Screens keep getting faster. Can you even tell? | CES saw the launch of several 360Hz and even 480Hz OLED monitors. Are manufacturers stuck in a questionable spec war, or are we one day going to wo…::CES saw the launch of several 360Hz and even 480Hz OLED monitors. Are manufacturers stuck in a questionable spec war, or are we one day going to wonder how we ever put up with ‘only’ 240Hz displays?
Well no, because most people aren’t getting them. It’s nice but it’s difficulty to justify spending hundreds on a lightly better screen
This tech trickles down to mainstream in a few years. That’s always how it is.
Reminiscent of the hi-res audio marketing. Why listen at a measly 24bit 48khz when you can have 32/192?!
These have an actual perceivable difference even if subtle. Hires audio, however, is inaudible by humans.
I tend to agree, but the audiophiles always have an answer to rebuttal it with.
I’m into audio and headphones, but since I’ve never been able to reliably discern a difference with hi-res audio, I no longer let it concern me.
Imo the biggest bump is from mp3 to lossless. The drums sound more organic on flacs whereas on most mp3s they sound like a computer MIDI sound.
The biggest bump for me was the change in headphones. It made my really old aac 256kbps music sound bad.
Tried flac vs 192 vorbis with various headphones. E.g. moondrop starfield, fiio fa1, grado sr80x…
Can’t tell a difference. Kept using vorbis.
Opus is the way these days. Pretty much transparent even at 128kbps (arguably with even lower bitrates in most cases).
320kbps cbr and v0 vbr mp3 are audibly transparent. Most likely, 250kbps and v2 are too.
I’d somewhat call myself an audiophile, just one that cares about actual measurements and audibility, and not snake oil. Haven’t heard a good term for that yet, though.
Audiophiles also tend to care about some some sort of audio purity, but I’m willing to go wild with EQ, room correction, and impulse responses, which is pretty much the opposite of purity.
They have tests you can take to see if you can hear the difference. A lot of people fail! Lol
Usually percussion is where it’s easiest to notice the difference. But typically people prefer the relatively more compressed sound!
The bigger the screen, the more you notice because it covers more of your field of view. I would say 240Hz is the sweet spot. You can definitely feel the improvement from lower rates, but rates above it start to be barely noticeable. However I am fine with 144-165Hz if I wanted to save money and still get a great experience. Bellow 120Hz is unusable for me. Once you go high refresh, you cannot go back, ever. 60Hz feels like a slideshow. For gaming 60 is fine, but for work use and scrolling around I can’t have 60. Yes people, high refresh rate is useful even outside of gaming.
Funny thing is, while gaming, even if my monitor and PC can do it, I rarely let my fps go above 120-140. I limit them in the game. PC gets much quieter, uses less power, heats up less and its smooth enough to enjoy a great gameplay. I will never understand people who get a 4090 and play with unlocked fps just to get 2000 fps on minecraft while their pc is screaming for air. Limit your fps at least to your Hz people, have some care for your hardware. I know you get less input lag but you are not Shroud, those less 0.000001ms of input lag will not make a difference.
I went from 1080p60 as my standard for literal decades to 3440x1440 @144hz over the last 2 years and I can’t go back, mostly for non-gaming activities, find the ultrawide better than multi monitor for me, would love a vertical e-ink display though for text. I also limit my fps to 120, I don’t like feeling like my PC is going to take off and the place I rent is older so the room I use for my office is smaller, heats up quickly.
I still use a 75hz desktop and 60hz on my Laptop. I can’t tell the difference.
Even looking at the iPhone 15 pro next to a 15 looks the same to me.
When it comes to my phone, I can tell the difference between 90 and 60 Hz. I prefer 90 Hz but I would be okay with 60. Ideally I’d like the highest refresh rate I can get inside my budget when I have to buy a new device with a screen. One annoying limitation is that all the video is played in 24-60 Hz. I notice it when things move with any kind of speed or when I’m looking at background object and the camera moves.
All things considered, it’s a minor annoyance. My quality of life wouldn’t change if I were limited to 30 Hz.
Now I need to find a 144hz monitor. I’m not gaming outside of my steamdeck and don’t do online, so I don’t care about that. But I’m always working with text.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
After all, it wouldn’t be the first time manufacturers have battled over specs with debatable benefit to customers, whether that’s the “megahertz myth” or megapixel wars of the ‘00s or, more recently, smartphone display resolution.
You can read an in-depth breakdown of the reasoning in this post in which they argue that we’ll have to go beyond 1000Hz refresh rates before screens can reduce flicker and motion blur to a level approaching the real world.
Higher refresh rate monitors might be smoother, with better visual clarity and lower input latency for gamers — but at what point does it stop making sense to pay the price premium they carry, or prioritize them over other features like brightness?
All of this also assumes that you’ve got the hardware to play games at these kinds of frame rates, and that you’re not tempted to sacrifice them in the name of turning on some visual eye candy.
But even as a person who’s been enjoying watching the monitor spec arms race from afar, I’m not looking to imminently replace my 100Hz ultrawide LCD, which I’ve been using daily for over half a decade.
Or, to use an even sillier example, it’s like drinking bad coffee after a pandemic spent obsessing over brewing the perfect cup at home.
The original article contains 1,095 words, the summary contains 214 words. Saved 80%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I’d much rather they invest efforts into supporting customisable phones. Instead of just releasing a few flavours of the same hardware each year, give us a dozen features we can opt into or not. Pick a base size, then pick your specs. Want a headphone jack, SD card, FM radio, upgraded graphics performance? No problems, that’ll cost a bit extra. Phones are boring now - at least find a way to meet the needs of all consumers.
Not exactly what you are talking about, but slightly related: the company Fairphone makes phones with parts that can easily be replaced. The philosophy is that you will not have to buy a new phone every 3 years. They do have some customized options aswell (i.e. ram, storage, models) but its limited.
But going full on optimization with phones, laptops and tablets, similar as a desktop, is just incredibly hard due to the lack of space in the device for the components. As such it makes more sense to offer a wide variety of models, with some customizable options, and then have the user pick something.
On Fairphone, they flat out refuse to even discuss adding a headphone jack (check the posts in their forums - it’s a “hands over ears” no) so I’m sticking with Sony/ASUS (the latter atm as they’ve been slightly less anticompetitive recently but I’d much rather go to a decent company) until they do… It’s not like you notice a phone being 1mm thicker when you have a 3mm case on it anyway
Damned asus. Refusing to have a microsd card slot on a single rog phone, ever.
It seems we all have our dealbreakers. I love the Zenfone but the lack of software updates is a hard no from me.
Their answer is buying the usb-c to 3mm adapter. If you keep that connecter in you bag, ot connected to your headphones, you should be fine most of the time. Unless you would like to charge and listen to audio at the same time.
To me, that feels like a solid design choice, but yes we all have our dealbreakers.
Solid in the same way the designers heads are solid bone I guess…
A 3.5mm adapter is not an answer as it causes wear on the USB C port in ways it’s not designed for (but 3.5mm is as it’s circular so the cable rotates and breaks before the port), and it’s hard to get a good dac that isolates the power noise when using a multiple charging/listening adapter that’s also that small
My problem with fair phone is that they use old hardware.
I never replaced any parts on my old phone and only replaced the phone with a new one because it was getting really slow. I replaced the xr with an iPhone 15.
So my concern with the fair phone is that I’ll replace it with faster hardware more frequently than I would have replaced a no repairable phone that’s faster.
Your talking about project Ara. Google bought it out and killed it roughly ten years ago.
RIP Project Ara
I wish a company would build 4.5"-5.5" and 5.5"-6.5" flagship phones, put as many features that make sense in each.
Then when you release a new flagship the last flagship devices become your ‘mid range’ and you drop the price accordingly, with your mid range dropping to budget the year after.
When Nokia had 15 different phones out at a time it made sense because they would be wildly different (size, shape, button layout, etc…).
These days everyone wants as large a screen as possible on a device that is comfortable to hold, we really don’t need 15 different models with slightly different screen ratios.
These days everyone wants as large a screen as possible
iPhone mini gang rise up!
Yay I’m part of something! :-)
I updated to the latest mini iPhone after rumours it would be the last. I hope not, but the trend seems to be bigger and more ridiculous “phone” form factors.
I don’t need or want a phone over 90hz, and a pc screen over 180hz. A phone is a waste of battery and a pc screen over that is a waste of money.
Then don’t buy them? With better screens coming out the ones you do want to buy get cheaper.
Back in the day 144hz screens cost a premium, now you can have them for cheap.
I didn’t say I wanted them disallowed from being made. Just that it’s dumb to buy them.
I think there’s an argument to make screens faster. Graphics have hit a point where resolution isn’t going to give anything of substance… It’s now more about making lighting work “right” with ray tracing… I think the next thing might be making things as fluid as possible.
So at least in the gaming space, these higher refresh rates make sense. There’s still fluidity that we as humans can notice that we’re not yet getting. e.g. if you shake your mouse like crazy, even on a 144hz the mouse will jump around to different spots it’s not a fluid motion (I’ve never seen a 180hz but I bet the same applies).
You can see it moving a mouse super quick on a static background, but I never notice it happening in games. There’s probably something there a touch noticeable in some fps online games if you really paid attention and could lock your max fps at 120fps with a 240hz monitor, but that would be about it, and I don’t competitively play fps games. I’m perfectly happy with running 60fps at 120hz for myself.
All I want is a 27/28 inch oled 4k monitor with good hdr. I don’t care about the refresh rate as long a it’s 60Hz+
I’m sticking out with IPS until MicroLED matures enough for me to afford.
OLED was never designed to be used as a computer monitor and I don’t want a monitor that only lasts a couple years.
Researchers just designed a special two layer (thicker than current OLED) that doubles the lifespan to 10,000hours at 50% brightness without degrading.
I’m totally with you on good HDR though. When it works, it’s as night -and-day as 60 -> 144hz felt for me.
Why would oled only last 2 years?
It doesn’t only last for two years, however it begins to degrade after one year of illuminating blue. This would reduce the color accuracy.
However OLEDs are also very bad at color accuracy across it’s brightness range. Typically at lower brightness their accuracy goes out the window.
This isn’t as bad on smart phones ( smart phones also apply additional mitigations such as subpixel rotation) however desktop computers typically display static images for much longer and so not use these mitigations afaik.
How can screens be fast when our eyes are slow?
Maybe this is what Jaden Smith meant when he famously stated:
How Can Mirrors Be Real If Our Eyes Aren’t Real
Wow, still blown away…
