not seeing any non negligible difference between 60 and 120 Hz, am I weird?
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.
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.
Haha definitely possible. Maybe compare side by side and see if you can learn to appreciate it a bit if you're interested. It's kinda nice to be able to tbh
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.
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.
In fact, scrolling is the main difference to me. App opening/closing animations also appear smoother, but I find you get used to those much easier if you go back to 60 Hz after having used 120 Hz. Scrolling, however, isn't the same...
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.
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
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
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.
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.
I still can't really tell the difference between 30 and 60 fps, so I run everything at 30 with higher settings. I feel like I'm winning.
Lol, I tried 30FPS cap in Genshin Impact and it became a stuttering mess
60 to 120 Hz is definitely noticeable to me; when scrolling, it makes a big difference. When my phone auto-switches to low battery mode and to lower refresh rates I can usually tell the difference very quickly.
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:
TL;DR Some people will see it, some people won't. Do whatever works best for you.
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.
I use mine at 90HZ and i can clearly see the difference
I have an OG Nord and turned the refresh rate from 90Hz to 60Hz because it makes no difference to anything but battery life.
Are you viewing dynamic or static content? For me, the difference is huge with games, etc but harder to tell with static images.
Guessing not much content goes above 60 fps on mobile, except interface, played with describing long lists up and down, still barely noticed any difference
120 is about latency more than anything else. When you play a game in 120 you notice how fast the reaction to your controller presses are making gameplay super smooth. On a phone, I can't imagine that being as noticeable for day to day use.
After awhile at 120hz, use someone's 60hz phone, you'll notice it.
This is why I'm intentionally staying away from high-refresh-rate displays until I can feasibly upgrade everything I use to that standard (phone, TV+consoles, desktop monitors, etc). I don't know exactly what I'm missing out on and ignorance here is bliss.
If it helps, I only have a high refresh phone display. I don't notice the difference when I'm using my slower displays because I'm not used to seeing those applications at a higher refresh rate. It doesn't seem to bother my mind.
I only notice it when I'm using another phone at a lower refresh rate.
I remember on crt's there was a massive difference between 60hz and 85 hertz, but my laptop has a 120 hertz screen and I really don't see much of a difference between it and 60 hertz and it at 120 hertz, there is some work out there by some people that suggest that it's because the CRT is just structured in such a way that you're going to notice improved frame rates better and it's going to look less blurry to your eyes.
For me the biggest difference between 60 and 85 Hz on a CRT was that one gave me a massive headache and nausea within a few hours, and the other didn't.
Modern displays work differently though, especially LCDs which only really flicker if the backlight flickers. CRTs only display a small sliver of the image at any given time, while the rest is black or fading away until the next frame is drawn.
(Though I do see a big difference between 60 and 85 fps these days; 85-95 is where I start to find FPS games to not feel downright choppy, but there's still a big, big difference between 95 and 165.)
Higher refresh rates make a bigger difference when physically larger portions of the screen are changing at once, and when there's fast movement on the screen. That's why it has a more noticeable effect on FPS games, where the entire screen changes when you move the mouse, and when you want to quickly move your aim to specific points. It's much more noticeable on a large display than it is on a phone screen, for example.
on a phone for me its not a useful feature. i notice it mainly when scrolling. meh. its fine on 60hz imho. maybe if i did more gaming on me phone or whatever id care more but just watching videos and browsing the web its fine.
It's harder to notice the difference at first. When I first got my 144Hz monitor I had trouble distinguishing between the two, but now I can immediately tell (and it's made going back to gaming at 60fps really difficult lol).
If you keep using 120Hz mode, then after a while you'll definitely feel the difference between the two.
That said unless you game on your phone a lot, I don't know how useful it is to have it set to 120, especially if it drains more battery.
Even moving windows around looks and feels stuttery on desktop at 60hz, which is a pretty simple action. Basic desktop navigation I find more bothersome than 60 fps in a video game, since the system just feels and looks less responsive when it comes to animations and scrolling and moving stuff around.
I had to replace my old monitor that was 60 hz that I was intended to use as my secondary, since it was way too jarring having the two side by side. I avoided using the second one because of how suddenly it felt laggy entering that domain. Just the cursor movement looked bad.
In some cases I think it's actually worse. When scrolling through my code on 60hz, I can still read some words, because it's in the same place long enough. On 120hz, it's just a blur whilst scrolling, my eye can't focus on any words to read them.
For gaming it's nice because it reduces input lag, but when playing a game where the timing isn't that tight, it doesn't matter much.
Should be the other way around. Motion clarity goes up with refresh rate.
I'm not sure how would it matter either. But I'm not gaming much on my phone so maybe that's that.
I find it notice it the most on phones, like a huge difference for me. Not as much on PC monitors though.
I tend to not see the difference, but I do feel it.
Whether it’s on a phone or gaming on a computer, it just feels more responsive and like a smoother experience.
I turned mine from 120hz (default) to 60hz to save battery. Probably the only reason I noticed is because I knew it was 120hz. The battery hit wasn't worth the subtle difference.
I just went from 90Hz to 60Hz and it was noticably worse. Promptly went back to 90 lol.
Did to test it with some 4k movies or games with a refresh rate above 60hz?
With lower res movies, games, photos and static UI, you can't spot it anyway.
There’s like two 4k movies that have a refresh rate above 24FPS lawl
My phone supports 60Hz and 120Hz (nothing in between) and the difference is definitly recognizable.
Scroll up and down real fast.
Humans can only see 12 frames per second.
you forgot the /s
What kind of apps? I don't think you'd really see much change with simple 2D interfaces. But video or things rendered in 3D real time will most definitely be noticable.
On a 2D interface, the most noticable thing would be scrolling. Scrolling is much smoother with a higher refresh rate. Just scroll through these comments switching between 60 and 120. Guarantee you'd notice.
I doubt you would see much in video, as most sources are less than 60 fps.
That is true. Sports are sometimes digitslly broadcast at higher frame rates, though. I've seen some Sharks games at 90+ and now it just looks awful when I see hockey at 60 or less on TV.
If you are in a 60 Hz electrical area (i.e. the Americas, mostly), and the power is rock-steady, and you have cheap fluorescent lighting -- then anything other than 60 Hz refresh rates might improve your screen, but much more so on old CRTs than on modern LCDs and OLEDs.
These days, like most smartphone 'features', it is mostly but not entirely about a checkmark to induce you to feel that you are missing out on something.