Are 240Hz gaming laptops worth it? I’ve been waiting to get one for testing ever since
first seeing them on display at CES back in January, so let’s find out if they’re
a game changer or a gimmick.
Just as a refresher, lame pun intended, the refresh rate of your screen is how many times
the image changes per second, so for a 240Hz screen like the one I’ve got in this Aorus
15 gaming laptop, that means the screen will change 240 times per second. Before this,
144Hz was the best you could get in a laptop, however external 240Hz monitors have been
around for a while now. While 240Hz in a general sense is nothing new, we’re only just now
getting it available in laptops, and I’ve got some examples linked in the description.
This is different to the frame rate, or FPS your laptop can produce in games. For example,
in Overwatch with lower settings it’s possible to hit the 300 FPS frame cap. Despite the
hardware being capable of producing high FPS, if you have a 60Hz screen, the screen is only
going to be refreshed 60 times per second. This doesn’t just mean there’s no point
going over 60 FPS though, it’s kind of a different topic but you can check the card
in the top right corner where Tim from Hardware Unboxed covers why FPS higher than your refresh
rate is still beneficial.
To take full advantage of a high refresh rate display like 240Hz you’re going to want
to be able to run games at high frame rates. The benefit of this is that games that are
capable of producing high FPS feel smoother and more responsive.
This is where we may start to run into problems with 240Hz laptops. Even the higher end gaming
laptops can’t compete to the specs available in a gaming PC, so depending on the game and
settings you’re playing with you may not be able to get high enough framerate to make
240Hz worthwhile compared to a 144Hz alternative option.
With that in mind, the Aorus 15 gaming laptop that I’ve got here has an Intel i7-9750H
CPU and Nvidia RTX 2070 graphics, no max-q here, so it should be able to perform pretty
well for a portable machine. I’ll just quickly blast through some benchmarks to give you
an idea of what sort of FPS this level of specs gives us to see if the 1080p 240Hz screen
is worth it.
Overwatch runs well on pretty much any modern hardware, so even at ultra settings we’re
seeing average FPS around 240, a good matchup for the 240Hz screen, with lower settings
hitting the 300 FPS cap in this game. If I’m looking for it I can just notice screen tearing,
but you could just enable vsync and lock it to 240 FPS and keep it extremely smooth.
Fortnite also runs quite well on pretty much anything, and low settings were getting us
just below 240 FPS, though it’s not as if we need to hit 240 FPS exactly, the fact is
this is still over 90 additional frames that would be shown on the screen each second when
compared to 144Hz.
CS:GO was tested with the Ulletical FPS benchmark, and even maxed out above 200 FPS was possible,
with higher than 240 possible with lower settings, so again a good game that would benefit from
the 240Hz screen if you’re playing competitively.
I don’t think Dota 2 really needs an insane frame rate, but at low settings above 190
FPS was possible with this laptop.
Rainbow Six Siege was tested with the built in benchmark, and while higher settings were
still giving good FPS in this test, low settings was getting us above 240 FPS.
These are all less demanding games though, if we look at something else like Battlefield
5 even with low settings and RTX off, shown by the purple bar down the bottom, the frame
rate is fine for a 144Hz screen, 240hz would be unlikely to help further.
PUBG is another quick example, even at minimum settings we’re not seeing above 130 FPS,
so it just goes to show that it really depends on the types of games that you plan on playing,
and the settings used.
In general I’d only recommend a 240Hz laptop screen if you’re going to be playing those
esports titles that are actually able to run at high frame rates, otherwise you’re probably
not going to benefit much over a more standard 144Hz screen.
I’m sure some people won’t even be able to tell the difference between the two as
well, personally I had a tough time, but using two machines together I was able to notice
the subtle difference. There’s a much more obvious jump going from 60Hz to 144Hz, but
the jump from 144Hz to 240Hz was much more minimal for me, I suspect it may vary between
people, and to me it seems to be a pretty niche option in a laptop, mainly for those
playing esports titles competitively.
Battery life is important when it comes to laptops, so does running the screen at a higher
refresh rate use more battery power? As you can set the refresh rate of the screen, I’ve
tested the battery life at 240Hz and 60Hz twice each. Unfortunately I wasn’t able
to set 144Hz with this, but this does seem to indicate that the battery lasts longer
while at 60Hz. All testing was done with the screen at 50% brightness with YouTube videos
playing.
On average 60Hz is lasting 13.8% longer than 240Hz, so could be worth changing this in
Windows when on battery power, especially considering most laptops generally do not
perform as well when compared to being plugged into the wall, so you probably won’t be
smashing 200+ FPS anyway.
Visually I can’t say there are any differences just looking at this 240Hz Sharp panel compared
to other 144Hz laptops I’ve tested recently. I’ve tested colour gamut with the Spyder
5, and we’re looking at 97% of sRGB, 69% of NTSC, and 75% of AdobeRGB, so pretty decent
results for a gaming laptop. At 100% brightness in the center I measured the panel at 343
nits with a 860 to 1 contrast ratio, so overall above average compared to others I’ve tested,
meaning it doesn’t look like there are any obvious compromises with this 240Hz panel.
Viewing angles also looked fine to me on all angles.
In terms of backlight bleed it was looking pretty good, a small issue down the bottom
right, but overall no difference from any other 144Hz panels I’ve tested, though this
will of course vary between laptops.
I’m happy to see 240Hz laptop panels coming to market, however I do think that they have
a pretty niche use case at the moment, and are likely to be used as a selling point to
people who may not even be able to utilize them. Again it all comes down to the games
you’re playing and settings in use due to the hardware we’ve currently got in laptops,
as well as even the individual looking at the panel. In the future as our processor
and graphics become more powerful it may be easier to run such games at higher frame rates.
As we saw in the benchmarks earlier, we generally need to be playing esports titles with lower
settings in order to get high enough FPS make 240Hz really worth it.
Even then the improvement over 144Hz was hard for me to notice, but I expect this sort of
thing will vary between people so it’s probably a case of needing to try it out for yourself
first if possible. At this time I think 240Hz is more geared towards pro players where the
difference may actually matter more, though even then it seems niche as you’d expect
these guys to be playing on a desktop PC for best performance rather than a laptop.
In terms of pricing differences I haven’t been able to find too many examples yet as
these are still fairly new, but I’ll link some 240Hz models in the description. The
Aorus 15 I’ve got here with 240Hz screen is $2200 USD at the moment, while the 144Hz
model is $1950, however there’s also a difference in CPU there, so this price difference isn’t
just the screen. Similar problems with other models I checked, they all went to 9th gen
with the 240Hz, so it’s hard to see how much 240Hz only is costing us at this time.
So what screen refresh rate will you be getting in your next laptop, or will you be trying
to buy a 240Hz panel to upgrade your current laptop? Let me know if you think it’s worth
it down in the comments, and if you’re new to the channel get subscribed for future tech
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