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points by mahboi 3 days ago | 0 comments

Someone was complaining to me that Apple took a long time to add 120 Hz displays to phones. I didn't even know what my iPhone had, turns out it's 60 Hz cause it's a 12 mini. I've used 120 Hz displays before. Cannot tell the difference.

[–] blehn 3 days ago

If you use a 120 Hz iPhone for 6 months and then switch back to your 12 mini, you'll notice immediately.

[–] freehorse 3 days ago

What you definitely notice between 60Hz vs 120Hz on a phone is the battery drain.

Depends a lot on the usage I guess. In a tablet where you may draw etc you can notice the difference definitely. Or if you play games on the phone. But otherwise I don't think the difference is that important as it is sometimes claimed.

[–] mahboi 2 days ago

Yeah, first thing I'd do is check if it can be disabled

[–] thaeli 2 days ago

Not for me. I tried out the high refresh rate thing, switched back to 60.. can't tell any difference at all. Same for high DPI vs "regular" DPI screens.

Screen flicker on CRTs with low refresh rates was terrible for me, but with modern flat panels.. nope, can't really tell the difference.

[–] foldr 3 days ago

I used to switch between a MacBook Pro with a 120Hz display and a MacBook Air with a 60Hz display and never noticed any difference. I think I could probably have noticed if I'd put them side by side and compared the feel of the scrolling, but why would I do that?

There's a minority of people who really do notice stuff like this, which is fine. The problem is that for some reason, they sometimes have difficulty accepting that they're a minority.

[–] swiftcoder 3 days ago

I think this varies a lot from person to person. I find the effect to be incredibly subtle - one of my monitors reset it self to 60hz a while back, and I didn't catch the problem for days.

[–] andriesm 3 days ago

Scrolling text, I notice IMMEDIATELY

[–] matwood 3 days ago

Sure, and maybe I'm odd, but I don't read text while scrolling. I stop scrolling and then read. So yes, if I just scroll up and down quickly I can see the refresh is different, but otherwise I don't notice it in my regular usage.

[–] swiftcoder 3 days ago

Plus we all grew up reading the 24fps text scroll in the Star Wars intro just fine. Until we convince a new generation of cinematographers to shoot in 120fps, it all seems a bit moot - even most digitally-authored content doesn't exceed 60fps (and tech people are the first to complain about things like the soap opera effect...)

[–] oceanplexian 2 days ago

The way frame rate work on conventional film vs. an LCD are completely different. It’s like trying to ask the bitrate of a Vinyl record.

Conventional film projectors don’t show each frame continuously, they transition the shutter blade smoothly between frames, and projectors often flash each one a couple of times (48 or 72hz). A cinema projector is going to demolish a LCD in smoothness and motion quality even if it technically has a higher refresh rate on paper.

[–] swiftcoder 2 days ago

Right, but we're mostly all watching 24 fps movies on LCDs. I don't have a cinema projector in my living room.

[–] pipodeclown 2 days ago

There is a big difference between watxhing a movie and operating a device where your input makes things move on the screen, you notice the depay way more.

[–] swiftcoder 2 days ago

I find that watching something like a fast-pan in 24fps footage on a modern LCD is horrific. CRTs used to inherently smooth this sort of thing out, but now we get these harsh frame transitions. As much as the soap-opera-effect is maligned, a high refresh rate LCD needs some form of motion prediction for low frame rate content.

[–] oceanplexian 2 days ago

Can you not literally see the frames skip as you move the mouse cursor across the screen? To me it’s OBVIOUS and excruciating and I’m only a light/casual gamer and use all my computers for work.

[–] swiftcoder 2 days ago

If I move my cursor slowly I can see the difference, I guess? But I don't habitually do that - I run with mouse/trackpad dialled to maximum acceleration, even at 120Hz there's a skip when you flick the cursor halfway across the screen. And I'm rarely scrolling a line at a time, I'm going page at a time.

I don't really get the obsession with smooth movement for desktop use (as opposed to gaming). Possibly this is a generational thing? Why is anyone intentionally using a computer primarily via slow analogue inputs?

[–] apparent 3 days ago

If something is not noticeable when it gets "better", but it leads people to notice other stuff is "worse" over time, then I'd argue it's not actually a good thing to get.

Imagine if someone said "this food won't really taste better to you when you first eat it, but after 6 months you'll find other food tastes worse". To me, this would not be a selling point.

[–] olyjohn 3 days ago

I didn't know how bad TV looked in the 90s. We watched a low res 19 inch TV from across the room. Did moving to HD make any real difference in our lives? Do we really enjoy TV that much more? Once the excitement wears off about 20 minutes into watching it, its still the same thing. If the story is good, you get into it either way and forget what you're watching it on.

[–] biggc 3 days ago

Watching older TV shows I notice a lot more close ups of actors faces. I’m convinced it’s because the shows were produced with small screens in mind.

[–] me-vs-cat 2 days ago

Sounds very similar to old glass panes being thinner at the top and thicker at the bottom. Did the glass flow over the years, or did we lose what was common knowledge at the time, for installers to orient each pane a certain way?

[–] MonkeyClub 1 day ago

That one’s down to gravity, glass flows down very slowly over long periods.

[–] zeppelin101 3 days ago

Depends on the content. When people are talking in a nondescript (thing the "12 Angry Men" movie), SD is quite fine. Now compare it to Blade Runner or Scarface. Those movies absolutely benefit from more detail and colors.

[–] dwb 3 days ago

I watched TV and used computers in the 90s and the whole time I was desperate for display technology to improve. Mainly CRT refresh rates, which often gave me a headache, but yeah I noticed the crappy pixel density all the time too. The nice Apple display I have now is one of my fave things I’ve ever bought and could only be improved by being >60Hz (which I do notice, but it’s not a big deal).

[–] kome 3 days ago

CRT refresh rates is super high, usually starting at 120hz... and now we are trying to do the same? you want to feel headache again?

[–] spider-mario 3 days ago

> CRT refresh rates is super high, usually starting at 120hz...

That’s not my memory of it at all. They were often set to 60Hz by default, and increasing the setting to 75Hz would make it noticeably less flickery.

> and now we are trying to do the same? you want to feel headache again?

The headaches were from when it was too low.

[–] dwb 2 days ago

That’s what I’m talking about. 80Hz was just enough to keep the headaches away for me and that was either impossible or came with other compromises for some monitors / video cards.

[–] mahboi 2 days ago

HD matters a lot for sports. Big screens and nice sound help with movies, which DVD quality is usually good enough for, but certain movies deserve to be a theater or IMAX. It doesn't matter for most other things. I still watch stuff in 360p or 240p.

[–] libria 2 days ago

Big of you to assume I only watch "if the story is good".

The kids make me watch Transformers - completely devoid of suspense or consistency. That 4k 120Hz OLED is the only thing getting me through that gauntlet.

[–] apparent 3 days ago

Yes, I definitely remember noticing how much better TV was when we moved from 20" sets from last century to HD LCDs (and then much larger/higher-res LCDs) over the last 25 years.

And I would disagree that only the story matters. If that were the case, people wouldn't go to the theater (a trend that has started happening in the last 15 years as people have been able to rig their living rooms to give an experience that is nearly theater quality, especially when considering cost and convenience. When we had 20" TVs, they were no substitute for going to the movies.

[–] alexgoodhart 3 days ago

People had giant TV’s in the past as well. They are cheaper now.

Either way, a larger screen is not the same improvement as higher resolution. And more importantly, the reason people may not go to the movies when they have a home theater system is partly due to justifying the cost of the theater system.

[–] comboy 3 days ago

It's the same dynamic as with how we optimize for web pages speed. People don't immediately think that website responding 200ms faster is better. But they enjoy the experience more anyway (even if at some subconscious level) and they end up liking it more and spending more time with it.

With food also you could be incrementally getting better and better food and when you then try v1 it would taste bad.

It seems that we might also be noticing slight degradation more than slight improvement in general? No idea if that's true.

[–] koyote 3 days ago

I don't think that's a good comparison.

I've often had new phones that are 'faster' but I barely notice the fastness until I go back to my old phone and realise that my finger-memory needs adapting because things take just a bit longer to load.

I'd assume it's similar for screen refresh rates.

[–] apparent 3 days ago

That's not been my experience with the refresh rates, and it's not what GP and GGP said either. I have a 13 mini and have bought both 16 and Air. I kept them for 2 weeks and then returned.

When I got the phones, I did not notice any benefit related to screen refresh. I also did not notice any detriment when I went back to my 13 mini after two weeks on a 120 Hz screen.

But if it was as GP said, and it's only something you notice when you go back to a "lesser" screen, then that would not be a selling point in my book.

[–] alsetmusic 3 days ago

I always wondered why Windows users didn't notice the jagged text in 2001 and see a Mac as obviously better. You don't know what you aren't missing until it's gone.

[–] 100percentjake 2 days ago

This was exactly my experience when I stopped eating fast food regularly.

[–] bluescrn 2 days ago

The difference is extremely noticable on a PC when you're dragging windows around with a mouse (or gaming of course). Especially if you have a dual-monitor setup and only one of them does the high refresh rate.

Not sure I'd notice it much on a phone.

And for decades we've had people claiming that 30fps is just fine for gaming...

[–] foobarian 2 days ago

There was an immense step up from 30 to 60.. I guess it stands to reason there would be more improvement past 60

[–] 7e 3 days ago

Some people are born with nervous systems which aren’t capable of noticing the difference, just like there are people who can’t see better than 20/20 no matter how good their optical acuity is.

[–] mahboi 3 days ago

Maybe I'd be able to tell in a blind test if I'm looking for it. Just meant it's not something I'd passively notice.

[–] wlesieutre 3 days ago

If you have any devices with a faster screen, you can see them side-by-side on https://testufo.com/

Not a blind test, but the smoothness when tracking a moving object is very obvious

[–] sersi 3 days ago

Thanks for the link, checked it and well even side by side on my mbp, the difference is not that super obvious. 30 to 60 fps is very obvious and night and day. 60 fps and 120 fps, I only notice the difference side by side if I pay attention...

But maybe it's because I'm 40+ with relatively bad eye vision and 20 years earlier I'd be noticing the difference much more.. But I'd say going from 1080p to 4k was a lot more obvious than that...

[–] Maxion 3 days ago

I've never understood the 120hz hype. Sure it looks a tiny bit better, but I'd trade that in a heartbeat for more battery.

[–] wlesieutre 2 days ago

I doubt there's much difference because of the adaptive refresh rate, it runs at a lower rate most of the time and only uses 120 when it decides that would be useful.

But if you really don't want it, Settings > Accessibility > Motion > Limit Frame Rate will cap it at 60.

There's also an option to prefer page rendering updates near 60 hz buried in Safari's feature flags settings. This one defaults to on, presumably to protect the battery life from asshole web developers and advertisers.

[–] mahboi 2 days ago

If only they had an option to disable HDR to protect your eyes from advertisers

[–] wlesieutre 2 days ago

Agreed, I'd go for a setting where each page could have exactly one HDRed item

[–] mahboi 2 days ago

Yeah, I can tell if looking at the UFO but not the stars. It doesn't really look choppy at 60, just blurry.

[–] mahboi 2 days ago

Forgot to say... This test proves that my eyes/brain are capable of seeing the difference. But this is a test deliberately meant to show the difference, and even then I have to focus on it. I'm not going to notice in regular usage.

[–] bluescrn 2 days ago

Some people can't even be convinced that 60fps is significantly better than 30fps for gaming.

Convincing them they need more than 60hz is going to be a hard sell.