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Comment by petepete | Hacker News Reader

Once you try a high refresh rate monitor, even for work, you just don't want to go back. Every movement and animation is buttery smooth.

Try setting your refresh rate to 30hz for an hour.

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People say this, but I’ve had people fail double blind tests for 120hz vs 90hz vs 60hz. I’ve yet to find anyone that can reliably tell 144hz vs 120hz.

What people mostly notice is latency not refresh rate.

I'd agree with you. I think people who use those sorts of displays frequently could tell the difference between 60 and 120hz but 120 vs 144hz seems way too close together.

Took me 2 seconds to notice that a friends monitor was at 60hz by just moving the mouse. Just look at the distance between each cursor icon update as you move it.

Some people use really slow mice (low resolution and/or configured for low sensitivity), which I suspect is a factor here.

It's noticeable for me on every single mouse movement— no special effort is required to move the cursor 'quickly'.

That’s a rendering artifact.

You can show multiple mouse images at 60 fps which shouldn’t trick people if they can actually see 90 vs 60 vs 120 fps.

Anecdotal, but my friends and I have passed such tests. YMMV

You mean double blind 144hz vs 120hz when latency isn’t an issue?

If you don’t mind me asking how old are your friends?

That's crazy to me, just move the mouse around really quickly and you'll quickly notice it's not 120hz (if you are used to it).

What blind test did you use?

They watched normal desktop use and a video game loop.

I added mouse trails to verify people were actually noticing the FPS not just artifacts from the rendering pipeline.

Oh, pretty sure the mouse trails will kill any ability, that’s by far the most noticeable thing about the higher refresh rate in my experience.

Agreed. I have a number of 4K 144 Hertz monitors, I'd like a 6 or 8K monitor but until they have it in high refresh create I'm not switching. I'm not much of a gamer, but when I do occasionally game it is significantly more fluid as well.

Theres a hill people are willing to die on. Resolution matters for me, I don't care about refresh rate.

I'm constantly switching between my M1 Air and work M2 16 Pro and refresh rate has never bothered me.

I have 60, 144 and 165hz displays. I have to say I don't really see much of a difference. Around 30 hz yes. But not over 60. It's probably some sort of genetic vision difference thing.

Even moving the mouse quickly should be a very different experience between 60 and 165

I appreciate that. I can't discern the difference like most people for some reason, unless I am really looking for it.

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