Does Your Gaming Laptop Need a High-Refresh-Rate Screen?

Once, a laptop screen was a laptop screen was a laptop screen. Those days are decidedly over.

Buying a gaming laptop has become one of the most complex decisions in consumer tech today, given the many nuances of components and newly emerging features to factor in. Take, just for instance, items like adaptive sync, the tricky-to-understand tiers of AMD and Intel laptop CPUs, and Nvidia's shades-of-grey GeForce RTX mobile graphics chips. And then you have all the different screens!

Today gaming laptops are often advertised with high-refresh-rate displays. Indeed, these panels are now one of the key features that separate gaming from everyday or civilian notebooks. It's implied that speedy screens improve the gaming experience, but the technicalities are often left unexplained. Let's dive into the details of high refresh rates, how they work, how they relate to other factors and specs such as screen resolution, and—most important—how many hertz your next gaming rig really needs.

The Basics: Refresh Rates Explained

Like a TV set, a laptop or computer monitor must redraw its picture many times per second to make fluid motion possible. How often the screen redraws is known as its refresh rate, which is measured in hertz (Hz). A screen with a higher refresh rate redraws itself (or refreshes the image) more frequently.

Most Hollywood movies are shown at 24 frames or pictures per second, just enough for the eye to see smooth motion. One frame per second (1fps) translates to 1Hz. But while movies can give the illusion of fluid rather than jerky motion at 24fps, PCs can't. If your laptop screen refreshed that slowly, your mouse cursor would appear to be skipping instead of gliding across the desktop. It would ruin the computing experience.

For that reason, the standard refresh rate for most laptop screens and desktop monitors is 60Hz, allowing a gaming frame rate of up to 60fps. Content played at that rate will look truly smooth with no stuttering or jerking. That might make you wonder: Why should I pay for anything higher?

You certainly can if you like. High-refresh-rate gaming laptop displays start at 120Hz and top out (at this writing) at a blistering 480Hz, with popular in-between increments including 144Hz, 165Hz, 240Hz, 300Hz, and 360Hz.

The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 8 sports a modern 16-inch, 16:10 aspect ratio display with 240Hz refresh rate.
(Credit: Molly Flores)

The primary benefit of a high refresh rate is that it makes motion appear even more fluid. In a scene lasting one second showing a car driving by, a 60Hz display could show 60 frames, whereas a 120Hz panel could show 120 (assuming the video content was recorded or produced at 120fps). The smaller time gap between frame changes—1/120th of a second versus 1/60th of a second—would make the scene look smoother.

Before diving further into refresh rates, let's visit another common screen specification that's often advertised alongside it: response time.

Refresh Rate Versus Response Time: What's the Difference?

Computer screens are made of millions of pinpoint elements called pixels, each of which can change color independently. A single frame or image in a photo, game, or movie is a little like a jigsaw puzzle, with each pixel showing the appropriate color to assemble the image.

Response time, measured in milliseconds, is how quickly pixels can change color. Lower times are always better, but response times aren't always comparable across laptop (or monitor) brands. Unlike refresh rate, we have no industry standard for measuring response time. Screen manufacturers commonly measure what's called gray-to-gray response time, how long it takes for a pixel to change from gray to white to gray again (a shorter time than the classic transition from black to white and back). Even using the same measurement scenario, however, you'll still find variances in measurement methods.

Top Tested Gaming Laptops With 144Hz Refresh Rates

In short, don't write off a laptop just because its screen response time is higher than another's. While lower numbers are better, response times under five milliseconds (5ms) are generally considered fast enough for gaming systems.

Response time is related to screen refresh rate in a practical sense. A screen with a high refresh rate but a relatively slow response time would be pointless or counter-productive because the pixels would have trouble keeping up with the quickly changing frames' demands. Fast-motion scenes on a screen with a slow response time may appear to smear or “ghost.” To some extent, response time trumps refresh rate as you assess a notebook display's specifications, but once you're under 5ms you can focus more on Hz.

Refresh Rate Versus Screen Resolution: How to Weigh Them Both

Another variable that affects refresh rate is screen resolution—how many pixels a display has. The optimized, top resolution (listed as its horizontal by vertical pixel count) is known as its native resolution.

Today's minimum display resolution for all but the absolute cheapest laptops and Chromebooks is full HD, also known as FHD or 1080p. It's a resolution of 1,920 by 1,080 pixels, giving a 16:9 aspect ratio. Recent premium gaming notebooks, such as the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 8 and the Asus ROG Strix Scar 18, have slightly taller 16:10 aspect ratio panels with a more cinematic 2,560-by-1,600-pixel resolution, known as QHD. Though QHD has nearly twice as many total pixels as FHD, today's more powerful graphics processors have no problem driving that resolution quickly enough for the latest games (which wasn't the case a few years ago, hence the popularity of full HD).

Asus' jumbo ROG Strix Scar 18 is a gaming rig with an 18-inch, 240Hz display with 2,560-by-1,600-pixel resolution.
(Credit: Molly Flores)

Even today, relatively low-priced entry-level and mainstream gaming laptops rarely have the performance to drive a QHD display, so 1080p gaming remains deeply popular. Similarly, even premium gaming notebooks rarely have 4K or UHD (3,840-by-2,160- or 3,840-by-2,400-pixel) screens, because only the most powerful and pricey GPUs can hit high frame rates at that resolution.

You'll find QHD panels with refresh rates up to 240Hz, and 1080p screens with refresh as high as 480Hz. Ultra-high-res UHD/4K displays are still predominantly 60Hz, with some 120Hz panels available. Don't count on 4K screens with 300Hz refresh rates showing up anytime soon; no current GPU-to-monitor connection has enough bandwidth to make the combination possible, even if the GPUs could push that many pixels that fast (which today's laptop GPUs can't).

Frame Rate Smoothing Technologies

A traditional laptop's screen refresh rate is constant, which is to say it always operates at its rated frequency (usually, as we said, 60Hz). This can be problematic for gaming, since with demanding, fast-paced action the computer may not be producing frame rates that are evenly divisible by the refresh rate. This results in a phenomenon known as screen tearing or stutter.

For example, suppose a laptop screen has a 144Hz refresh rate but the system manages only 73fps in a certain game. This means that each time the screen redraws itself, it may not have a completely new frame ready from the GPU. But since the GPU must continuously send frames—in this scenario, 144 of them per second—to maintain a picture, it may be forced to send part of the previous frame along with part of the next frame to keep up. Such an image can appear torn, with portions at the top and bottom briefly mismatched or out of alignment.

Not every gamer will notice tearing, especially on screens with triple-digit refresh rates. However, that doesn't mean it doesn't occur. The modern solution is frame-rate synchronization, known in a broad sense as adaptive sync, which allows the screen to dynamically alter its refresh rate to match the frame rates coming from the graphics processor.

The best-known laptop adaptive sync technology is Nvidia G-Sync (hit the link for a primer). AMD's version is called FreeSync. You may also encounter the term variable refresh rate or VRR, more in association with TVs than laptops. These are still relatively premium technologies; many entry-level and mainstream gaming laptops don't provide any form of adaptive sync.

Nvidia offers different tiers of its G-Sync frame-rate-smoothing technology.
(Credit: Nvidia)

If you want the ultimate smooth gameplay experience, frame-rate synchronization is worth looking for despite its higher cost. The downside is that insisting on adaptive sync will reduce your notebook choice.

A Word on Panel Technology

One last related topic to know is a laptop screen's technology or panel type, which affects both refresh rate and response time. It's often indicated by an acronym in the screen specs, the most popular being IPS for in-plane switching. This design has almost completely replaced the twisted nematic (TN) technology that most gaming laptops used until the early- to mid-2010s. IPS screens provide superior color range and wider viewing angles—meaning the screen doesn't wash out or turn into a photo negative when seen from off-center—than TN panels.

Testing the sRGB gamut coverage of the Asus ROG Swift 360Hz IPS desktop gaming monitor.
(Credit: PCMag)

The transition from TN to IPS was slow, since early IPS screens suffered from long response times, making them bad picks for fast-paced gaming. Modern IPS displays have cut response times to just a few milliseconds, so they're thoroughly capable.

A third laptop screen type, more popular with premium content creation and workstation models than gaming rigs, is organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology. (See our computer monitors guide and our roundup of favorite OLED laptops.) OLED tech hasn't made much of a mark in the gaming laptop segment yet. Indeed, we've tested just a few OLED gaming machines (the 14-inch Acer Predator Triton 300 SE and the 15.6-inch MSI Raider GE67 HX among them). Until recently, high-refresh OLED was not much of a thing, but the latest screens in a few models can support refresh rates up to 240Hz, in OLED 1440p and 4K varieties. For now, though, expect most gaming laptops you see to feature an IPS display, and if OLED shows up, it will likely be as a high-end configurable option.

Acer’s 14-inch Predator Triton 300 SE is one of the small group of gaming notebooks with an OLED screen option.
(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

So, How High a Refresh Rate Do You Actually Need?

As we said, the screens of today's most affordable gaming laptops usually have the same 60Hz refresh rate you'll find on non-gaming notebooks. For casual gaming and most AAA titles, 60Hz is perfectly acceptable when paired with a low to midrange GPU such as Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3050 or 4050 or AMD's Radeon RX 6500M. These graphics processors can readily play today's games at between 30fps and 60fps at full HD resolution. For that scenario, a higher refresh rate is unnecessary. That said, in new gaming-oriented laptops you won't find any models with ordinary 60Hz screens anymore.

However, esports players will want to surpass the 60Hz mark, since their survival is highly dependent on their reaction time, which in turn involves how quickly the PC can display frames. Stepping up to a 144Hz or faster screen is worth the cost to enjoy a silky-smooth gaming experience that won't look choppy when you try a 180-degree headshot. Even relatively modest GPUs can reach triple-digit frame rates in less resource-intensive esports titles like Fortnite, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Rainbow Six Siege, and League of Legends. Indeed, some esports players have been known to turn down a game's visual quality or detail settings to hit higher frame rates for a competitive edge.

Fortnite for PC is a popular fast-twitch esports title that demands high frame rates for competitive gameplay.
(Credit: Epic Games)

Esports players with higher budgets can benefit from refresh rates beyond 144Hz. Powerful GPUs can saturate 240Hz or faster screens in less demanding esports titles. However, 240Hz is a practical stopping point if your budget is finite since most players won't notice the difference among 240Hz, 300Hz, or even 360Hz panels—let alone the 480Hz of the current refresh-rate champ, the monstrous Alienware m18.

Players of AAA games looking for the most cinematic experience should also consider a high-refresh display. Higher frame rates and smoother onscreen action create a more immersive experience, and reaction time can count in these games, too. Realistically, AAA gamers can comfortably stop at 144Hz or 165Hz; even a flagship laptop GPU like the GeForce RTX 4080 won't manage higher frame rates with most games. Most of today's premium gaming rigs come with 144Hz screens standard and have options for 165Hz or 240Hz upgrades.

Top Tested Gaming Laptops With 300Hz-Plus Refresh Rates

As we said, the best-case scenario for buttery-smooth gaming is a high-refresh-rate screen teamed with an adaptive sync technology such as AMD FreeSync or Nvidia G-Sync, though the latter will limit your notebook choice. Also remember response time, though unlike refresh rate it can only be loosely compared since different vendors measure it differently.

Finally, don't forget that despite theoretical cases and specs, it's still possible to buy a gaming laptop with a screen you'll regret, such as one lacking in brightness. That's where formal tests, not laptop-maker marketing, matter big-time. So does seeing a laptop in person before you buy, if that's an option. Our gaming notebook recommendations will help you find the system most deserving of your hard-earned dollars.