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I think there are three groups of people with opinions regarding 120Hz vs 60Hz refresh rate. Group 1 can tell the difference between the two and strongly prefe

by diziet 3y ago

I think there are three groups of people with opinions regarding 120Hz vs 60Hz refresh rate. Group 1 can tell the difference between the two and strongly prefers 120Hz. Group 2 can't tell the difference between the two and prefers the more affordable options. Group 3 has not done a lot of comparisons between the two refresh rates, or has used 120Hz displays that were actually in 60Hz mode, or compared lower resolution 120Hz displays with higher resolution 60Hz displays. I think a lot of people mistakenly think they are in Group 2 when they are in Group 3.

boyter 3y ago
I thought I was in 2... till I actually got a 120Hz screen. Since I flip between my desktop at 120Hz and Macbook Air M1 at 60Hz frequently I discovered I really notice. Its always so much nicer when I leave the Air. Everything is so much smoother.
- Aeolun 3y ago
  Same difference between 30 and 60hz I imagine. Feels like you go from mega choppy to smooth as butter.
  - boyter 3y ago
    I get used to 60 pretty quickly, but I really notice it when I move back.
  - rjh29 3y ago
    A variable rate between 30-60 is absolutely worse than consistent 30fps.
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      If you display those frames on a 60Hz screen, it's an awful effect. If the screen natively supports variable frame times, there's a lot more upside and a lot less downside.
- opdahl 3y ago
  John Linneman from Digital Foundry made a great point about refresh rates (or framerates in his context). Lower refresh rates generally is perceived as way worse when you often switch around between high and low refresh rates. Case in point if you change from 60hz to 120hz and move your mouse etc. you will definitely feel that its way smoother, and 60hz would feel extremely sluggish. But if you just stuck with the 60hz for a while eventually you will perceive it as smooth again. They use the example of 30fps seemingly feeling very bad when you keep switching between Quality and Performance mode on console games, but 30fps is actually okay for many instances. Of course 60fps will feel smoother no matter what, but the point is is that the difference is heightened when you switch back and forth.
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wlesieutre 3y ago
If anyone is on a high refresh rate screen and wants to see the difference side by side, https://testufo.com https://testufo.com is a nice comparison. In most browsers it will go up to whatever refresh rate your monitor runs at, including 144 or 165 hz, probably 240 but I've never owned one of those. I have a hard time believing that anyone with functional eyesight wouldn't be able to see the difference between 60 and 120, but I can definitely see not caring enough to spend the money just to make scrolling and cursor movement smoother.
- alpaca128 3y ago
  I switched from 60Hz to 240Hz on my desktop. The difference in smoothness is immediately noticeable, but I realized I don't really care. When I don't look for it I can switch from 240Hz screen to my laptop and not notice anything. Both run smooth enough for a good user experience. So I personally would always prioritize a good pixel density unless one plays a lot of games that require low input latency.
  - wlesieutre 3y ago
    Even for games where fast reactions aren’t important, I still appreciate the smoothness of high frame rates. I’ve found 1440p / 165 hz with freesync to be a good balance, with enough resolution and things running as smoothly as I want to turn graphics options down for. 60 feels low but anything over 90ish I don’t mind. Screen wise I got a pair of Dell S2721DGFs that I’m quite happy with. IPS panel and commonly on sale for $300. Weakest point is backlight inconsistency for dark scenes but it’s a compromise I’m willing to put up with.
111111IIIIIII 3y ago
Group 4 does video/photo/graphics work so they prioritize color accuracy and high resolution, so they would always trade >60Hz for more resolution, at least up to a point that has yet to be achieved. And that isn't even factoring in cost, which is a big one since Group 4 is a smaller market than Groups 1-3 so the displays targeting them (like this Dell 6K) tend to be the most expensive on the market by a large margin. Realize >60Hz makes exactly zero difference for video playback, so the only areas for improvement are cursor movement and scrolling smoothness.
- hopfenspergerj 3y ago
  60 is not a multiple of 24.
  - 111111IIIIIII 3y ago
    Nor is 120. Even with a 240Hz display, capturing and editing should use 3:2 pulldown for best end user playback. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-two_pull_down https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-two_pull_down
    - akaru 3y ago
      Check your math, son.
      - 111111IIIIIII 3y ago
        My point is none of these refresh rates are multiples of 23.976.
        kurthr 3y ago
        I think your point is that 1/1000 frames would need to be 6:5 at 120Hz? I'd be more concerned with the automatic black frame insertion most LCDs do to increase contrast.
extr 3y ago
Yes, I went ahead and got a 4K 120hz monitor even though my use-case is coding, because it was so jarring switching between my M1 ProMotion display and my main monitor. Just scrolling/cursor movement is so much smoother, 60hz vs 120hz now feels like what 30hz vs 60hz used to feel like.
- lynguist 3y ago
  Which one did you get? And don't most 4k 120hz monitors "bloom"? Eg the area where your mouse cursor is brighter and when you move it it moves with a bloom around that area?
encodedrose 3y ago
Is there a Group 4: Can tell the difference between 120Hz and 240Hz? I use the 32" Odyssey G7 which is 2560x1440@240Hz.
- snarfy 3y ago
  Yep. It really depends what you do with your monitors. For gaming I'll never go back to anything less than 240hz. Even high end video cards struggle to render modern games at 240hz consistently at 4k. 1080p is fine.
WheatMillington 3y ago
What about the other very large group, like me, who can easily tell the difference but it's very much not worth the price of admission?
- crazygringo 3y ago
  Exactly. I can easily tell the difference and couldn't care less. Brightness, pixel density, and contrast/blacks (including glossiness) are what I care about in terms of image quality. Maybe if I were a gamer it would matter, but I couldn't care less about how smooth scrolling or cursor movement is. It doesn't change my productivity or affect my comfort at all.
  - dumpsterdiver 3y ago
    I'm in the same boat, except that I recently discovered that in my advanced years (early 40s) I am now one of those people who are "sensitive to certain flashing light patterns or textures". It's not often that it happens, but every blue moon I will be looking at a screen and suddenly begin sweating profusely right before I lose consciousness for a brief bit. Most recently when that happened I passed out on top of my left arm and I was really concerned that it was numb for a good 40 minutes after the event. I called an emergency nurse line and explained the symptoms, and they assured me it wasn't a heart related event, but a reaction to the chaotic light patterns I was subjecting myself to. Edit: I never got around to my point, which was even though I'm part of the group who doesn't really care about refresh rate, it appears that my body might care.
    - iSnow 3y ago
      You probably should get yourself checked for photosensitive epilepsy.
  - chihuahua 3y ago
    Same here. I don't care about any of those things. All I want is a large monitor (currently 43" + 27"), so I can get my work done, then turn off the monitors and collect my paycheck.
cespare 3y ago
I don't think I'm in any of those groups. I own a variety of monitors and can easily tell the difference between 60hz and 120hz. All things being equal, I of course prefer 120hz (or 165hz as some of my gaming monitors support). I also own monitors at resolutions from 1440p to 4k. For doing work (programming, where I'm mostly looking at text), resolution makes a huge difference. I only do coding on high DPI screens and I would upgrade to 5k or 6k or 8k displays if I were confident that my hardware and OS would support them well. (TFA was very helpful in that respect.) In these settings, high refresh rate makes only a marginal difference to my experience. For gaming, refresh rate makes a much bigger difference, and resolution makes a somewhat smaller difference -- my hardware can't reasonably drive many of the games I play at 4k or higher anyway. So I just use cheaper, lower-resolution monitors that operate at high refresh rates for gaming. Someday I guess I'll just be able to spend $300 for an 8k monitor at 240hz and then I won't have to make this kind of choice. (In fact, in the several years since I last bought gaming hardware I think the options for high-refresh-rate 4k monitors have gotten much better; I might use 4k for gaming if I were buying today.) But for now, I'll always pick resolution over refresh rate for doing work, and it's not because I can't tell the difference.
- delta_p_delta_x 3y ago
  I want the best of both worlds. There exist 144 Hz 4K 27" monitors, such as the LG 27GP950/27GP95R. They're still LCD panels rather than OLED, but I am confident that OLED panels with these dimensions will arrive fairly soon.
  - theandrewbailey 3y ago
    I've been using two 27" 4k 144hz monitors for over a year on my personal machine. I'm doubtful if my work setup would be able to drive them to full capability.
fotta 3y ago
I used to be in group 3, then I got an iPhone with 120Hz display and fell into group 1. When you turn on Low Power Mode it restricts the display to 60Hz and it’s extremely noticeable for me now. Luckily I don’t notice the difference for monitors because I don’t have any 120Hz displays yet.
dontlaugh 3y ago
I find it hard to believe anyone wouldn’t notice the difference when comparing side by side. It may very well not be worth the price, but that’s different.
D13Fd 3y ago
No, I have 144hz and 60 hz monitors side by side at home, and 120/60 hz side by side at work. I can certainly tell the difference. It doesn’t bother me much, although it’s enough that I have held off on the recent Apple display mostly because it only does 60hz.
cassac 3y ago
Lots of people can tell the difference and simply don’t care. I care about black levels but I don’t pretend that people who don’t care are clueless.
Dalewyn 3y ago
As someone who has a 240Hz 1920x1080 Dell monitor, the 60Hz is intolerably choppy and 120Hz is the budget/compromise option. Seriously, getting at least a 120Hz monitor makes for a world of difference because it makes everything smoother. Increases in resolution beyond 1920x1080 meanwhile are going to quickly hit the point of diminishing returns, anything beyond 2160p particularly so.
- photonbeam 3y ago
  Its not a resolution issue, its DPI and viewing distance. I read text on a monitor all day, 4k in a 24inch frame at desk chair distance is the minimum for me
- alpaca128 3y ago
  I have a 240Hz screen as well and decided to go back to 4k with 60Hz. Yes, the difference is very noticeable in direct comparisons, but in reality I think about other things when using my computer and 60Hz still feels smooth enough for desktop use. Meanwhile text on a 1080p screen above 15" feels more like reading low-res bitmap fonts and strains my eyes nowadays.
fomine3 3y ago
It's a bit complex in my case. For smartphone, 120Hz vs 60Hz OLED is night and day, especially for scrolling. Never leave from 120Hz+. For PC monitor, 120Hz vs 60Hz LCD is distinguishable but not much benefits. Maybe due to I use Windows and non-smooth scroll mouse. It's nice for gaming but needs $$ for GPU.
- FractalParadigm 3y ago
  For gaming you need $$ for CPU as well. It's all fine and dandy if your GPU is capable of rendering/filling the ~1 gigapixel/s of 4K120, the trick is keeping it fed with enough data so it can render all those pixels.
voldacar 3y ago
I'm shocked that group 2 exists at all. Just wave your mouse around and watch the cursor. Or open up quake and turn around while keeping your eye focused on a stationary object.
- mighmi 3y ago
  There are also people who can't really focus on moving objects very well. They generally look extremely blurry to me even if moving relatively slow. A few years ago e.g. the Simpsons began to use these computer aided 3-d pans which hurt my eyes to watch. Pausing, they are all in normal resolution but when watching them the screen turns into a mush for me and I can just see color blobs.
- NavinF 3y ago
  Yep it's very obvious when moving the cursor in a circle since you can see every frame. I'm sure group 2 exists. It's just that all its members have an undiagnosed vision disorder.
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- crote 3y ago
  > Just wave your mouse around and watch the cursor I just realized that I literally never do this. It is indeed incredibly jarring. even at 60Hz. I think my eyes basically immediately "jump" to where I want to move the cursor, so I don't really "track" it. Do other people track the cursor with their eyes?
  - voldacar 3y ago
    My eyes naturally snap to moving objects and track them. And even if I only look at the spot where I want the cursor to be, I can still see it moving and leaving frames behind in my periphery. And that's at 144hz. I'm thinking of getting a 240hz or 390hz soon though.
JohnBooty 3y ago
I can easily tell the difference between 60hz and 120hz+, but it absolutely does not matter to me for web browsing and software development. FWIW I do spend a lot of time with 120hz and 144hz displays. For gaming it's awfully hard to go back to 60hz after tasting those high refresh rates. In fact, I've been saying that for 25 years. At the tail end of the CRT era a lot of higher-end CRTs could do like 90 or 100hz at 1280x1024. Most PC games couldn't push that many FPS even at lower resolutions but it really helped reduce flicker and eyestrain, even when staring at text in Windows.
rjh29 3y ago
I can tell the difference between 30 and 60fps and I just don't care. 60fps is smoother sure but I don't find it better in any objective sense, just different. My brain is quite capable of filling in the missing frames itself. Maybe I have a "vision disorder" but since even modern PS5 games are increasingly going back to 30-40fps (preferring graphical quality over framerate) I think that is actually the majority position. High framerate lovers are the coffee snobs of the computer world.
BoorishBears 3y ago
I own 360hz e-sports monitors, multiple 120hz 4k monitors, and still work on a 60hz XDR with absolutely 0 qualms? I think you're missing a Group 4 that realizes no one's actually made a top quality 120hz display yet and isn't about to sacrifice clarity for refresh rate when it comes to productivity. (fwiw, the MBP XDR comes closest but it's not a display) If you value overall picture quality, then the vast majority of 120hz+ screens are either blotchy messes or have unacceptably low pixel density (or both)
ehnto 3y ago
It's certainly specific to your use cases. 60hz is totally fine for all use cases, which I think is why this is a contentious topic at all. But higher refresh rate and content that actually puts out enough frames to utilize it does definitely make it a smoother experience. It is night and day to me, but I play fast moving games at 144fps on a 144hz monitor, so if I am missing half over half the frames I do notice. I guess that's another group, people correctly in high refresh rate mode but not consuming content that reaches that refresh rate.
p1necone 3y ago
I also find group 3 (in this situation and similar) are often proud of their ignorance too, which can be frustrating. They both haven't had enough experience to properly see the difference and actively try not to.
NotYourLawyer 3y ago
I can tell the difference but it doesn’t do much for me (except in touch screen phones where I’m scrolling with my finger). I’m not a gamer, and I’m weird enough to turn off smooth scrolling in browsers and word processors because I hate it. So it’s really just a matter of how smooth the mouse cursor’s movement is.
tintedfireglass 3y ago
I own 60hz, 90hz and 120hz displays and honestly can't find the difference between them. Everyone loves higher refresh rates but I can't feel ANY difference between them and they all feel the same. But I can see the difference when a game is at 60fps and 120fps on all of them. Not sure why
- alpaca128 3y ago
  > But I can see the difference when a game is at 60fps and 120fps on all of them. Not sure why Because twice the refresh rate means half the latency. And in games like shooters any mouse movement causes the entire screen to change, which makes lower latency very noticeable compared to just a moving cursor on the desktop. This is why VR feels really bad on low framerates, the latency between head movements and screen updates is too long.
eek2121 3y ago
If you can't tell the difference between > 60hz and 60hz, you may want to get your vision checked. I'd say once you get to 75-80hz the returns start to diminish, and by 120 things are hard to notice, but 60hz and 120hz differences are definitely noticeable.
doublepg23 3y ago
I love 120Hz on my iPad Pro for general responsiveness (though the response time is dreadful) and 120Hz on my LG OLED for gaming but I’m frankly just blind and will take 4K on 27” at 200% scaling any day for desktop work.
acumenical 3y ago
After experiencing 120Hz it ruined 60Hz monitors for me
globular-toast 3y ago
I have 120Hz on my phone and the difference is remarkable. But I'm still sceptical. I just wonder if rendering at 120Hz then averaging the two frames to display at 60Hz would have the same effect. It seems like a pretty simple demo to set up (if you know how). Does this exist somewhere? To convince me that real 120Hz is actually worth it.
stefandesu 3y ago
I know I'd notice the difference and would strongly prefer 120Hz, but I still stay away from them for now because if I got a 120Hz monitor, I would also need to buy a new MacBook Pro to match the refresh rate. (Also not sure if the M1 Air could even drive 4K 120Hz.)
brailsafe 3y ago
I find that higher refresh rate seems more impactful on otherwise rather choppy experiences, or games, or phones. I'd go for it if it was free and came with no or extremely minimal compromises to resolution or picture quality, but the underlying display tech is pretty important. Of course, if I were spending $6k on a screen, it better have higher refresh rate and incredible picture quality, because that's not an amount of money I spend on anything except taxes. I recently had the opportunity to try out an ultrawide 144hz VA panel at approximately the same pixel density as my Dell Ultrasharp 30" that came out a great number of years ago, and it was... fine. Used it for a few months and then sold it. Swapped the 30" back in and am back to my old stance that whatever replaces this screen is going to have to have wildly better picture quality than the ultrawide; I haven't even thought about it since. The picture quality on the VA wasn't necessarily bad enough to notice while I was using it, except for the viewing angles, but comparatively it didn't hold up at all. Having used another 144hz display right at again the same pixel density at 27" next to my MacBook pro being actively used as a second screen, I think the density and quality of the MacBook display sort of nullified anything I got from refresh rate. For me to replace my current screen, what I'm hoping for is basically for this 6k to either come down to earth in price, or for competition to come in and build an equivalent. If I could get that for ~$1500CAD eventually (only half of what they are right now on sale), refresh rate would still only be a nice to have. More important to me is a good KVM feature, thunderbolt/one-cable connectivity, and better aesthetics I guess above most other features. A nice webcam would be nice too, but I don't really care much about that being built-in unless it's invisible.
leokennis 3y ago
I always thought >60 Hz was basically nonsense, but since I got the iPhone 13 Pro with 120 Hz screen I'm converted. It's like having a small ache in your back - not really an issue, no problem to live 100 years with it. But then one day...it's gone. Do you really want to go back now?

by diziet 3y ago

boyter 3y ago

I thought I was in 2... till I actually got a 120Hz screen. Since I flip between my desktop at 120Hz and Macbook Air M1 at 60Hz frequently I discovered I really notice. Its always so much nicer when I leave the Air. Everything is so much smoother.

Aeolun 3y ago
Same difference between 30 and 60hz I imagine. Feels like you go from mega choppy to smooth as butter.
- boyter 3y ago
  I get used to 60 pretty quickly, but I really notice it when I move back.
- rjh29 3y ago
  A variable rate between 30-60 is absolutely worse than consistent 30fps.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    If you display those frames on a 60Hz screen, it's an awful effect. If the screen natively supports variable frame times, there's a lot more upside and a lot less downside.
opdahl 3y ago
John Linneman from Digital Foundry made a great point about refresh rates (or framerates in his context). Lower refresh rates generally is perceived as way worse when you often switch around between high and low refresh rates. Case in point if you change from 60hz to 120hz and move your mouse etc. you will definitely feel that its way smoother, and 60hz would feel extremely sluggish. But if you just stuck with the 60hz for a while eventually you will perceive it as smooth again. They use the example of 30fps seemingly feeling very bad when you keep switching between Quality and Performance mode on console games, but 30fps is actually okay for many instances. Of course 60fps will feel smoother no matter what, but the point is is that the difference is heightened when you switch back and forth.
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wlesieutre 3y ago

If anyone is on a high refresh rate screen and wants to see the difference side by side, https://testufo.com https://testufo.com is a nice comparison. In most browsers it will go up to whatever refresh rate your monitor runs at, including 144 or 165 hz, probably 240 but I've never owned one of those. I have a hard time believing that anyone with functional eyesight wouldn't be able to see the difference between 60 and 120, but I can definitely see not caring enough to spend the money just to make scrolling and cursor movement smoother.

alpaca128 3y ago
I switched from 60Hz to 240Hz on my desktop. The difference in smoothness is immediately noticeable, but I realized I don't really care. When I don't look for it I can switch from 240Hz screen to my laptop and not notice anything. Both run smooth enough for a good user experience. So I personally would always prioritize a good pixel density unless one plays a lot of games that require low input latency.
- wlesieutre 3y ago
  Even for games where fast reactions aren’t important, I still appreciate the smoothness of high frame rates. I’ve found 1440p / 165 hz with freesync to be a good balance, with enough resolution and things running as smoothly as I want to turn graphics options down for. 60 feels low but anything over 90ish I don’t mind. Screen wise I got a pair of Dell S2721DGFs that I’m quite happy with. IPS panel and commonly on sale for $300. Weakest point is backlight inconsistency for dark scenes but it’s a compromise I’m willing to put up with.

111111IIIIIII 3y ago

Group 4 does video/photo/graphics work so they prioritize color accuracy and high resolution, so they would always trade >60Hz for more resolution, at least up to a point that has yet to be achieved. And that isn't even factoring in cost, which is a big one since Group 4 is a smaller market than Groups 1-3 so the displays targeting them (like this Dell 6K) tend to be the most expensive on the market by a large margin. Realize >60Hz makes exactly zero difference for video playback, so the only areas for improvement are cursor movement and scrolling smoothness.

hopfenspergerj 3y ago
60 is not a multiple of 24.
- 111111IIIIIII 3y ago
  Nor is 120. Even with a 240Hz display, capturing and editing should use 3:2 pulldown for best end user playback. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-two_pull_down https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-two_pull_down
  - akaru 3y ago
    Check your math, son.
    - 111111IIIIIII 3y ago
      My point is none of these refresh rates are multiples of 23.976.
      - kurthr 3y ago
        I think your point is that 1/1000 frames would need to be 6:5 at 120Hz? I'd be more concerned with the automatic black frame insertion most LCDs do to increase contrast.

extr 3y ago

Yes, I went ahead and got a 4K 120hz monitor even though my use-case is coding, because it was so jarring switching between my M1 ProMotion display and my main monitor. Just scrolling/cursor movement is so much smoother, 60hz vs 120hz now feels like what 30hz vs 60hz used to feel like.

lynguist 3y ago
Which one did you get? And don't most 4k 120hz monitors "bloom"? Eg the area where your mouse cursor is brighter and when you move it it moves with a bloom around that area?

encodedrose 3y ago

Is there a Group 4: Can tell the difference between 120Hz and 240Hz? I use the 32" Odyssey G7 which is 2560x1440@240Hz.

snarfy 3y ago
Yep. It really depends what you do with your monitors. For gaming I'll never go back to anything less than 240hz. Even high end video cards struggle to render modern games at 240hz consistently at 4k. 1080p is fine.

WheatMillington 3y ago

What about the other very large group, like me, who can easily tell the difference but it's very much not worth the price of admission?

crazygringo 3y ago
Exactly. I can easily tell the difference and couldn't care less. Brightness, pixel density, and contrast/blacks (including glossiness) are what I care about in terms of image quality. Maybe if I were a gamer it would matter, but I couldn't care less about how smooth scrolling or cursor movement is. It doesn't change my productivity or affect my comfort at all.
- dumpsterdiver 3y ago
  I'm in the same boat, except that I recently discovered that in my advanced years (early 40s) I am now one of those people who are "sensitive to certain flashing light patterns or textures". It's not often that it happens, but every blue moon I will be looking at a screen and suddenly begin sweating profusely right before I lose consciousness for a brief bit. Most recently when that happened I passed out on top of my left arm and I was really concerned that it was numb for a good 40 minutes after the event. I called an emergency nurse line and explained the symptoms, and they assured me it wasn't a heart related event, but a reaction to the chaotic light patterns I was subjecting myself to. Edit: I never got around to my point, which was even though I'm part of the group who doesn't really care about refresh rate, it appears that my body might care.
  - iSnow 3y ago
    You probably should get yourself checked for photosensitive epilepsy.
- chihuahua 3y ago
  Same here. I don't care about any of those things. All I want is a large monitor (currently 43" + 27"), so I can get my work done, then turn off the monitors and collect my paycheck.

cespare 3y ago

I don't think I'm in any of those groups. I own a variety of monitors and can easily tell the difference between 60hz and 120hz. All things being equal, I of course prefer 120hz (or 165hz as some of my gaming monitors support). I also own monitors at resolutions from 1440p to 4k. For doing work (programming, where I'm mostly looking at text), resolution makes a huge difference. I only do coding on high DPI screens and I would upgrade to 5k or 6k or 8k displays if I were confident that my hardware and OS would support them well. (TFA was very helpful in that respect.) In these settings, high refresh rate makes only a marginal difference to my experience. For gaming, refresh rate makes a much bigger difference, and resolution makes a somewhat smaller difference -- my hardware can't reasonably drive many of the games I play at 4k or higher anyway. So I just use cheaper, lower-resolution monitors that operate at high refresh rates for gaming. Someday I guess I'll just be able to spend $300 for an 8k monitor at 240hz and then I won't have to make this kind of choice. (In fact, in the several years since I last bought gaming hardware I think the options for high-refresh-rate 4k monitors have gotten much better; I might use 4k for gaming if I were buying today.) But for now, I'll always pick resolution over refresh rate for doing work, and it's not because I can't tell the difference.

delta_p_delta_x 3y ago
I want the best of both worlds. There exist 144 Hz 4K 27" monitors, such as the LG 27GP950/27GP95R. They're still LCD panels rather than OLED, but I am confident that OLED panels with these dimensions will arrive fairly soon.
- theandrewbailey 3y ago
  I've been using two 27" 4k 144hz monitors for over a year on my personal machine. I'm doubtful if my work setup would be able to drive them to full capability.

fotta 3y ago

I used to be in group 3, then I got an iPhone with 120Hz display and fell into group 1. When you turn on Low Power Mode it restricts the display to 60Hz and it’s extremely noticeable for me now. Luckily I don’t notice the difference for monitors because I don’t have any 120Hz displays yet.

dontlaugh 3y ago

I find it hard to believe anyone wouldn’t notice the difference when comparing side by side. It may very well not be worth the price, but that’s different.

D13Fd 3y ago

No, I have 144hz and 60 hz monitors side by side at home, and 120/60 hz side by side at work. I can certainly tell the difference. It doesn’t bother me much, although it’s enough that I have held off on the recent Apple display mostly because it only does 60hz.

cassac 3y ago

Lots of people can tell the difference and simply don’t care. I care about black levels but I don’t pretend that people who don’t care are clueless.

Dalewyn 3y ago

As someone who has a 240Hz 1920x1080 Dell monitor, the 60Hz is intolerably choppy and 120Hz is the budget/compromise option. Seriously, getting at least a 120Hz monitor makes for a world of difference because it makes everything smoother. Increases in resolution beyond 1920x1080 meanwhile are going to quickly hit the point of diminishing returns, anything beyond 2160p particularly so.

photonbeam 3y ago
Its not a resolution issue, its DPI and viewing distance. I read text on a monitor all day, 4k in a 24inch frame at desk chair distance is the minimum for me
alpaca128 3y ago
I have a 240Hz screen as well and decided to go back to 4k with 60Hz. Yes, the difference is very noticeable in direct comparisons, but in reality I think about other things when using my computer and 60Hz still feels smooth enough for desktop use. Meanwhile text on a 1080p screen above 15" feels more like reading low-res bitmap fonts and strains my eyes nowadays.

fomine3 3y ago

It's a bit complex in my case. For smartphone, 120Hz vs 60Hz OLED is night and day, especially for scrolling. Never leave from 120Hz+. For PC monitor, 120Hz vs 60Hz LCD is distinguishable but not much benefits. Maybe due to I use Windows and non-smooth scroll mouse. It's nice for gaming but needs $$ for GPU.

FractalParadigm 3y ago
For gaming you need $$ for CPU as well. It's all fine and dandy if your GPU is capable of rendering/filling the ~1 gigapixel/s of 4K120, the trick is keeping it fed with enough data so it can render all those pixels.

voldacar 3y ago

I'm shocked that group 2 exists at all. Just wave your mouse around and watch the cursor. Or open up quake and turn around while keeping your eye focused on a stationary object.

mighmi 3y ago
There are also people who can't really focus on moving objects very well. They generally look extremely blurry to me even if moving relatively slow. A few years ago e.g. the Simpsons began to use these computer aided 3-d pans which hurt my eyes to watch. Pausing, they are all in normal resolution but when watching them the screen turns into a mush for me and I can just see color blobs.
NavinF 3y ago
Yep it's very obvious when moving the cursor in a circle since you can see every frame. I'm sure group 2 exists. It's just that all its members have an undiagnosed vision disorder.
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crote 3y ago
> Just wave your mouse around and watch the cursor I just realized that I literally never do this. It is indeed incredibly jarring. even at 60Hz. I think my eyes basically immediately "jump" to where I want to move the cursor, so I don't really "track" it. Do other people track the cursor with their eyes?
- voldacar 3y ago
  My eyes naturally snap to moving objects and track them. And even if I only look at the spot where I want the cursor to be, I can still see it moving and leaving frames behind in my periphery. And that's at 144hz. I'm thinking of getting a 240hz or 390hz soon though.

JohnBooty 3y ago

I can easily tell the difference between 60hz and 120hz+, but it absolutely does not matter to me for web browsing and software development. FWIW I do spend a lot of time with 120hz and 144hz displays. For gaming it's awfully hard to go back to 60hz after tasting those high refresh rates. In fact, I've been saying that for 25 years. At the tail end of the CRT era a lot of higher-end CRTs could do like 90 or 100hz at 1280x1024. Most PC games couldn't push that many FPS even at lower resolutions but it really helped reduce flicker and eyestrain, even when staring at text in Windows.

rjh29 3y ago

I can tell the difference between 30 and 60fps and I just don't care. 60fps is smoother sure but I don't find it better in any objective sense, just different. My brain is quite capable of filling in the missing frames itself. Maybe I have a "vision disorder" but since even modern PS5 games are increasingly going back to 30-40fps (preferring graphical quality over framerate) I think that is actually the majority position. High framerate lovers are the coffee snobs of the computer world.

BoorishBears 3y ago

I own 360hz e-sports monitors, multiple 120hz 4k monitors, and still work on a 60hz XDR with absolutely 0 qualms? I think you're missing a Group 4 that realizes no one's actually made a top quality 120hz display yet and isn't about to sacrifice clarity for refresh rate when it comes to productivity. (fwiw, the MBP XDR comes closest but it's not a display) If you value overall picture quality, then the vast majority of 120hz+ screens are either blotchy messes or have unacceptably low pixel density (or both)

ehnto 3y ago

It's certainly specific to your use cases. 60hz is totally fine for all use cases, which I think is why this is a contentious topic at all. But higher refresh rate and content that actually puts out enough frames to utilize it does definitely make it a smoother experience. It is night and day to me, but I play fast moving games at 144fps on a 144hz monitor, so if I am missing half over half the frames I do notice. I guess that's another group, people correctly in high refresh rate mode but not consuming content that reaches that refresh rate.

p1necone 3y ago

I also find group 3 (in this situation and similar) are often proud of their ignorance too, which can be frustrating. They both haven't had enough experience to properly see the difference and actively try not to.

NotYourLawyer 3y ago

I can tell the difference but it doesn’t do much for me (except in touch screen phones where I’m scrolling with my finger). I’m not a gamer, and I’m weird enough to turn off smooth scrolling in browsers and word processors because I hate it. So it’s really just a matter of how smooth the mouse cursor’s movement is.

tintedfireglass 3y ago

I own 60hz, 90hz and 120hz displays and honestly can't find the difference between them. Everyone loves higher refresh rates but I can't feel ANY difference between them and they all feel the same. But I can see the difference when a game is at 60fps and 120fps on all of them. Not sure why

alpaca128 3y ago
> But I can see the difference when a game is at 60fps and 120fps on all of them. Not sure why Because twice the refresh rate means half the latency. And in games like shooters any mouse movement causes the entire screen to change, which makes lower latency very noticeable compared to just a moving cursor on the desktop. This is why VR feels really bad on low framerates, the latency between head movements and screen updates is too long.

eek2121 3y ago

If you can't tell the difference between > 60hz and 60hz, you may want to get your vision checked. I'd say once you get to 75-80hz the returns start to diminish, and by 120 things are hard to notice, but 60hz and 120hz differences are definitely noticeable.

doublepg23 3y ago

I love 120Hz on my iPad Pro for general responsiveness (though the response time is dreadful) and 120Hz on my LG OLED for gaming but I’m frankly just blind and will take 4K on 27” at 200% scaling any day for desktop work.

acumenical 3y ago

After experiencing 120Hz it ruined 60Hz monitors for me

globular-toast 3y ago

I have 120Hz on my phone and the difference is remarkable. But I'm still sceptical. I just wonder if rendering at 120Hz then averaging the two frames to display at 60Hz would have the same effect. It seems like a pretty simple demo to set up (if you know how). Does this exist somewhere? To convince me that real 120Hz is actually worth it.

stefandesu 3y ago

I know I'd notice the difference and would strongly prefer 120Hz, but I still stay away from them for now because if I got a 120Hz monitor, I would also need to buy a new MacBook Pro to match the refresh rate. (Also not sure if the M1 Air could even drive 4K 120Hz.)

brailsafe 3y ago

I find that higher refresh rate seems more impactful on otherwise rather choppy experiences, or games, or phones. I'd go for it if it was free and came with no or extremely minimal compromises to resolution or picture quality, but the underlying display tech is pretty important. Of course, if I were spending $6k on a screen, it better have higher refresh rate and incredible picture quality, because that's not an amount of money I spend on anything except taxes. I recently had the opportunity to try out an ultrawide 144hz VA panel at approximately the same pixel density as my Dell Ultrasharp 30" that came out a great number of years ago, and it was... fine. Used it for a few months and then sold it. Swapped the 30" back in and am back to my old stance that whatever replaces this screen is going to have to have wildly better picture quality than the ultrawide; I haven't even thought about it since. The picture quality on the VA wasn't necessarily bad enough to notice while I was using it, except for the viewing angles, but comparatively it didn't hold up at all. Having used another 144hz display right at again the same pixel density at 27" next to my MacBook pro being actively used as a second screen, I think the density and quality of the MacBook display sort of nullified anything I got from refresh rate. For me to replace my current screen, what I'm hoping for is basically for this 6k to either come down to earth in price, or for competition to come in and build an equivalent. If I could get that for ~$1500CAD eventually (only half of what they are right now on sale), refresh rate would still only be a nice to have. More important to me is a good KVM feature, thunderbolt/one-cable connectivity, and better aesthetics I guess above most other features. A nice webcam would be nice too, but I don't really care much about that being built-in unless it's invisible.

leokennis 3y ago

I always thought >60 Hz was basically nonsense, but since I got the iPhone 13 Pro with 120 Hz screen I'm converted. It's like having a small ache in your back - not really an issue, no problem to live 100 years with it. But then one day...it's gone. Do you really want to go back now?