Has any non pro consumer ever noticed a display greater than 60 hz. I can barely get the regular people in my life to nice anything above 30 hz or turning off motion smoothing. I really don't see how any of this stuff matters for most people

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benley 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm sure there is a point of diminishing returns for display refresh rates, but I can tell you from experience that it is definitely higher than 60hz. 90hz feels meaningfully smoother (on a Steam deck), and 120/144hz (on a desktop monitor in my case) feels smoother than that. Even mouse input latency is perceptibly lower. I've never used a display faster than 144hz but I honestly would not be surprised to discover that one can still tell the difference well past 144hz.

60fps is basically fine as long as you are unaware that it can be any better, but once you find out you are forever spoiled by the knowledge.

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thesuitonym 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm sure mouse latency is a big issue for iPad Mini users.

I know there's a sizable contingent of people who just think a bigger number is better, but realistically this is a device for passively consuming text and video content that is typically around 30 fps anyway. Why waste the battery power on faster refresh?

	▲	eptcyka an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Not sure about iPads, but going from a pixel 3 to a pixel 5 made me feel like my pixel 3 was broken. Xr to 16 pro was similar, but that is because Xr was legit broken.
	▲	close04 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The ProMotion screens have variable refresh rate depending on the content displayed. 10Hz to 120Hz for iPhones and 24Hz to 120Hz for iPads. So in theory the power consumption should be even better than a regular screen for static content like reading text.

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lilbigdoot 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yup. For me up until 90/100ish it's a pretty significant improvement all the way up and after that I don't know if I could notice outside of a fast game or wiggling the cursor over a contrasting color

I'm sure a lot of people now would feel odd if you gave them a 60Hz phone after high refresh has become so common, even if they don't pay conscious attention to that kind of stuff

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3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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zamadatix 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think Apple has held off 120 Hz for so long precisely because the average person gets a bit of a jolt of "this device is fast, it runs so smooth compared to..." they can't quite immediately place until someone explains it's the refresh rate.

Without this, it'd be very hard for an average user to "feel" a performance difference between an A18 Pro in the Neo and say as far as the M5 Max in a MacBook Pro unless they had a "special" use case which really needed the extra CPU/GPU cores.

Of course, they can't stay forever on that. E.g. with the iPhone 17 they finally flipped the non-Pro over. Probably because it was starting to make the iPhone seem sluggish/stuttery compared to other phones more than it was making the iPhone 18 seem fast. Tablets have never seemed to be as fierce a market in terms of your average Joe comparing them, but I'd expect the same switch to being a liability instead of a tool will happen there as well (if they aren't already late to the game).

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lynndotpy 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I would be surprised if >10% of people didn't notice a difference between 60Hz and 120Hz.

Whether the hardware can keep up with Liquid Glass and push 120 frames a second is a different story, of course.

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peesem 6 hours ago | parent [-]

notice, maybe, but care, definitely not. there's a reason TV manufacturers get away with leaving on that awful AI smoothing by default.

	▲	mort96 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That argument goes the other way though? The only reason TV manufacturers would leave frame interpolation on by default is that a decent chunk of people notice, those people care, and most of the people who notice are "normal people" who aren't repulsed by it. If only "pro consumers" noticed or cared... well, those "pro consumers" are the ones who think it looks like shit and would rather have a TV without it.

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globular-toast 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Nobody ever wanted a >60Hz display, but once you've used one it's hard to go back. It's like having a higher-performance car. You're now stuck with paying more just for baseline happiness.

It's probably not actually as hard to go back as we think it is, but holding on to stuff is in our genes.

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atlasduo 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I keep hearing this all the time, and I think this is an absolutely massive overstatement that you cannot go back to 60 hz after experiencing high refresh rates.

My personal experience is that I do notice the difference - for like a minute - and then I adjust and never care anymore.

	▲	globular-toast 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, we're talking more like reducing the amount of sugar in your tea hard, not quitting heroin hard.

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ckx 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think it only really matters for gamers, but seriously, who's gaming on an iPad?! Use a PC or console!

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scotty79 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You don't have to know what Hz is to see that scrolling on some devices is smooth and on other (coug..Apple) devices is choppy. 60Hz feels like a decade old phone.

	▲	ckx 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		As someone who occasionally browses Hacker News on a Kindle e-Reader, having a low refresh rate really doesn't matter.
	▲	smallerize 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		If your phone is choppy when scrolling a list on a 60 Hz display, it's not going to scroll smoothly on a 120Hz display.
	▲	qlte 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Yeah I wanted to love the form factor of the Mini and thought the 60 he wouldn't be an issue but was reminded any time I used the device. Actually surprised to learn Apple did the OLED swap and didn't use the opportunity to bump it up at least to 90 hz like the OLED Steam Deck.