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> but even non-tech people I know are wondering why Android phones run smoother than iPhones. Stuff that would be completely unheard of purely because of how no

> but even non-tech people I know are wondering why Android phones run smoother than iPhones. Stuff that would be completely unheard of purely because of how noticeable 60hz vs 120hz is. Are they? I'm a tech person and I can barely notice it at all. And I don't think I have a single non-tech friend who is even aware of the concept of video refresh rate. Whenever there's something that doesn't feel smooth about an interface, it's because the app/CPU isn't keeping up. I've honestly never understood why anyone cares about more than 60hZ for screens, for general interfaces/scrolling. (Unless it's about video game response time, but that's not about "running smoother".)

Jcampuzano2 2y ago
Yeah I think when they say non-tech people they mean a subset of people who know a bit about refresh rates (example being avid PC gamers for instance), but I'd still say the vast majority of people cannot tell 60 to 120. That or its not something they think about. Certainly if they had both side by side they may be able to notice a difference, but in everyday use it makes no real difference to the vast majority of people. Anecdotally even though I do use Android myself, everyone around me still think iPhones look the smoothest (albeit most of them have never even touched a quality phone running android)
- Ataraxic 2y ago
  It's one of those things where once you have used it, you will notice it. Given most iOS users aren't swapping between pro and non pro models, it's not something you think about.
  - deleted 2y ago
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- smallmancontrov 2y ago
  They don't know the words but they definitely notice it. "Why is it so smooth/rough?"
- fsckboy 2y ago
  >Yeah I think when they say non-tech people they mean a subset of people who know a bit about refresh rates (example being avid PC gamers for instance) no, he didn't say that. he said they comment on the difference between apple and android (their perception). you have to take that as a given. that "it's because refresh rate" is his hypothesis, so yes argue that, but not by changing his evidence.
- pishpash 2y ago
  Just tried ProMotion vs. 60Hz on MBP, no/very little difference I can see. Sure it's just me but for me all the claims here are way exaggerated/psychological, almost like audiophiles being able to "hear" stuff that doesn't exist in a blind test.
  - klausa 2y ago
    As one of the upthread comments mentioned, this is something that probably varies with sensitivity between people. But I am quite confident I'd be able to tell 60/120hz with a 100% accuracy within 5s of being able to interact with the device. Probably under a second on an iPhone, ~2s on a Mac with a built-in display and slightly longer on iPads and bigger displays. Add ~2 extra second if I'm using a mouse instead of a trackpad. It is _that_ noticeable to me.
  - nicoburns 2y ago
    I'm generally ok with 60Hz (the difference isn't that significant to me). But I can definitely see the difference in a head-to-head comparison with fast moving content. The easiest way to see it for me was to move the cursor around quickly. With 60Hz there are much more visible "jumps" between positions. With 120Hz it animates much more smoothly.
  - mort96 2y ago
    It's baffling to me that some people claim to not see the difference. It's literally light and day to me. It's like someone looking at a low DPI screen and a high DPI screen and not being able to tell the difference.
    - jofzar 2y ago
      Yeah I move a window and it's immediately noticable. I'm jealous of people who can't tell.
      - lukevp 2y ago
        Same. The suggestion that it’s like audiophiles totally missed the mark, because lots of audiophile claims do not stand up to double blind tests. I can guarantee that 60 vs 120 hz blind tests would be insanely easy to pass if there was window movement or scrolling or basically anything but static frames.
declan_roberts 2y ago
They definitely are not. Not even most tech power users understand refresh rates let alone can easily spot the difference. Still a nice to have, which Apple recognizes.
klausa 2y ago
I actually call BS on the "not-being-able-to-tell". I will give you that most people outside of this websites audience will not be able to _tell_ it's because of the refresh rate. But I am quite confident if you take most of 120hz iPhone users phones out of their hand, turn on low battery mode, most will be immediately able to tell that something _feels_ off.
- stringsandchars 2y ago
  > I actually call BS on the "not-being-able-to-tell". I actually call BS on your BS. I don't believe that people are standing with two phones in their hand - an Android and an iPhone - and comparing them the way that people here are suggesting. I don't think I have ever seen anyone do that IRL, and I don't believe anyone actually does it. People go to the Apple Store to get their iPhone or to some other store to get their Android phone, because they are interested in either platform, and absolutely not thinking about hopping from one to the other based on some imperceptible screen-refresh 'smoothness'.
  - klausa 2y ago
    That's... not what I said at all? The only claim I made is that if you toggle between 60/120hz on people's devices, they will be able to tell the difference.
  - jjcob 2y ago
    i used an android phone for a year with a 90 fps display. When I switched back to an iphone, it felt slow to me. i couldn't tell what the problem was, the brand new phone just felt sluggish. a year later when using my partners iphone pro, i realised that the sluggishness must be because of the refresh rate. i think once you get used to 90 or 120 fps, then 60fps will just feel choppy. no need to compare them side by side.
meindnoch 2y ago
If you try using a 60hz screen after a 120hz one, it will feel very sluggish and choppy. As long as you don't get used to 120hz, you'll be fine with 60hz.
- brk 2y ago
  I've never really felt this way, and have used all kinds of screens of various resolutions, sizes, technologies, etc. For 99% of the typical use cases (chats, email, doom scrolling, etc.) there just is not a big enough perceptible difference for most buyers. Screen refresh rate arguments are starting to have hints of audiophile discussions.
  - hnuser123456 2y ago
    I flatly will not buy any monitor, laptop, phone, tablet, or TV with a refresh rate below 120hz. I had 120hz 1080p over DVI-dual link in 2010. I can accept graphically demanding games going down to ~50 fps, but for UI interactivity and navigation, I'll take 120hz+ only.
    - mvanbaak 2y ago
      And there you are, watching a movie on that 120p+ tv. You do k ow the movie is only 24p right?
      - hnuser123456 2y ago
        I also (hopefully) don't have to interact with any UI while the movie is playing, but if I did, I'd want that UI running at 120hz. Maybe TV streamers will start advertising 120hz output soon. Maybe I should just replace my streamer with a spare PC that can output 120.
        volemo 2y ago
        > Maybe TV streamers will start advertising 120hz output soon. 120 Hz won’t make a difference on a TV box, imo, as abysmal state of their UI is far greater of a problem. High refresh rate is nothing when a transition takes seconds and when scroll is jittery even by 60 Hz standards. :(
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electrograv 2y ago
Yes, human visual perception exists along a spectrum of temporal, spatial, and chromatic resolution that varies from person to person — I’ve even met some people who can’t perceive the difference between 30hz and 120hz, while to me and most people I know, the difference between 60hz and 120hz is enormous. So you could make the same argument against high DPI displays, superior peak screen brightness, enormously better contrast ratio, color gamut, etc. Also speaker quality, keyboard quality, trackpad quality, etc. Where does this argument end? Do you propose we regress to 60hz 1080p displays with brightness, contrast, and viewing angles that are abysmal by modern standards? Or is the claim that the MacBook Air’s current screen is the perfect “sweet spot” beyond which >99% of people can’t tell the difference? I think the market data alone disproves this pretty conclusively. Clearly a significant enough percentage of the population cares enough about image quality to vote with their wallets so much so that enormous hardware industries continue to invest billions towards make any incremental progress in advancing the technology here. To be fair, I think there’s strong data to support that modern “retina”-grade DPI is good enough for >99% of people. And you can argue that XDR/HDR is not applicable/useful for coding or other tasks outside of photo/video viewing/editing (though for the latter it is enormously noticeable and not even remotely approaching human visual limits yet). But there’s plenty of people who find refresh rate differences extremely noticeable (usually up to at least 120hz), and I think almost anyone can easily notice moderate differences in contrast ratio and max brightness in a brightly lit room.
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- VincentEvans 2y ago
  Lol, reminds me of audiophile discussions when most people listen to youtube streaming a recompressed version of an mp3 someone uploaded.
  - toxik 2y ago
    It’s not imagined though, I use my partner’s phone sometimes and every time I used it I thought it was broken because the UI jitter was so jarring at 60Hz. Actually I’m still not convinced her phone isn’t broken. Also her flashlight resets to the lowest brightness EVERY time it’s cycled.
seanmcdirmid 2y ago
It just feels more "fluid" and real, and then you get used to it and 60Hz feels jittery. I have an iPad pro, and its honestly made me consider going with an iPhone Pro (I still have just the non-pro model), although not quite yet. However, I notice a huge difference between scrolling on my phone and scrolling on my ipad. Its the same thing about retina vs. the previous resolutions we had put up with. Yes, you don't need them for text, but once you get used to it for text you don't want to go back.
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- pitkali 2y ago
  For me, the crisp text was the reason retina became a must.
alpaca128 2y ago
On smartphones you interact with the UI in a more direct way, which probably makes the input latency even more obvious. For me 120Hz is noticeable immediately when scrolling, though I also don’t find it important enough to warrant a higher price aside from gaming. What I find more important is a high pixel density, though on phones that’s less of an issue as with PC screens - I have yet to find one comparable to the ones in current iMacs.
cosmic_cheese 2y ago
I switch between refresh rates ranging from 60hz and 240hz every day and while I certainly notice the difference, unless I’m running games I adjust and forget about it in seconds. While VRR 120hz+ on all Apple device screens would be nice it’s not exactly a dealbreaker… it’s not like rendering my IDE with 2x+ extra frames changes much of anything.
jofzar 2y ago
In seriously surprised you can't tell, it feels significantly smoother for me to see a high refresh rate display. 60hz just looks sluggish/slow and wrong to me now. I had a side by side of the same monitor (was at a lan) and was watching my friend play and couldn't understand why his game looked so laggy untill I realise he had high refresh rate off. Turned on 144hz and it was so much better
- aardvark179 2y ago
  That may have very little to do with refresh rate itself, and far more to do with the image processing and latency introduced by the monitor in different video modes.
minton 2y ago
I run Windows daily at work on a 60Hz display. I recently got my son a gaming PC complete with a 144Hz monitor. I was genuinely confused why Windows itself “felt” so much better. Just dragging windows around seemed like magic. It’s not that the UI is lagging on my machine, it’s more the smoothness of things when they move around. It makes everything seem faster, despite us timing various things and finding no actual performance differences.

Jcampuzano2 2y ago

Yeah I think when they say non-tech people they mean a subset of people who know a bit about refresh rates (example being avid PC gamers for instance), but I'd still say the vast majority of people cannot tell 60 to 120. That or its not something they think about. Certainly if they had both side by side they may be able to notice a difference, but in everyday use it makes no real difference to the vast majority of people. Anecdotally even though I do use Android myself, everyone around me still think iPhones look the smoothest (albeit most of them have never even touched a quality phone running android)

Ataraxic 2y ago
It's one of those things where once you have used it, you will notice it. Given most iOS users aren't swapping between pro and non pro models, it's not something you think about.
- deleted 2y ago
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smallmancontrov 2y ago
They don't know the words but they definitely notice it. "Why is it so smooth/rough?"
fsckboy 2y ago
>Yeah I think when they say non-tech people they mean a subset of people who know a bit about refresh rates (example being avid PC gamers for instance) no, he didn't say that. he said they comment on the difference between apple and android (their perception). you have to take that as a given. that "it's because refresh rate" is his hypothesis, so yes argue that, but not by changing his evidence.
pishpash 2y ago
Just tried ProMotion vs. 60Hz on MBP, no/very little difference I can see. Sure it's just me but for me all the claims here are way exaggerated/psychological, almost like audiophiles being able to "hear" stuff that doesn't exist in a blind test.
- klausa 2y ago
  As one of the upthread comments mentioned, this is something that probably varies with sensitivity between people. But I am quite confident I'd be able to tell 60/120hz with a 100% accuracy within 5s of being able to interact with the device. Probably under a second on an iPhone, ~2s on a Mac with a built-in display and slightly longer on iPads and bigger displays. Add ~2 extra second if I'm using a mouse instead of a trackpad. It is _that_ noticeable to me.
- nicoburns 2y ago
  I'm generally ok with 60Hz (the difference isn't that significant to me). But I can definitely see the difference in a head-to-head comparison with fast moving content. The easiest way to see it for me was to move the cursor around quickly. With 60Hz there are much more visible "jumps" between positions. With 120Hz it animates much more smoothly.
- mort96 2y ago
  It's baffling to me that some people claim to not see the difference. It's literally light and day to me. It's like someone looking at a low DPI screen and a high DPI screen and not being able to tell the difference.
  - jofzar 2y ago
    Yeah I move a window and it's immediately noticable. I'm jealous of people who can't tell.
    - lukevp 2y ago
      Same. The suggestion that it’s like audiophiles totally missed the mark, because lots of audiophile claims do not stand up to double blind tests. I can guarantee that 60 vs 120 hz blind tests would be insanely easy to pass if there was window movement or scrolling or basically anything but static frames.

declan_roberts 2y ago

They definitely are not. Not even most tech power users understand refresh rates let alone can easily spot the difference. Still a nice to have, which Apple recognizes.

klausa 2y ago

I actually call BS on the "not-being-able-to-tell". I will give you that most people outside of this websites audience will not be able to _tell_ it's because of the refresh rate. But I am quite confident if you take most of 120hz iPhone users phones out of their hand, turn on low battery mode, most will be immediately able to tell that something _feels_ off.

stringsandchars 2y ago
> I actually call BS on the "not-being-able-to-tell". I actually call BS on your BS. I don't believe that people are standing with two phones in their hand - an Android and an iPhone - and comparing them the way that people here are suggesting. I don't think I have ever seen anyone do that IRL, and I don't believe anyone actually does it. People go to the Apple Store to get their iPhone or to some other store to get their Android phone, because they are interested in either platform, and absolutely not thinking about hopping from one to the other based on some imperceptible screen-refresh 'smoothness'.
- klausa 2y ago
  That's... not what I said at all? The only claim I made is that if you toggle between 60/120hz on people's devices, they will be able to tell the difference.
- jjcob 2y ago
  i used an android phone for a year with a 90 fps display. When I switched back to an iphone, it felt slow to me. i couldn't tell what the problem was, the brand new phone just felt sluggish. a year later when using my partners iphone pro, i realised that the sluggishness must be because of the refresh rate. i think once you get used to 90 or 120 fps, then 60fps will just feel choppy. no need to compare them side by side.

meindnoch 2y ago

If you try using a 60hz screen after a 120hz one, it will feel very sluggish and choppy. As long as you don't get used to 120hz, you'll be fine with 60hz.

brk 2y ago
I've never really felt this way, and have used all kinds of screens of various resolutions, sizes, technologies, etc. For 99% of the typical use cases (chats, email, doom scrolling, etc.) there just is not a big enough perceptible difference for most buyers. Screen refresh rate arguments are starting to have hints of audiophile discussions.
- hnuser123456 2y ago
  I flatly will not buy any monitor, laptop, phone, tablet, or TV with a refresh rate below 120hz. I had 120hz 1080p over DVI-dual link in 2010. I can accept graphically demanding games going down to ~50 fps, but for UI interactivity and navigation, I'll take 120hz+ only.
  - mvanbaak 2y ago
    And there you are, watching a movie on that 120p+ tv. You do k ow the movie is only 24p right?
    - hnuser123456 2y ago
      I also (hopefully) don't have to interact with any UI while the movie is playing, but if I did, I'd want that UI running at 120hz. Maybe TV streamers will start advertising 120hz output soon. Maybe I should just replace my streamer with a spare PC that can output 120.
      - volemo 2y ago
        > Maybe TV streamers will start advertising 120hz output soon. 120 Hz won’t make a difference on a TV box, imo, as abysmal state of their UI is far greater of a problem. High refresh rate is nothing when a transition takes seconds and when scroll is jittery even by 60 Hz standards. :(

deleted 2y ago

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electrograv 2y ago

Yes, human visual perception exists along a spectrum of temporal, spatial, and chromatic resolution that varies from person to person — I’ve even met some people who can’t perceive the difference between 30hz and 120hz, while to me and most people I know, the difference between 60hz and 120hz is enormous. So you could make the same argument against high DPI displays, superior peak screen brightness, enormously better contrast ratio, color gamut, etc. Also speaker quality, keyboard quality, trackpad quality, etc. Where does this argument end? Do you propose we regress to 60hz 1080p displays with brightness, contrast, and viewing angles that are abysmal by modern standards? Or is the claim that the MacBook Air’s current screen is the perfect “sweet spot” beyond which >99% of people can’t tell the difference? I think the market data alone disproves this pretty conclusively. Clearly a significant enough percentage of the population cares enough about image quality to vote with their wallets so much so that enormous hardware industries continue to invest billions towards make any incremental progress in advancing the technology here. To be fair, I think there’s strong data to support that modern “retina”-grade DPI is good enough for >99% of people. And you can argue that XDR/HDR is not applicable/useful for coding or other tasks outside of photo/video viewing/editing (though for the latter it is enormously noticeable and not even remotely approaching human visual limits yet). But there’s plenty of people who find refresh rate differences extremely noticeable (usually up to at least 120hz), and I think almost anyone can easily notice moderate differences in contrast ratio and max brightness in a brightly lit room.

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VincentEvans 2y ago
Lol, reminds me of audiophile discussions when most people listen to youtube streaming a recompressed version of an mp3 someone uploaded.
- toxik 2y ago
  It’s not imagined though, I use my partner’s phone sometimes and every time I used it I thought it was broken because the UI jitter was so jarring at 60Hz. Actually I’m still not convinced her phone isn’t broken. Also her flashlight resets to the lowest brightness EVERY time it’s cycled.

seanmcdirmid 2y ago

It just feels more "fluid" and real, and then you get used to it and 60Hz feels jittery. I have an iPad pro, and its honestly made me consider going with an iPhone Pro (I still have just the non-pro model), although not quite yet. However, I notice a huge difference between scrolling on my phone and scrolling on my ipad. Its the same thing about retina vs. the previous resolutions we had put up with. Yes, you don't need them for text, but once you get used to it for text you don't want to go back.

deleted 2y ago
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pitkali 2y ago
For me, the crisp text was the reason retina became a must.

alpaca128 2y ago

On smartphones you interact with the UI in a more direct way, which probably makes the input latency even more obvious. For me 120Hz is noticeable immediately when scrolling, though I also don’t find it important enough to warrant a higher price aside from gaming. What I find more important is a high pixel density, though on phones that’s less of an issue as with PC screens - I have yet to find one comparable to the ones in current iMacs.

cosmic_cheese 2y ago

I switch between refresh rates ranging from 60hz and 240hz every day and while I certainly notice the difference, unless I’m running games I adjust and forget about it in seconds. While VRR 120hz+ on all Apple device screens would be nice it’s not exactly a dealbreaker… it’s not like rendering my IDE with 2x+ extra frames changes much of anything.

jofzar 2y ago

In seriously surprised you can't tell, it feels significantly smoother for me to see a high refresh rate display. 60hz just looks sluggish/slow and wrong to me now. I had a side by side of the same monitor (was at a lan) and was watching my friend play and couldn't understand why his game looked so laggy untill I realise he had high refresh rate off. Turned on 144hz and it was so much better

aardvark179 2y ago
That may have very little to do with refresh rate itself, and far more to do with the image processing and latency introduced by the monitor in different video modes.

minton 2y ago

I run Windows daily at work on a 60Hz display. I recently got my son a gaming PC complete with a 144Hz monitor. I was genuinely confused why Windows itself “felt” so much better. Just dragging windows around seemed like magic. It’s not that the UI is lagging on my machine, it’s more the smoothness of things when they move around. It makes everything seem faster, despite us timing various things and finding no actual performance differences.