Is 360Hz a Waste? - 240Hz vs 360Hz Monitors
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Published 2024-05-25
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Is 360Hz a Waste? - 240Hz vs 360Hz Monitors
I know, I know, the human eye can't see past 4 frames per second, but guys 360Hz OLED monitors are here, and there selling like hotcakes, so is 360Hz truly a waste as some may think, or is it a huge upgrade worth paying for? Well fear not my fellow sweaty gamers, because as a reviewer whose thrown hands with over 20 OLEDs in just the last year alone I’m here to definitively answer that question, and in order to do so, let me buss down the 2 key advantages higher frame rates bring to the table.
The higher the frame rate the lower the input lag. Listen, you may be hard stuck in rookie lobbies now, but perhaps it's not you, but the high latency of your PC, who are we kidding, it's you, but regardless there is definitely an advantage to sustaining higher frame rates so you can react quicker. For example
60fps has a delay of 16.7ms
120fps a delay of 8.33ms
240fps a delay of 4.17ms
And 360fps a delay of just 2.78ms
As you can imagine someone at 360Hz will have a substantial advantage over a player with just 60fps, as they can theoretically react nearly 14ms faster, which doesn’t seem like a lot, but at high levels of play this is a huge difference and could make or break the game.
However when comparing 360Hz to 240Hz the difference is much smaller. In fact 360Hz is just roughly 1.5ms faster, and listen, faster is faster, but is this enough for you to have a substantial advantage? No. In fact many people may not even notice the difference if they aren't accustomed to 360Hz gaming already. Even worse, this tiny advantage comes at the cost of needing a PC that can pump out 50% more performance to sustain a stable 360Hz which also means spending A LOT more on your PC, but does that mean it's a waste?
Not necessarily
Before we make that call we need to talk about the second key advantage of higher frame rates. Motion performance.
Yes, everyone knows that lower latency is better, but in fast paced games seeing objects in motion clearly can be just as important to make sure you line up your shot correctly. This is likely the largest advantage running 360Hz has, because as you can see 144Hz OLED is already pretty decent, but trying to read text in motion is impossible. At 240Hz it starts to become much more feasible, but at 360Hz it is substantially clearer once again.
Now again you certainly don’t absolutely need this level of clarity, but even for day to day use the speed and clarity is quite nice, but in gaming it can give you that small edge you need to win the game.
However the question remains. Is it a waste? Yes and no. Yes it’s a waste in a sense that you have to pay for a significantly more powerful PC to get a small advantage in games, and I’m not just talking about the graphics card, you will even need an incredibly fast CPU and RAM to drive over 240fps consistently, but if your someone who can benefit from that advantage, or you simply enjoy the feel and look of ultra low latency & extremely smooth motion, then for you 360Hz will be worth it, as there is no technical disadvantage to having a higher framerate, so hopefully all types of monitors can eventually be available at 1000Hz.
But until that day, you will have to weigh the pros and cons of choosing between a higher resolution at a lower refresh rate, or a lower resolution at a higher refresh rate, and while that certainly will depend on your personal preferences, considering the diminishing returns beyond 240Hz, I think most gamers who play a mix of games would be better off purchasing 4K 240Hz OLED over a 360Hz 1440p OLED if you have enough PC power to run either option and you you can’t decide which you would rather have, as the bump in resolution & thus overall detail will be significantly more noticeable then the jump in speed.
Monitors Shown. Affiliate links below. I earn commission on purchases.
16:9 (4K)
Gigabyte 32" (4K 240Hz OLED) FO32U2: amzn.to/3W42Do0
16:9 (1440p)
Alienware 27" (1440p 360Hz OLED) AW2725DF: howl.me/clV5XkZbvs1
Gigabyte 27" (1440p 360Hz OLED) FO27Q3: amzn.to/4awu8u1
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All Comments (21)
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I went from a 240hz to 360hz and in games where I can get that FPS, it is a nice increase in smoothness, but really only when quickly whipping the camera around.
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@thedisplayguy I capped the FPS to the half I had. Nothing changed. My Nvidia driver version is 551.86... Even with capped fps the flickering appears always in darker areas. No frametime spikes or framedrops. Any other thing I can do?
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I have 165hz and 180hz IPS monitors with well tuned OD, and when I tried a 240hz IPS at my friend's place it's not a massive difference. However OLED is a completely different story, even at the same 240hz it's night and day clearity diofference. I'm switching to a 360hz OLED this year.
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I was sceptical about the difference, but I have been playing Apex on a PC at 240Hz consistently and whilst messing about with the new console 120Hz mode I tried 60Hz again, it feels like you are bogged down and heavy with the movement. I can't believe I thought 60 was enough in the past being a console peasant 😅 You might not be able to see the difference sometimes, but you can definitely feel it!
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do 240 vs 360 and 480hz
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@thedisplayguy I tried to limit the frame rate. For example 60, but sometimes that even increases the flickering. What I noticed is that the FPS in the monitor OSD sometimes briefly jumps to 120+ fps and then back to the normal fame rate. This happens despite the FPS being limited to 60. Is there anything else I can do? I checked the framerate and frametime graph with msi afterburner and they are completely flat. No spikes or drops. The msi afterburner doesn't show these 120+ with and without the capped framerate. The framerate is clearly at 60 when capped at 60. Could it be windows 10? So is windows 11 better for G-SYNC? Could it be a faulty panel? Please help!
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@thedisplayguy Strange is... On my playstation 5 there is no flickering with VRR in Gran turismo 7 (only tested it in gran turismo 7) but on my PC with G-Sync there is flickering in every darker area in games. Did you have flickering?
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If you’ve played them both you know there’s a difference lol diminishing returns be damed when you ACTUALLY perceive the change yourself you can feel it massively.
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bro, help me, my computer does not output more than 300 frames per second, if I put 240 Hz on my acer 390 Hz, will it be worse than on a monitor with a maximum frequency of 240?
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I'm very latency sensitive and I got the MSI MAG 271QPX for $649 USD and I absolutely love it I came from a Cooler Master Tempest Mini LED panel and the HDR quality is much better on OLED plus the clarity and motion performance is wonderful I couldn't be happier with it and it's now getting firmware updates since MSI backtracked and it's getting the same firmware updates as the MPG model so no downsides anymore
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Been waiting for this
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There only seems to be low resolution options for oled right now. I haven’t seen many options over 5k
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360hz feels smoother on mouse to .. not only on screen when u use high polling rate... Try to use mouse on 1000hz 240hz and try to use mouse 4000 hz on 240hz.. same with 360hz... but people never try so they can not know..
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1:16 the 14ms difference is not the reason why someone has a clear advantage at higher refrash rate, its the smooter image leading to faster reaction.
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is playing competitive fps games on a 32 inch 4k oled monitor too big? is it a disadvantage?
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I have a rtx 4090 core i9 ddr5 pc. I’m looking for a nice 1440p 360hz vesa compatible monitor, any suggestions?
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Hey. I have the Asus rog swift pg32ucdm. But it flickers with gsync. I don't now what to do. It makes me really sad because I hoped that it doesn't flicker. Did you test it for VRR flicker? There are some situations like in Forza Horizon 5, the interior of the car (gray or black) flickers for example. Or some corners and darker areas in Avatar Frontiers of Pandora. Fortnite dark/gray areas aswell. I'm on windows 10 Pro 64 bit. My GPU is an Asus ROG Strix RTX 4090. Could it be windows 10 itself? Could anyone help me please?
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I work with computers 6/8 hours a day and occasionally play some video games. When I went from a 60hz to a 120hz the difference was day/night. Now I have various displays: 90Hz(lenovo slim seven x laptop), 144Hz(lg c4 42"oled and an ultrawide VA 34" from MSI) , 160Hz (lg 38" ultrawide lcd), 240Hz (asus rog strix 16" laptop 2023 with mini led), but if I'm being honest, above 120Hz I can't see a substantial difference, even when I play. To be honest, I don't play competitively, but mainly single-player games! Having said that, thank you always for everything and congratulations on your beautiful channel, which gave me a lot of advice in choosing the perfect display!
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I dont feel like this was a deep enought review. If you play fast fps on a high lvl i would listen way more to what you feel in difference. Adjusting recoil should be way better with 360 hz. Also ofc you use it in comp shooters. So 360 hz are defently reachable.
