Just got a new phone (OnePlus Nord 3), turned refresh rate HUD in developer settings and I see some parts of the system and some apps display 120 Hz but I have problem noticing any difference, same with my wife’s Redmi Note 12, i have to look very carefully and maaaybe I notice some different, not sure
You’re blessed, I can’t use a 60hz phone anymore after having one with 90hz.
If you don’t think high refresh rate makes a difference, turn it to 60hz to save some battery and to not get used to it and end up with the same problem as me.
Just changed my phone to 160hz. I can’t believe i used to live like a poor
I switch between 60Hz and 120Hz pretty often. And while I do notice a huge difference, it’s not for long and I get used to it.
I was just playing with my wife’s phone the other day. She has the pixel 6a, and I have the pixel 7. So they are extremely similar looking and feeling phones, except hers has a 60Hz screen and mine has a 90Hz screen. I thought the phone was broken. I was like, “why is the screen so choppy???”
Nah, some people just notice it more, some less. I always upset my friends when they show me their 165Hz monitors or their 4k screens and I’m like “Oh is it? I wouldn’t have noticed.” 🤷 Happens. In return I always notice immediately if an icon is badly or lazily made.
It wouldn’t surprise me if some of them didn’t actually set their monitor to 165 or whatever the highest might be. So many people talked about this back on r/pcmasterrace
I use a high refresh rate monitor and 60hz feels SO SLOW to me. I can’t stand it.
Oh yeah, once you’re used to it, it’s hard to be satisfied with less
Honestly it’s one of those things that aren’t all that impressive at first glance, but if you use it for a while THEN go back to 60hz it hurts
Precisely this. I didn’t notice it much when I started using it, but I switch between phones frequently for software development, and I definitely feel the difference. It’s nice, but it’s not a life-changing difference. It’s just a difference.
I find that I’m always perfectly happy with my current monitor or phone screen, until I see something better. Ignorance is bliss. For this reason, I deliberately try to never see any better screens, this way I always seem to remain endlessly impressed by my 75 quid Philips 1080p panel!
There’s also the group of people who easily notice it but don’t really care. Like I see that it’s different, but it’s not better to me.
I can easily tell when a phone is at 120Hz, but the difference in actual use is minor, and I keep it on 60Hz to conserver battery
Same. The 120hz feature is nice and maybe mostly good for games, but for daily use the battery life is worth more than the small smoothness upgrade at least for me.
If you’re not seeing it, you’re not paying attention to the right things. I’m never going back to anything below 120.
Especially scrolling. It’s really noticeable for those gestures which is pretty frequent on phones.
Had to scroll way too much to find this comment.
Seriously people, just try to scroll your app drawer after turning off 120Hz. It’s jitter as far as the eye can see.
Yeah scrolling is where the difference really shows. Seems about what you’d want to optimize a smartphone for
for me it’s painfully obvious when a phone is 60hz vs 120hz, i run mine at 120 and my wife doesn’t care and runs at 60… so yeah obviously some people just do not care or can’t see it, others like me need it to be high refresh haha
The difference is massive to me but my parents struggle to notice, so it certainly varies person to person
I’m starting to worry it’s an age thing, I’m near 40😝
It’s all downhill from about 25.
You’ll start to notice it by 40-50.
Generally it is a slow, gentle downhill but it varies from person to person.
My current phone Pixel 7 supports 60/90, my previous phone had 60/120 Xiaomi Mi11.
Both run at 60, why? Because I’m absolutely buggered if I can tell the difference other than higher rate drains the battery quicker.
I went from 30fps to 120fps and I can’t tell the difference
Edit: Now that I’ve experimented a bit more there definitely is a difference and 120fps feels nicer to eyes. It’s nothing huge but noticeable
Have you tried going back to the 30 Hz one?
When comparing side by side it’s obvious but on daily use I don’t notice it granted I don’t play games or anything.
That’s a bit extreme
There’s a massive difference in smoothness between 60 and 120hz for me, even just scrolling you can tell straight away how deliciously smooth 120 is.
I think in most cases it won’t matter, and many people cannot perceive the difference.
But from my own experience I did the csgo sniper test map (where you look down to the doors and shoot the random npc players that will jump across).
While I didn’t think it felt different I could consistently hit at more than twice the rate on 144hz vs 60.
After using 144hz for a while there is a more visible juddering when switching to 60. But it’s not jarring or annoying.
So I’d say for most cases it doesn’t matter. If you play fps games, there’s a definite advantage to a higher frame rate. Unconsciously I guess you’re able to use that extra info.
This isn’t new either. I used to play Cs1.6 on crt. We’d often play on a lower resolution to get higher screen refresh. My screen would for example show 800x600 at 120hz.
Yeah, I remember the Quake ]|[ Arena controversy, where people with 120hz had a real advantage over people with 60hz monitors, geez I’m old
You’ll only really notice it when things are moving and only when it’s about 60+ frames per second. Otherwise, your display is just refreshing static objects more frequently. It will not have anything to do with quality of images. You might notice an increase in responsiveness since the screen refreshed sooner, but that is generally minimal.
That’s not unusual, imo high refresh rates on phones are a bit of a marketing tactic bc they don’t really have the computation power to support it when it counts (no one really cares if a static GUI is shown at 120 Hz but it is a waste of battery, you want it for gaming, videos, etc)
No, you want it for scrolling. Scrolling feels much more responsive at 120Hz. It does drain battery more but not by enough to be a deal breaker for most people.
It’s useless for videos as most videos are 60Hz.
Please note as you go higher up in the framerate, the gains will be less noticeable.
There’s some term for this phenomenon, but I forgot it right when I wanted to type it. (please tell me again!😭)
Diminishing returns!
To add to that, it’s because frametimes are inversely proportional to the framerate.
Every time you double the framerate, you halve the frametime. Which in turn means that the improvement in frametimes gets smaller, the higher you go.
Always makes me laugh when YouTubers such as MKBHD say 60Hz is unusable in 2023. 60Hz is absolutely fine. I had 90Hz on my Pixel 4XL and never once noticed the difference.
Some people notice it a lot more. I wouldn’t want to go back from 144 to 60 on my phone, but I could live with it. Going back to 60 on my computer on the other hand… That would be a deal breaker. Especially for gaming, of course, but I literally have worse precision with the damn mouse pointer at 60 Hz now.
After reading all the comments I’m thinking it really comes to what you’re able to see. If you see no difference between 60 and 120, good for you, set it to 60 and save some battery. If you’re able to see the difference, like I do, you’ll just enjoy the extra smoothness. I’ve always seen the difference between 60 and 90/120. I think it also comes to the content. For me it’s like this:
- For videos, whatever refresh rate is ok as long as that was the intent of whoever created it.
- For games 30 is playable, 60 is good, 120 is beautifully smooth. The type of game will also play a role here. An fps will benefit more from higher refresh rates.
- For moving UI elements 30 is unusable, 60 is ok, 120 is really comfortable.
TL;DR Some people will see it, some people won’t. Do whatever works best for you.
