Screens keep getting faster. Can you even tell?

theverge.com:

By Jon Porter, a reporter with five years of experience covering consumer tech releases, EU tech policy, online platforms, and mechanical keyboards.

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OLED monitors have gotten faster than ever. While LCD monitors have been pushing 500Hz for around a year now, CES 2024 saw similarly excessive refresh rates arrive on their OLED siblings, with multiple monitors hitting speeds of 360 and 480Hz.

Whenever we’ve written about these monitors, commenters have quite fairly asked what the point of this all is. 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. 

It wasn’t just one or two manufacturers that had such high refresh rate OLEDs to show off. Samsung, Dell, and MSI all revealed 27-inch monitors that run 1440p resolutions at 360Hz. Asus one-upped them with a 480Hz 27-inch monitor. And both LG and Asus unveiled 32-inch “Dual-Hz” displays, which offer 240Hz 4K as standard but can boost to 480Hz if you’re happy to put up with a lower 1080p resolution.

Although these new OLED monitors aren’t hitting quite the same refresh rates as the fastest LCDs, in practice, OLED’s faster pixel response times mean that they’re likely to have better motion clarity all the same. In a video comparing a 240Hz Asus OLED monitor with a 360Hz Asus LCD last year, YouTuber Optimumpoints out that the LCD monitor had more ghosting despite its higher refresh rate, and the two monitors were pretty evenly matched on motion blur despite the differences in refresh rate. Blur Busters’