You’ll get less eye strain with 144hz vs 60. Long story short i swapped years ago and it was immediately worth it. My boss complained of headaches from screens so I recommended he upgrade, he mentioned recently he hasn’t had issues since. Anecdotal of course but everyone i know with eye pain or headache issues have had a better time using higher refresh rates.

For me, the difference between 60 and 144 Hz is big, even when not gaming, and would definitely aim 144 Hz for any non-laptop screen. However, I don’t think I would notice a big enough difference between 120 and 144 or 160 in a blind test.

I would say go for any of those options you can find in your market; I treat them as basically equivalent.

Just about any game with full-screen motion will be noticeably better at 120+ fps than 60. How much better will depend on the game, screen size, and viewing distance.

Bear in mind that higher frame rates will mean your GPU has to do more work, so it will use more power and produce more heat. (They might even induce coil whine.) I therefore set a frame rate limit in graphics-intensive games, to enjoy smoother motion without driving my electricity bill deep into the land of diminishing returns. The sweet spot for me is usually somewhere in the 60-120 range, but I find that even 40 fps is enough for certain games, like Baldur’s Gate 3.

If you’re shopping for a monitor, I suggest looking for variable refresh rate support. It makes frame rate dips and peaks less jarring, and offers more flexibility in setting frame rate limits.

As someone who uses a 60hz monitor next to a 170hz one, there is a difference, but not one I’d call night and day. I’d say that even the mediocre HDR my monitor came with was more worth it than the framerate.

Diminishing returns do come into effect, however they are proportional to the amount of additional frames. like another comment mentioned, going from 60 to 90 or 120 are big leaps that you absolutely will notice. Something you might not notice immediately is that some actions will just feel faster and more precise, even if theyre not particularly fast moving, like moving your cursor or scrolling a web page.

Personally after having a 120hz desktop i cant go back without it feeling slow and unpleasant.

My phone can also do 120hz but unfortunately it sucks the battery dry or i would use it there too.

Going back to 60 from 120, I can say that it’s very noticable. Even outside of games, in things like the window manager, just resizing or moving windows feels very choppy.

100%.

I got the first Korean 1440p “overclock” monitor, and 60-> 110hz was like night and day many years ago. Sometimes it’d reset from a driver update (as the graphics driver had to be patched to work with overclocked DVI back then), and I’d immediately notice even poking around the web.

Some with phones. I got a Razer phone 2, and 120hz was incredible. I went from that to an iPhone 16 plus (60hz), and it feels sluggish to me.

Another caveat is that 120hz is more “convenient” and less stuttery for most video. 24fps does not evenly divide into 60, but it does for 96 or 120. An once you start seeing choppiness in video, your eyes can’t unsee it.

I sit in front of a screen for a good chunk of the day and also like video games, a 144hz monitor has been an absolute necessity lest I get motion sickness by the time I get to the video games.

Up to 120-150? Absolutely. Makes the computer feel way more snappy and smooth

Above 150? Don’t think so!

I’m not sure there ever has been 30hz monitors. Going from 60 to 120 is double, just like 30 to 60. Having just made that jump this year, I can say yes,it’s very nice.

I switched from a 144Hz 165Hz monitor that I used for years to a 240Hz monitor, and yes of course there are somewhat diminishing returns, but if I can run a game at 240 fps then I can absolutely tell the difference between the two. Not only is motion noticeably smoother but games just feel so much better to control (especially shooters) when you have faster visual feedback on your inputs, even outside of multiplayer games.

The game I’m playing most right now is Deadlock which I get between 140-170 fps on average in, and even just in that range it starts to feel comparatively sluggish when the framerate starts to dip.

Edit: I actually just remembered my last monitor was overclocked to 165Hz and it was still a significant leap.

Up to 90-120hz is pretty nice. That’s the sweet spot for me. I’m not into esports and also I’m an environmentalist so 240hz and 360 hz monitors just seem really excessive to me since you need hundreds of watts of power to push those frame rates. I usually run like 75 hz on my steamdeck or other lower power devices.

depends. high refresh rate is great if you play fast moving games. The difference is pretty much “same” as 30->60 when going from 60 to 120, for example. After seeing something at eg. 120 fps, “60 feels like 30, kinda” - just a personal observation.

For turn based 4x games, isometric rpg’s etc, probably won’t make much of a difference.

FPS, racing, etc fast? yea, it’s great.

edit: if you’re a movie enthusiast, 144 Hz screen might make sense if you watch a lot of stuff which is 24 fps. As 144 (and 120, for that matter) divide evenly with 24, making the tiny judder go away compared to 60 Hz screen.

Get in a shop and look at the samples there. For me, i can’t tell the difference between 30 and 60 fps, despite having 120% with glasses.

Btw, cinema effect (24 fps) is slightly over the conscious limit of 25 fps aka 40ms window. And TV series are fine with 30 fps. But the optical chain is in large parts independent and the optical effect that a still background light (vs CRT strobe on dark) doubles the required fps (70 to 100), so it can’t be said for certain. Observation in a forum told me, that fps-sensibility is trained to a certain degree, with tasks/games where you follow the mouse or movements with your eyes (me a creative builder and programmer, rather than a competitive gamer or designer/CADler). But who knows.

I have 2 monitor setup. Primary one is 165 Hz VA, the other is 60 Hz IPS as secondary screen for stuff like chat or background video. While the VA has some problems (it can’t catch some particular color changes in needed time-frame), it’s generally much smoother. Not just games, but in desktop workflow too. You suddenly feel your mouse is somehow smoother on one screen and feels choppy on the other. Ever since I got the 165 Hz monitor, I’m constantly thinking of upgrading the secondary one too, just for the smoothness. The only thing holding me back is it’s just more money spent when not needed, but man… the QOL surely is there and is so tempting.