Guide To Refresh Rates And Response Times In Gaming Monitors 2021

Picking out the right monitor for your gaming PC might seem simple at first, but looks can be deceiving. It used to be a simple matter of getting the right resolution and the right cable. But now you have to worry about the panel type, the cable inputs, whether it has FreeSync or G-Sync, and more.

Two of the most important monitor specs to make sense of if you’re new to PC gaming are refresh rates and response time. We’ll cover what each of those terms mean, what specs influence them, and how to get the right monitor for your rig. For an overview of all the tech that goes into a gaming monitor, check out our guide to monitor technologies.

What is refresh rate?

Refresh rate is one of the marquee features of displays, especially since the advent of gaming displays with refresh rates higher than 100 Hertz (Hz). To that end, you’ll see it at the top of just about any monitor product page.

Refresh rate refers to the number of times per second that your monitor will update with new information. Your basic desktop display–think the screen at your office or the one that came with the Dell mom bought so you could do homework–will have a refresh rate of 60Hz, meaning the image can refresh 60 times per second. This is visible even when you’re not gaming. For instance, with a 144Hz display, cursor movements will update every 7 milliseconds. With a 60Hz display, it’ll update every 17 milliseconds or so. It’s a minute, yet visible difference.

Monitor refresh rates have climbed in recent years. Some rank as high as 360Hz, and refresh rates like 144Hz and 165Hz are becoming increasingly common. If a monitor is labeled as a “gaming” display, those refresh rates are more common than sub-100Hz refresh rates nowadays.

When thinking about what refresh rate you want from your display, the easiest connection to make is to your gaming frame rate, or frames per second (fps). That refresh rate metric will tell you exactly how many frames your screen is capable of displaying.

If you’re playing an esports game like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on a high-end graphics card, but playing on a 60Hz display, you’ll only ever see a maximum of 60fps, even though your graphics card is capable of displaying five times that number. The higher the number, the better–though you’ll see diminishing (but still noticeable) returns as you pass that 144Hz mark.

What is response time?

Response time, meanwhile, refers to how quickly a given pixel can change from black to white (sometimes back to black) or between shades of gray (Gray-to-Gray or GtG). As you might have guessed, the variety of ways manufacturers measure response time means that the number on the spec sheet may not be totally reliable.

Response times on those office and homework displays are typically around 16 milliseconds (ms) or less, but can go as low as 1ms. For response time, lower is better.

If your monitor has a high response time, you may see what the PC community refers to as “ghosting.” If you’ve ever been playing a high-action game on a monitor with poor response time, you’ve probably noticed this in the form of the image smearing, or afterimages that show what was on your screen a few milliseconds ago, while it’s already trying to show that new image.

Because there are so many different ways to measure response time, it’s a good idea to take the monitor model you’re thinking of getting and search for that model along with the keyword “ghosting.” This way, you’ll find out if any people who already own the monitor are complaining about it or if reputable review sites bring it up in their reviews.

Most gaming-focused displays will advertise a response time of 1-5ms.

Which gaming monitors are the fastest?

One way to get an idea of how good or bad response time can be is to look at the type of display panel your monitor of choice is using. There are three primary types to consider: TN, IPS, and VA. We have an in-depth guide on TN, IPS, and VA display panels, but here’s a quick look at how they matter for refresh rates and response times.

• TN, or Twisted Nematic panels, are very common and often a bit less painful to your wallet. These panels are capable of high refresh rates, but have noticeably poorer color reproduction and viewing angles, meaning that you’ll need to be looking at the screen straight-on to see it without colors looking faded or inaccurate Come from Sports betting site VPbet . If you’re trying to get into competitive gaming, TN panels are the cheapest way to get a monitor with a high refresh rate.
• IPS, or In-Plane Switching panels, improve on TN panels in a few important ways. IPS panels offer much better color reproduction and viewing angles than TN, making them much better suited to production work–creating graphics, editing photography, and video–than TN panels. While IPS is better for accurate color, some users complain of “IPS glow” around edges in dark images. IPS panels have historically struggled with refresh rate and response time, but modern IPS panels have narrowed the gap significantly in both categories. IPS panels are typically more expensive, but if you can afford them, they’re the best solution for gaming and work alike.
• VA, or Vertical Alignment panels, act as sort of a compromise between TN and IPS. They offer better color reproduction than TN but fall short of IPS’s ability to display wider color gamuts, while also offering good response times and refresh rates. They offer better viewing angles than TN, but less than IPS, and usually have a higher contrast ratio, meaning you’ll get better blacks on dark images. They’re typically cheaper than similar screens with IPS panels.