Comment by Aurornis
1 day ago
High refresh rate displays are an interesting feature because most users do not notice the difference.
I can spot a 60Hz display from jiggling the mouse pointer for a second.
I’ve also done side-by-side comparisons of full screen scrolling on 60Hz and 120Hz screens for less technical people who could barely perceive a difference when I was pointing it out, but it took some time to get them to see it.
MKBHD (YouTube tech video and reviewer) talks about this a lot: It’s highly valuable to people like you and me who are attuned to the performance of our devices, but most people don’t notice. Or care!
I would appreciate high Hz displays everywhere, but I admit that Apple has probably made the right consumer choice tradeoff to compromise on refresh rate for these lower end devices where minimum cost and maximum battery life are the two most important features for those who buy them.
I'm one of those who can't spot a difference. I've tried to with the mouse trick or scrolling and I just can't see it. I can see the difference between 30fps and 60fps but anything north of 60fps is imperceptible to me. Maybe it's from a lifetime of gaming on toaster specs where I'd scarcely break 25fps.
Motion picture film 24 frames per second, old line NTSC 30 frames per second.
I think another thing to keep in mind is that there’s probably an element of sensory adaptation at play here. Like when you wear a watch: you notice it at first, and then you don’t notice it on your wrist anymore.
So if you’re actively moving between a high-refresh-rate device (like a lot of people here with their 144hz monitors) and then one with a lower refresh rate, you’re probably more sensitive (and potentially annoyed) by the discrepancy.
You will notice this as soon as you use a low dpi device again for any length of time. First 10 minutes you see the pixels. After that you stop seeing the pixels.
Viewing distance plays a factor too. I realized 4k tvs are useless to me because I can't perceive 1080p pixels unless I'm comparison shopping in a TV show room from 2 feet away (probably why they don't let you experience appropriate TV viewing distances in these spaces in the first place).