Sigma's BF full-frame mirrorless camera redefines minimalism with no memory card slot - Related to slot, but, shows, live, full-frame

A year of OLED monitor burn-in testing shows promising results

If you’ve ever seen images permanently etched onto an expensive television, then you know why some PC consumers still hesitate to upgrade to an OLED monitor. While the vivid colors and perfect contrast are amazing for gaming, doing regular work on these displays could spell burn-in disaster — or at least that’s the conventional wisdom.

One YouTuber decided to put a new QD-OLED monitor to the test for a practical look at burn-in risk on the latest panels. Monitors Unboxed spent a year torturing the MSI MPG 321URX, a 32-inch 4K monitor with one of the latest QD-OLED panels. They set up a worst-case scenario that would maximize the potential for OLED burn-in: entirely static content, mostly writing and browsing the web, with minimal gaming or video playback.

The semi-controlled test involved 60 hours of use per week, approximately 3,000 total hours after a year. The monitor was set to 200 nits of brightness. Windows 11 was set to light mode with a dark taskbar. The screen was set to sleep after 2 hours of inactivity (which is much higher than the typical setting for most individuals) and the burn-in reduction pixel refresh cycle going once per day (which is half the recommended refresh cycles, ). It’s a grueling schedule for any monitor. But for an OLED with basically no full-screen video? It’s a gauntlet.

“Basically, the idea here is to perform real-world testing of OLED longevity in the worst possible configuration,” says Monitors Unboxed, “effectively burning in the display on purpose.” The goal is to use the OLED monitor in the same way you’d use an IPS-LCD monitor, which shouldn’t have any major issues after just one year of use.

So how did it look after a year? , the panel showed some faint burn-in after three months, fairly evenly across the display. (I’ll add that as a former phone reviewer who’s dealt with dozens of small OLED displays, that’s pretty normal.) A little more was visible at the six-month mark, and a little less than expected at nine months.

After a year of not-quite-daily pixel refresh cycles, the only visible effects are slight burn-in on blue and green subpixels, an obvious band where the dark taskbar sits, and a faint line down the center of the screen (which Monitors Unboxed attributes to using side-by-side windowed apps).

The torture test is pretty good news, considering the test was done without most of the software compensations for burn-in, plus elements like rapid display sleep turned off. Monitors Unboxed notes that burn-in on an OLED panel is cumulative, so there’s no way to lessen the damage once it’s done. Periodically playing games or videos won’t stop existing OLED burn-in damage from showing.

But if you’re using your OLED for a mixture of activity types, and if you’re using the proper mitigation tools, then you can expect a new OLED monitor to last a lot longer without showing these results, especially if you’re not a constant eight-hours-a-day user.

And as the presenter notes, this burn-in is all but invisible while you’re actually using the monitor. “I think most people will not see significant burn-in concerns using an OLED, even for productivity use, inside the first two years, possibly two and a half years.”.

The whole video is well worth a watch if you’re thinking of buying an OLED monitor or concerned about the longevity of your current OLED display. I’ll point out that MSI, like other high-end OLED monitor vendors, offers a 3-year warranty specifically for burn-in on the panel.

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Sigma's BF full-frame mirrorless camera redefines minimalism with no memory card slot

Why it matters: Sigma has introduced a new full-frame mirrorless camera designed for those that prefer to focus on shooting rather than fiddling with excessive buttons, dials, and settings. The new Sigma BF attributes a [website] full-frame back-illuminated CMOS sensor inside of a unibody chassis carved from a single piece of aluminum over a seven-hour period.

Instead of the usual array of dials and buttons on the top of the camera, you get a single shutter button.

Around back, it is mostly more of the same. Next to the [website] fixed touchscreen LCD are three pressure-sensitive haptic buttons and a dial for navigating a refined user interface. There's also a small status monitor that demonstrates the current active setting, further decluttering the main display. A power button can be found on the right side of the body, and there's a tripod mount on the bottom.

Sigma has baked in 13 preset color modes including standard, warm gold, sunset red, and monochrome for a customized look without having to pop into an editing program. Most serious photographers will probably bypass this feature, but it is there should you want to play around with it.

There's no viewfinder, nor is there a memory card slot. All images and videos are stored on a 230 GB internal storage solution that can hold up to 14,000 JPEG files, 4,300 uncompressed RAW images, or up to [website] hours of 6K video. In continuous shooting mode, the camera can capture up to eight frames per second.

The BP-81 battery back is removable and , you can expect to get around 260 still photos or up to an hour of recording per charge. A USB-C connector is used for data transfer and quick charging, we're told.

The Sigma BF is available to pre-order now priced at $1,999 without a lens in your choice of black or silver. It is compatible with L-Mount lenses from Sigma, Panasonic, and Leica. Look for it to ship this April.

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uBlock Origin is officially dead for Chrome, but ad blockers live on

Last year, Google revealed changes to its Chrome browser that signaled the end for popular extension uBlock Origin. The ad-blocker’s design put it at odds with Google’s new Manifest v3 requirements, with death as the likely outcome.

The Grim Reaper is here now, with Manifest V3’s full implementation all but complete. As of late February, Google appears to be nuking Chrome’s uBlock Origin support in waves. Tech journalists over at Bleeping Computer have noticed a disabling of the extension on some of their PCs; meanwhile on PCWorld’s Windows 10 and 11 devices running Chrome version [website], uBlock Origin is still functioning.

If uBlock Origin and other extensions haven’t been taken away from you yet, they very soon will be—so it’s time to jump to a viable alternative ASAP. Going without an ad-blocker is a security risk, as rogue ads can push you to phishing sites or spread malware.

Google really means it this time. PCWorld.

Fortunately, good ad-block options still exist. The easiest switch? Hopping over to uBlock Origin Lite instead. Made by the same developer of the original uBlock Origin, you can coax similar performance out of it with a quick hop into its settings. By default, its “Basic” filtering mode requires no permissions and goes lighter on screening. Ratchet up its scrutiny to at least “Optimal” filtering, and if you want to go ham, you can bump it up all the way to “Complete” filtering.

One key difference between this Lite version and the original is less custom control over filtering, which can be a harder adjustment for power customers. But with these setting tweaks, most customers won’t notice much of a difference between the two.

The different filtering levels for uBlock Origin Lite. PCWorld.

Other excellent alternative ad-block extensions exist, too—Ad Guard in particular is favored by my colleague Michael Crider. Meanwhile, AdBlock Plus has a long-storied history of blocking ads on the web. (However, many individuals switched from ABP after their “Acceptable Ads” program became more known.) Ghostery combines privacy control with ad-blocking, with a very simple, easy-to-understand interface.

You can read more about each of these extensions in PCWorld’s rundown of alternative ad-blockers, but there’s also a fifth option: switching to Firefox. It’s the one major browser not based on Chromium, the open-source code powering Chrome and browsers like Opera, Brave, and Vivaldi, etc. Accordingly, the full-fat version of uBlock Origin is still available. In fact, it’s the only version, because Mozilla’s missteps caused the death of uBlock Origin Lite. (Sigh.).

Editor’s note: This article was first , but updated when Manifest V3 extensions — and uBlock Origin — officially had the lights switched off.

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