I find refresh rate extremely important. I stuck with CRTs at 100Hz+ for a very long time after LCDs became popular because only 60Hz LCDs were available. I now use a 120Hz LCD and it’s much more enjoyable than 60Hz. Everything feels smoother and more responsive. The improved mouse control is very obvious (this might require increasing the mouse sample rate, I use usbhid mousepoll=2 on Linux). Motion appears much sharper, because the higher refresh rate allows for higher frame rate which reduces sample-and-hold blur (see http://www.blurbusters.com for detailed information on motion quality). The fastest LCDs on the market support 144Hz. I’d like one but I can’t really justify the expense right now.
However, note that I am unusually sensitive to motion artifacts, eg. I am bothered by PWM dimming of LED lights well into the kHz, and I greatly dislike 3:2 pulldown judder. It’s possible that some people genuinely don’t mind 60Hz LCDs, although I wonder if that’s only because they’ve never used anything faster.
Look at a monitor in a dark room for awhile and then turn it off. You should see strobing in your vision if you have a low refresh rate monitor. This induces eye strain more quickly.
Obviously visible strobing only indicates low refresh rate in CRTs and the rare few monitors with black frame insertion or scanning backlights. In most cases strobing is caused by PWM brightness control, which has the visual disadvantage of strobing without the sample-and-hold-blur reducing advantage of frame-syncronized strobing. PWM brightness control is purely a cost saving measure. At high frequencies it might not bother you but it’s rare for PWM frequency to be listed in the specifications.
My phone uses PWM brightness control at about 200Hz so I run it at full brightness (100% duty cycle) if I’m using it for a long time which negates the strobing.
How important are characteristics like the refresh rate of monitors? Does anything besides the size really matter?
I find refresh rate extremely important. I stuck with CRTs at 100Hz+ for a very long time after LCDs became popular because only 60Hz LCDs were available. I now use a 120Hz LCD and it’s much more enjoyable than 60Hz. Everything feels smoother and more responsive. The improved mouse control is very obvious (this might require increasing the mouse sample rate, I use usbhid mousepoll=2 on Linux). Motion appears much sharper, because the higher refresh rate allows for higher frame rate which reduces sample-and-hold blur (see http://www.blurbusters.com for detailed information on motion quality). The fastest LCDs on the market support 144Hz. I’d like one but I can’t really justify the expense right now.
However, note that I am unusually sensitive to motion artifacts, eg. I am bothered by PWM dimming of LED lights well into the kHz, and I greatly dislike 3:2 pulldown judder. It’s possible that some people genuinely don’t mind 60Hz LCDs, although I wonder if that’s only because they’ve never used anything faster.
Look at a monitor in a dark room for awhile and then turn it off. You should see strobing in your vision if you have a low refresh rate monitor. This induces eye strain more quickly.
Obviously visible strobing only indicates low refresh rate in CRTs and the rare few monitors with black frame insertion or scanning backlights. In most cases strobing is caused by PWM brightness control, which has the visual disadvantage of strobing without the sample-and-hold-blur reducing advantage of frame-syncronized strobing. PWM brightness control is purely a cost saving measure. At high frequencies it might not bother you but it’s rare for PWM frequency to be listed in the specifications.
My phone uses PWM brightness control at about 200Hz so I run it at full brightness (100% duty cycle) if I’m using it for a long time which negates the strobing.