Hey guys, Jarrod here and today we’re going to find out if getting a higher refresh rate
display is something you should consider paying extra for when buying a laptop.
Most laptop displays come at 60Hz, which essentially translates to being able to display 60 frames
per second.
Many laptops offer you the choice to pay more to upgrade the panel to a higher refresh rate,
such as 75Hz, 100Hz, or 120Hz, just as a few examples, but is this worth it?
First let’s start with an example.
This laptop here is the Metabox P650HP-G, I recently did a full review on it if you’re
interested.
While the base model comes with a 60Hz screen, you can optionally pay a couple hundred dollars
to upgrade to a 120Hz screen, which is what this model here has.
I didn’t actually know it had a 120Hz screen when I received it, as I only have it temporarily
for review purposes, I didn’t choose the hardware.
Within the first 5 minutes in Windows and just opening folders and installing programs,
I noticed that something was different.
Everything just seemed smoother and felt nicer.
Upon checking the display adapter settings, I found that the display was running at 120Hz,
cool!
Prior to this I had not used a panel over 60Hz, so I was keen to test it out.
After installing some games and beginning to play, I wasn’t noticing much difference.This
was because the games I was playing with very high settings were only just reaching the
60 frames per second mark.
The graphics card wasn’t powerful enough to push any higher and actually take advantage
of the high refresh rate panel in most of my tests.
Now some games did get to around 100 FPS, and I did lower the graphics settings in some
of the others to push them further, but I think this goes to show that if you want to
actually be able to reach those high frame rates with high settings, you’ll need an
equally powerful graphics card along with your high refresh rate display.
In this case the graphics card is an Nvidia 1060, which while I think performs great,
is just not up to the task of running games at max settings consistently at 120FPS.
If you want to play on high settings and get those high refresh rates for ultimate smoothness,
I’d suggest looking at a 1070 at the minimum, otherwise as mentioned you can play on lower
settings to achieve the necessary frame rates to get the smooth awesomeness.
Yeah yeah, Obviously!
I hear you say, but is it actually worth it in a laptop?
That depends largely on you.
Do you care about higher FPS?
If you’re happily gaming along at 60 FPS and have no issues then by all means save
your money and keep enjoying what you have.
Upgrading to a new laptop purely for a higher screen refresh rate can be quite expensive
and is therefore hard to recommend unless you know you need it.
On the other hand, if you’ve got the extra money to spend on a higher tier graphics card
and higher refresh rate panel and want some of that extra smoothness, then this is definitely
something that you should check out.
I’d only really suggest getting the higher refresh rate on the laptop panel itself if
you’ll be doing the majority of your gaming through that display.
For instance, if you’re going to be gaming mostly at home, it may make more sense for
you to buy a larger monitor with high refresh rate to plug into the laptop and then play
there.
Do you really need the high FPS with you wherever you go?
Hopefully you can see why this depends on you and your needs, so make sure you think
about these things before buying.
It’s also worth mentioning that simply having a higher refresh rate doesn’t stop issues
like screen tearing, to help resolve that you’d need to look into something like G-Sync.
If you’re interested in that checkout my is G-Sync in a laptop worth it video, I’ll
leave a link in the video description.
Unfortunately my camera can’t record at more than 60 frames per second, and YouTube
doesn’t currently support video above this either, so I’m not able to demonstrate the
differences in the video, it’s really something you need to see for yourself.
If you haven’t tried a panel with higher refresh rate out I’d suggest trying it first
if possible before buying, if one of your friends has one or there’s one in a store
test it out and see if you notice a difference.
Although I did notice the difference on first use, it was only after I went back to 60Hz
that I was truly able to appreciate the higher frame rates.
Is it worth the extra money?
That largely depends on you, however if you have the money for the higher refresh rate
panel, an adequately powerful graphics card, and will actually make use of the laptop panel
for gaming rather than an external monitor, then yes, go for it, it just looks really
nice!
So what do you guys think about higher refresh rate displays?
Would you get one in your laptop?
Be sure to let me know your thoughts down in the comments, and leave a like on the video
if you found it useful.
Thanks for watching, and don’t forget to subscribe for future tech videos like this
one.