BOE (Beijing Oriental Electronics) has unveiled a new monitor with the fastest refresh rate ever, a mind-boggling 600Hz to be exact.
The screen in question is actually a laptop screen, a Chinese website 16 inch LCD IT home page (Opens in a new tab) caught our attention (trans tom devices (Opens in a new tab)).
The panel was shown at the World Display Industry Congress in China, but besides size and refresh rate, no other specifications of the screen were made available, although it was shown at the event.
BOE was shown on display in a laptop with an AMD Ryzen and Nvidia CPU graphics processing units – Presumably, or at least those logos were on the chassis of the laptop, so it would be very strange not to have the glued components inside the laptop.
The 600Hz display is still in the early stages of development, mind you, because during operation, the display was attached to the base of the laptop using tape, apparently.
Analysis: Is this really a case of “whoop it, it’s silly”
Does the world really need a 600Hz panel? Is there any benefit to this seemingly unrelenting drive to raise refresh rates to increasingly massive levels? At the beginning of the year, the Bank of England was screaming at 500 Hz gaming screenAnd before the end of the year, a 600Hz display outperformed that effort, by a huge distance.
Isn’t this all very absurd? Well, we think that’s basically true, but having said that, there is a target audience for this kind of ultra-high refresh rate panel, though it’s arguable what such a screen brings to the table.
This will be the target audience Professional playersplaying the likes of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, where it’s possible to achieve really high frame rates (as it doesn’t require titles).
It’s worth noting that we can assume a 600Hz display is at 1080p, given that having to push high frame rates means it won’t be the highest resolution. In this case, hitting 600fps would never be possible — and remember, this is also a laptop, which makes hitting those heights a much more complicated task in terms of available GPU grunt. Here’s another point – we’re not sure why this was built as a laptop board, rather than a standalone screen like the aforementioned 500Hz voltage from BOE.
As Tom’s Hardware rightly points out, one advantage of increasing the refresh rate of panels this high is that you get better frame time – smoother, more consistent delivery of frames – but there are a lot of diminishing returns on that front as you go further. For amazing refresh rates. 360Hz for example provides a frame time of 2.7ms, while 600Hz cuts that down to 1.66ms. Now, the baseboard’s 60Hz is 16.66ms, which is good for casual gaming, so the drop from here to 360Hz and 2.7ms is significant (at least for competitive gamers). But reducing that to 1.66ms is pretty marginal, to say the least.
Is it really possible for a person to appreciate such a small difference? Can the human eye detect the benefits of 600 Hz (or even 500 Hz, or less)? In fact, it may not be the answer for the vast majority of people. But for a vanishing small niche of top pro gamers, they might benefit from a very high refresh rate panel in terms of a smoother gaming experience that might only be noticeable in terms of the very slight difference in gameplay. Feel from the game. But then, even the thinnest of potential feature leads is something high-earning gaming pros can find value chasing.
For the rest of us who don’t play video games, those monitors designed to hit high refresh rates are pretty pointless. And the extreme heights to which all this has been pushed over the course of 2022 will inevitably look ridiculous to us mere mortals in the gaming world. Realistically, we’d be perfectly fine with 144Hz, or 240Hz if you want to push the boat out.
On a final note, it also remains to be seen how much BOE will flex its marketing muscles. Will we actually see this 600Hz panel in Gaming laptops? Maybe, but then again, we haven’t heard a peep from the company about the 500Hz screen since it was introduced at the beginning of the year.
It’s supposed to be there 480Hz monitors are coming in 2023 Incoming from AU Optronics and LG Display too, so whatever your feelings about ultra-fast refresh rates, we should see some of these models bumping up sometime next year.