How long do LCD TVs last?

There has been a fair bit of debate over this topic for a while, and people do throw about a lot of figures, so it’s time to think about it for a moment and inject some common sense.

Watching a plasma screen for eight hours per day for about nine years might be enough to wear it out - or ‘burn’ it out as the phrase goes. Thats about 30,000 hours. The effect of the ‘burn out’ would be for the screen to lose brightness eventually.

One thing to watch out for is a different kind of burn out which may happen to isolated parts of the screen if a static image is left there for too long. Example - a logo on a computer game left on the screen for weeks on end. Unlikely, but worth remembering to switch if off when you go on holidays!

LCD TVs can’t burn out as they use different technology and according to manufacturers’ claims should last 18 years at 8 hours a day - roughly 60,000 hours.

Having said all of that, the reality is that technology is evolving so fast these days, especially in the area of visual entertainment, are you really going to keep your LCD TVs for 18 years?

And in nine years time you may well be wanting to upgrade your plasma TV to a brand new type, possibly one that hasn’t been invented yet with better quality than we can believe possible today.