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Comment by benley

19 hours ago

I'm sure there is a point of diminishing returns for display refresh rates, but I can tell you from experience that it is definitely higher than 60hz. 90hz feels meaningfully smoother (on a Steam deck), and 120/144hz (on a desktop monitor in my case) feels smoother than that. Even mouse input latency is perceptibly lower. I've never used a display faster than 144hz but I honestly would not be surprised to discover that one can still tell the difference well past 144hz.

60fps is basically fine as long as you are unaware that it can be any better, but once you find out you are forever spoiled by the knowledge.

I'm sure mouse latency is a big issue for iPad Mini users.

I know there's a sizable contingent of people who just think a bigger number is better, but realistically this is a device for passively consuming text and video content that is typically around 30 fps anyway. Why waste the battery power on faster refresh?

  • I know you’re being sarcastic with that first line, but touch latency is even more noticeable than mouse latency.

    Does the page look and feel glued to your finger as you scroll?

    • > Does the page look and feel glued to your finger as you scroll?

      Yes, for me issues with apps have mainly been in poorly optimized code causing lag, slow loading and the like. The 60hz/120hz thing has never really been a practical issue.

  • Not sure about iPads, but going from a pixel 3 to a pixel 5 made me feel like my pixel 3 was broken. Xr to 16 pro was similar, but that is because Xr was legit broken.

  • The ProMotion screens have variable refresh rate depending on the content displayed. 10Hz to 120Hz for iPhones and 24Hz to 120Hz for iPads. So in theory the power consumption should be even better than a regular screen for static content like reading text.

Yup. For me up until 90/100ish it's a pretty significant improvement all the way up and after that I don't know if I could notice outside of a fast game or wiggling the cursor over a contrasting color

I'm sure a lot of people now would feel odd if you gave them a 60Hz phone after high refresh has become so common, even if they don't pay conscious attention to that kind of stuff

Having seen faster screens, I find 120 is where the diminishing returns ramp up for me. I wouldn’t bother with more.