If you're a gamer, you've probably heard of high-refresh rate monitors. Your typical monitor will refresh 60 times per second or every 16.67ms. This is good enough for a decently smooth experience, but nowadays, a 60Hz monitor isn't good enough for a lot of people. With the rise of 144Hz, 240Hz, and even 360Hz monitors, you might be considering picking up one, but here's what you need to know first before you get one.

5 What are high refresh rate monitors?

It's how often your monitor refreshes

The most important thing to know about high refresh rate monitors is what they actually are. Basically, a 144Hz monitor means that it refreshes 144 times per second, and you can get monitors that are above and below this refresh rate pretty easily.

These monitors are particularly beneficial for those who may look to compete at a high-level in titles like Counter-Strike, Valorant, or Rocket League. However, they don't just benefit gamers, and they'll make your Windows experience feel extremely smooth when you're navigating between windows or opening and closing applications.

A high refresh rate monitor is honestly up there as one of the best PC upgrades you can make, along with an SSD, of course.

4 Do you have powerful enough hardware?

Depending on the game, of course

For gamers who want to eke out an advantage with a high refresh rate monitor, you'll need to evaluate whether you can actually benefit from one. If you buy a 240Hz monitor for Counter-Strike, but you only get 200 FPS or less, there's not much point to buying one as you won't reap the full benefits of the upgrade.

This will depend entirely on what game you're playing, and some games are less intensive than others to run. However, if you have the right hardware to drive frame rates capable of saturating the full refresh rate of a monitor, then by all means, you'll feel the benefit immediately.

3 There are diminishing returns as you scale up

144Hz from 60Hz is a big jump, but above that... not so much

If you want to go to 240Hz but it's really stretching your budget, try 144Hz. The reason a high refresh rate monitor feels so smooth is that it decreases the time between frames being drawn on your screen, but there comes a point of diminishing returns very quickly.

For example, a 60Hz monitor refreshes every 16.67ms, whereas a 144Hz monitor refreshes every 7ms. That's already a 62% reduction, but it doesn't scale like that as you go further. A 240Hz monitor refreshes every 4.1ms, and a 360Hz monitor refreshes every 2.78ms. They're faster, but the biggest jump by far is from 60Hz to 144Hz. Oh, and don't get me started on 540Hz monitors.

As a result, if you want a high refresh rate monitor but don't want to break the bank, 144Hz monitors are reasonably affordable and will get you most of the experience that you need to improve your gameplay. Plus, if you're not gaming, then you almost certainly won't notice the upgrade to 240Hz or 360Hz in basic tasks.

2 Response time isn't really too important

You'll see monitors marketed based on response time

Response time is not quite the same thing as refresh rate, but it is somewhat linked. Typically, this is measured in grey to grey, where it's the length of time it takes a pixel to change from one shade of grey to the next. However, this isn't a defined standard, so response times aren't quite uniform. However, BTB is black to white to black, which takes longer and is another way of measuring response time.

Response times don't particularly matter, as it essentially relates to how quickly your monitor will react when receiving an image to change the pixels to fit the next frame. Some monitors will allow you to overclock their response time, which can actually introduce problems like ghosting, where parts of the previous frame are left on the screen as the monitor may not uniformly change all of the pixels.

In theory, a 1ms monitor without accuracy problems will produce the best image, and at 144hz, a new frame is being displayed every 7ms. This means transitioning for 1ms followed by a static image for the remaining 6ms, but in that instance, even a 5ms response time monitor will get the job done.

1 Resolution versus refresh rate

It all depends what you need

Sometimes, you'll need to weigh up whether you want a really high refresh rate or a high resolution. When I bought my monitor, I had to choose between 144Hz 4K or 240Hz 1440p. I opted for 4K, as while I compete in FPS titles online, 4K is great both for general day-to-day usage and for productivity work.

However, the reason I had to choose was simply because, while there are 240Hz 4K monitors out there, they're both incredibly expensive and difficult to reach 240 FPS in most games at. 4K is incredibly taxing, and the same can go for the difference between 1080p and 1440p. You might need to make a decision on what refresh rate to use and what resolution to use, so choose wisely.