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Yeah. Speakers, printers, lightbulbs, garage doors, etc., etc.
I can tell the difference between 60 Hz and higher rates, but I think that most people could not care less. You don't buy a Thinkpad to game on, the most intense workout the display is liable to get is scrolling down a page.
It adds zero value to the experience, and you're just looking for things to be annoyed by / brag about.
Modern displays are already cutting edge. They have improved in every way that's meaningful in the last 35 years. Refresh rate is just not meaningful enough. "35 year old performance" it most certainly is not. You just seem hellbent on using this arbitrary (to most people) benchmark as a filter.
FYI, I run my 17 pro almost exclusively on power saving mode to cap frame rates because the battery life extending by 30 mins is more infinitely more valuable than frame rate over 50. I've capped my fancy monitor's frame rate to 60 so it matches my macbook air. And it's all fine in this world, nothing here is "one notch above unusable".
Until the bloody compositor updates the screen based on it or worse based on half of it.
Yeah it's all "fine". If these were the specs of the only laptop available to me then yeah it would be "fine". I could get things done. One or more of those things are deal-breakers for an awful lot of people.
For me, a rubbish display is a deal-breaker. I can't accept that they would compromise in this aspect, presumably to save a few bucks.
It's likely as difficult for me to understand how you could possibly prefer battery life over refresh rates as it is for you to do the opposite. And I'm not even talking crazy refresh rates here, 120hz or even 90hz at a minimum.
Would you buy a high-end laptop with 15 minute battery life? I'm not buying a new laptop with a 60hz display.
Functional: - battery life - screen resolution (binary, <2k and >2k for laptops), brightness (binary: works in the sun or not), viewing angles (binary: good enough vs not), color (binary, good enough vs not) etc - connectivity options - ram - build quality etc etc
Aesthetic: - color - finish - refresh rate - OS theming, animations and all that - material
When you say "why won't they do 120hz?" I hear "Why won't they release a magenta colored device". That's fundamentally different than "why won't they add usb c"
I don't think there's any value in 120hz. Nearly all content I consume is in 30-60 fps anyway. I don't need to see marginally smoother os animatations lol and thats nearly all 120hz is good for.
PS Gamers might actually functionally need high refresh rates. I'm not in that space, but I recognise that for some specializations it might be absolutely deal-breaker.
I wonder how much reduction we could see in eye strain, nausea, fatigue and headaches if higher refresh rates were normalised.
I remember one time showing a non-techy person the difference between a "Pro Motion" iPad Pro vs a lower spec iPad. They probably had no idea what refresh rates were before I took a moment to scroll up and down in the web browser for about 5 seconds side-by-side. They had their "ohhhhh" moment and bought the much more expensive Pro on that basis alone.
Enjoy your blissful ignorance, I guess?
I bet the vast majority of people would be perfectly happy to have 60hz display, longer battery life, and save a few bucks at the same time.
Funny bonus anecdote: I reinstall my OS in december, only a few weeks ago did I realize it wasn't set to 144hz but 60hz, since I was busy with work since and didn't play any games I did not even realize.
No these things aren't. 60 hz is fine though. What does it matter that it's "old"? It matters whether it's functional.
I for one prefer battery life over refresh frequency and will always choose 60 hz when available.
But in general I agree, just with different variables. I'm ok with 60hz but I won't use a screen less than 4K. Part of the reason I bought the ThinkPad is because it was one of the few I could find at a reasonable price that had a 4K screen.