What is refresh rate (Hz)? 60Hz vs 120Hz vs 144Hz explained
Refresh rate measures how many times per second your screen redraws. Learn what Hz means, why higher feels smoother, and whether 120Hz or 144Hz is worth it.
Publicado 5 de octubre de 2026
Resolution is about how many pixels your screen has. Refresh rate is about how often they change. Both affect what you see, but they solve completely different problems.
What Hz actually means
Refresh rate, measured in hertz (Hz), is how many times per second the display redraws the whole image. A 60Hz screen refreshes 60 times a second — once every ~16.7 milliseconds.
frame time = 1000 ms ÷ refresh rate
60Hz → 16.7 ms per frame
120Hz → 8.3 ms per frame
144Hz → 6.9 ms per frameHigher Hz means each on-screen change is shown sooner and motion is sampled more finely, so movement looks smoother and more responsive.
60 vs 120 vs 144: what you’ll notice
| Refresh rate | Feels like |
|---|---|
| 60Hz | The long-standing baseline; perfectly fine for text and video |
| 90Hz | Noticeably smoother scrolling; common on phones |
| 120Hz | A clear jump — fluid motion, snappy cursor and scrolling |
| 144Hz+ | The gaming standard; the smoothness gains shrink past here |
The biggest perceptual leap is from 60Hz to 120Hz. Going from 144Hz to 240Hz is real but subtle, and mostly matters for competitive gaming.
Refresh rate and frame rate aren’t the same. Your screen can refresh at 144Hz, but you only benefit if your computer actually produces that many frames per second. A 144Hz monitor showing a 60fps game still looks like 60fps.
Why higher Hz costs you
- GPU load — more frames per second is more work, exactly like a higher resolution.
- Bandwidth — high resolution and high refresh together can exceed what an older cable or port can carry, forcing the display down to a lower rate.
- Battery — on laptops and phones, high refresh drains faster, which is why many devices switch adaptively.
This is the resolution-versus-refresh trade-off: a cable that drives 4K at 60Hz may only manage 1440p at 144Hz.
How to check your refresh rate
Most systems report it in display settings (Windows: Settings → System → Display → Advanced display; macOS: System Settings → Displays). You can also measure it right here — the resolution detector estimates your live refresh rate directly in the browser, alongside your resolution and device pixel ratio.