa]

...

It seems logical to me to select up front the brightness level before entering in those special modes, and so I do not have a complain about that.

Well, I have to disagree here. It's nice if it works for you, but as I use it outside often on some of our sensors for monitoring the state I need the bright display.
I usually let the meter sit there for some hours or over night (if it would keep it that way) and load the data to my Laptop to compare them what our loggers inside sampled over the time. So it would be really great to shut the Display off as it runs all the time on full power and isn't needed anyway as we do other stuff then.

...well now I have the U1272A for these cases, but controlling the brightness in logging mode would be really nice, because I don't see any advantage in disabling the brightness/view button in logging mode.

This would also help a bit to prevent a decay of the display...even if it wouldn't be really needed it would care about worried consumers as the burn-in awareness in displays tends to rise a lot. So a point for the marketing

I have written an email to Agilent and asked about dimming and logging or maybe a display-timeout to be enabled in the menu in a later firmware.
As they were always very open and helpful I may have a solution one day

[Kiriakos GR]

More demands for the Agilent camp ..   

My decision is to be soft on them, so to not scare them. 

At list they do have live R&D, and so some demands it is possible to see them as resolved.

Unfortunately I have plenty of indications that the most of the competition out there in not in good shape about R&D.
For example Sanwa & Yokogawa, they do not have active R&D, and when their products become out dated,
they just pushing them in the third world, or they list them at high prices so to never run out of stock in the warehouse.

Yokogawa even hides the email of the Japanese factory,  and I do wonder do they really have one ?   

[Phyllomedusa]

...of course I am gentle with them.
All in all I am very satisfied with the customer care and response by Agilent. From time to time I give them an update if I found a problem or what I would need (what is pretty much all said)
....more like an extension of the "Voice of HH" campaign.

As we talked about it before you launched ittsb, you know that I am not a fan of doing a one-time review, since  you never test everything and some bugs or disadvantages are hidden that you step over them occasionally.
I don't know what would be more right "You grow in your DMM" or "Your DMM grows with you"

I am sure that I am not an easy customer for Agilent as I may find some weird stuff pretty handy and useful for my work.
(...Still looking for an integrated attachment loop that can't come loose . Maybe an External holster with integrated loop? )

____________________________________________________________________________________
Here is a nice presentation about OLED's and their decay I found a while on Farnell
Link expired

Another Interesting Paper is offered by OSRAM, as they offer OLED based lighting panels
http://www.osram.de/media/resource/hires/334571/OLED-Application-Guide.pdf


So as I thought it is affected by higher temperatures (sure it's organic) and the decay is exponential. That means after a while the decay will slow down. Our Displays are pretty fresh and therefore we have the highest brightness loss due to usage.
All in all I don't think it's a big concern as long as you don't need the meter for long term logging on daily basis.

[Kiriakos GR]

I have take a quick look of those documents, the information on them worth's something if they are fresh enough, the first one looks outdated.

Secondly not all manufacturers haves the same advanced technology about their offerings in OLED's.
The first document talks about 5000 hours life-spam, when the latest high quality ones does 100K hours.

About the one time reviews ... I like to believe that I am making the difference.
And actually I am teaching of how the proper reviews should be made.

It is not my intention to drive this conversation in to an off topic personal rant about what others do.
But my reviews does not contain a simple "take it apart"  and  few tests with DC volts and resistors.
No one except me had ever publish VFD filter performance tests of multimeters, or even frequency tests, or even present combination's of advanced functionality as I do.
Or even the use of external accessories like the hall effect curent probes.
 
The quality level of the ITTSB reviews is the highest ever at list about multimeters.
And about the user interface of its multimeter,  I have never discovered a bug in the software.

But some personal likes and dislikes could come from what you had use to using in the past.

I love the Olympus digital cameras menus, if you give me a Nikon I will just kick it out of the window no matter if it cost 5000 EUR.
Their menu system sucks big time.

I do agree with your saying "You grow in your DMM", but very few do that, most of the people they trash the User Guide with out even reading it.

Can you possibly imagine that I do read the most portion of the User Guide of its multimeter that comes for review ?  and how difficult is for one single brain to hold this amount of information ?

If you ever nag again about your two multimeters, I will send you seven for review so to make your head to explode.   

 
     

[Phyllomedusa]

Now....won't nag. You know that I am pretty satisfied with my meter ....otherwise.......seven for review?!?!?

About the OLED. Well, I is not the latest technology that was tested there, but I suggest the principles and incluences are the same. They are just slowed down but still take place.
Nevertheless, if I need to replace an OLED or LCD in twenty years doesn't matter that much for me (would buy a new meter probably....). So don't be too afraid of OLED you people all around. It has it's disadvantages (Mainly in bright ambient and battery runtime and trying to take photos of then ), but I really like the advantages of the viewing angle and brightness when I crawl under tables or engines. In the Lab it looks pretty cool (at least) and is quite nice for your colleagues to take a view on the reading from anywhere around it.

[Kiriakos GR]

The top list of reasons for a sudden death of a multimeter are mostly three.

a) To be burned out from misuse.
b) One strong impact which will kill the LCD display ( looks like black ink spilled over).
c) Range switch failure. 

The OLED's are exuded from damage due impact.
And so they do win a significant point and rightfully they gain the title of the most robust design.

In the page of Wikipedia about OLED's there is a picture, probably from the first generation of the super yellow OLED's, which haves severe damage on it, and I believe that is taken back at 2007.

Before a month ago SONY moved forward and released a lightweight OLED's glasses, which are used so to offer extremely high quality video with out the need of a large screen.

OLED's is the most fast growing technology,  and honestly I am unable to make any predictions about their life spam.
I can only suppose that the U1273A because of their release date as 2011, it uses the latest or the most freshest technology of OLED's, and this fact leads me in to the natural coming conclusion that the end user haves very less reasons to worry about it.
 
As professional technician my style of work is about 98% indoor (covered by roof)  field work.
The OLED's works for me very well as maintenance industrial electrician.
And the guys over 40s they will love them two, there is no need to use your short sight glasses.