Re:MacBook Air M4
by pishpash on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @01:10PM
(#43270128)
Just tried ProMotion vs. 60Hz on MBP, no/very little difference I can see. Sure it's just me but for me all the claims here are way exaggerated/psychological, almost like audiophiles being able to "hear" stuff that doesn't exist in a blind test.
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As one of the upthread comments mentioned, this is something that probably varies with sensitivity between people.
But I am quite confident I'd be able to tell 60/120hz with a 100% accuracy within 5s of being able to interact with the device.
Probably under a second on an iPhone, ~2s on a Mac with a built-in display and slightly longer on iPads and bigger displays. Add ~2 extra second if I'm using a mouse instead of a trackpad.
It is _that_ noticeable to me.
I'm generally ok with 60Hz (the difference isn't that significant to me). But I can definitely see the difference in a head-to-head comparison with fast moving content. The easiest way to see it for me was to move the cursor around quickly. With 60Hz there are much more visible "jumps" between positions. With 120Hz it animates much more smoothly.
It's baffling to me that some people claim to not see the difference. It's literally light and day to me. It's like someone looking at a low DPI screen and a high DPI screen and not being able to tell the difference.
Yeah I move a window and it's immediately noticable. I'm jealous of people who can't tell.
Same. The suggestion that it’s like audiophiles totally missed the mark, because lots of audiophile claims do not stand up to double blind tests. I can guarantee that 60 vs 120 hz blind tests would be insanely easy to pass if there was window movement or scrolling or basically anything but static frames.
Are you sure the underlying application and the OS are even rendering 120Hz all the time? The panel being able to was enough to convince some people they're seeing "smooth scrolling" when it was actually 60Hz saving battery. That's the analogy to audiophiles.
https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/10skjxm/promotion_d...
In this case it really is just you. I can tell a high-refresh-rate display from across the room. I can tell if someone’s iPhone is a Pro even if the person is sitting five meters away from me on a moving bus.
On the other hand, my MacBook has a 120 Hz display and both my iPad Mini and iPhone Mini are 60 Hz, and even though the difference is night and day, I don’t really MIND using them. It’s just not that cool.