> I don’t notice going back to 60 Hz displays on computers. However, on phones, where a lot more animations are a key part of the user experience, I think 120 Hz displays are more interesting.
I'm always so jealous of these people, 60hz is just so bad for me now and even make me a bit motion sick.
I can see it in everything, moving the window, scrolling, the cursor.
It's interesting how different people pick up different details. I can't really see the difference between 60Hz and 120Hz for example, but I'm unusually sensitive to bad kerning. The nano texture screen also screams smearing and low resolution to me.
Same. I currently have a 160hz and a 240hz monitor. And I can tell the difference between them when scrolling pages with tons of text.
There's less ghosting in 240hz.
And scrolling on 60hz to me looks blurry.
I'd like to think that those who don't notice the difference have improved brain GPUs that can compensate for ghosting.
> I'd like to think that those who don't notice the difference have improved brain GPUs that can compensate for ghosting.
Wow. My perspective was those that did notice the difference were more perceptive. Thank you - now I realize there is a completely different take. (I'm not sure that it's helpful mind you... but it gives me something to chew on).
How can you know it is not bias? For what its worth you might have never noticed any difference if you didn't knew they weren't refreshing at the same frequency.
For those of us who can see it, they are very noticeable. And could be told in blind testing 100% of times. After all 240Hz is still 4.1ms per frame, Again I have to point to this Microsoft Research Video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4
Oh for me it's very clear.
Specially between 60hz and 120+.
Scrolling looks blurry/ghosted in 60hz.
I guess I could vibe code an app to set monitor Hz randomly in either 60 or 280 and test.
But it would be a waste of time from how clearly I can tell the difference.
Wait until you try an OLED computer monitor, that screws with the "higher refresh rate => less ghosting" thought process completely.
Oh yeah I have an Oled LG C4 TV with 120hz refresh rate.
Can't go back to non-oleds.
I've made a test for myself. Screen split into two parts, two small squares moving and bouncing. First square moves every frame, second square skips every second frame, but moves 2x. So basically one half of the screen is full FPS, another half of the screen is half FPS. And I implemented it as a "blind test", so I could make a guess and then check it.
For screen with 60 FPS, the difference between 30 FPS and 60 FPS was pretty obvious and I could guess it 100% of the time.
For screen with 144FPS, the difference between 72FPS and 144FPS was not obvious at all and I couldn't reliably guess it at all. I also checked it with a few other persons, and they all failed this simple test.
So now I'm holding firm opinion, that these high-FPS displays are marketing gimmick.
https://pastebin.com/raw/hwR62Yhi here's HTML, save it and open. left click reveals which half is "fast" (full FPS) or "slow" (half FPS), scroll changes speed, F5 generates new test.
How old are you? I'm convinced this is an important detail.
I hosted a LAN party when I was in my early twenties when higher hz monitors were getting more popular in specifically the gaming scene. My buddy and I were playing a match of Counter Strike together side by side, me at 60Hz and him at 120Hz. I used to think like you, but it blew my mind how smooth it was in comparison, so much so I ordered a new monitor that weekend. I don't think it improved my ability to play in any significant way but it definitely felt nicer and smoother. Conversely, at the time you had to specifically set the option in Windows to account for higher Hz and if I forgot to on a reinstall or for whatever reason, I could tell something was off and would question my FPS and turn my counter on to see if I was getting lower FPS. You may not believe it, but I would noticably play worse. I thought it was psychosomatic myself until it happened a handful of times.
Now, I'm not a pro CS player by any means, but I guarantee you it matters, makes a difference, and is noticeable. I'm getting older now and care less as time goes on, but I still swear by and game on a high Hz monitor. When I look over my wife's shoulder on her low Hz monitor, the mouse movements are like a flipbook and when gaming on a Nintendo Switch 2 at 60 FPS, it is laughably noticeable.
Thanks for sharing the test. I'm surprised you aren't able to tell the difference -- I can pretty consistently (90%+) get the right answer to both sides at 120 fps "fast," speeds as low as ~500. At higher speeds it's much easier.
You can’t write it off as a marketing gimmick just because you and a few others personally can’t see the difference, many people demonstrably can.
> So now I'm holding firm opinion, that these high-FPS displays are marketing gimmick.
While I agree the jump from 60 -> 140 hz/fps is not as noticeable as 30 -> 60, calling everything above 60 a ”marketing gimmick” is silly. When my screen or TV falls back to 60hz for whatever reason I can notice it immediately, you don’t have to do anything else than move your mouse or scroll down a webpage.
If I hook up an LED to a microcontroller and blink it at increasing frequencies until I stop being able to see it (for me about 85Hz), then if brain hardware is optimized, I shouldn't notice a difference at twice that frequency ala Nyquist sampling theorem?
For me it's the motion clarity that I notice the most. Higher FPS is just one way to get more clarity though, with other methods like black frame insertion then even 60 fps feels like 240.
Pretty cool test, but I wonder how fast you ran them at? I was able to distinguish between full and half after increasing the speed to around ~2000 units.
Crazy. I switch between my work’s M4 MacBook Pro and my personal M3 MacBook Air all the time and I forget that the displays are even different.
Agree completely with this.
When I use a desktop display, my pattern is: load page, read content for 10-30 seconds, scroll, repeat.
When I use a phone, the read-time-before-scroll is more like 1-5 seconds due to the much smaller display.
I notice the scrolling blur in both places on 60 Hz displays, but it bothers me way more on a phone because I'm scrolling so much more.
The curse of high standards. I wish I dont notice a lot of things. I wish I can stop thinking about why something that is clearly better hasn't been done.
I would live a much happier life.
I don’t think on this case it’s high standards, my eyes are just unable to really notice the difference.
I regularly switch between Android 120hz and iPhone 60 hz. It's bad for maybe 2 or 3 minutes then the brain get used once again to it.
There is nothing groundbreaking about 120hz.
I'm right there with you, 60hz feels like a flip book to me now.
I can tell the difference between 120 and 60 just fine and of course prefer better, but it doesn’t bother me.
It’s unfortunate if it bothers you. I have the same reaction to 30Hz.
How do you watch movies or TV without throwing up?
Major difference is one you're watching something without interacting with it and the other is responding to your action; one you have your gaze relatively still, taking in the entire frame, the other your eyes are tracking an object as you interact with it via some sort of input device.
In tracking motion your eyes/brain can see improved motion resolution (how clear the details are in an object moving across the screen) up to 1000Hz.
Your body & nervous system processing has input lags on the order of 100ms and variance on the order of 10’s of ms though.
But your eyes can track a moving object (like a car, or a ball, or a cursor or text on a scrolling webpage); they don’t stay 100ms behind it.
That is predictive motion isn't the same thing.
Distance to screen matters.
Personally I've had concussions and bad screens do make me sick. Even 60hz TVs if I'm sitting somewhat close, particularly for certain content. All the chaos of Dr. Strange / Multiverse was too much for me to watch.
Motion blur mitigates the issue to some extent, why 24fps films are watchable.
Same, thankfully its now completely gone in phones. But i like the MBA 13 for its form factor but the screen feels broken to me.
This is such a weird experience for me. On my phone, I instantly notice going back to 60 from 90 hz. But on my computers and handheld consoles, I don't mind, or even notice, at all.