Is Upgrading to a 240Hz Monitor Worth It?

Should you upgrade from 120Hz or 144Hz to 240Hz...
Thank you to Ruipro for sponsoring this video!

My Favorite HDR Displays (For Now). Affiliate links below. I earn commission on purchases.
Best 4K OLED Monitors
Check below for GPU recommendations V

For years we lived with just 30 FPS on consoles. Then if you're like me, you probably built your first PC and got a 60Hz monitor all those years ago. Then you became an adult and picked up your first 120 or 144Hz display and the rest was history. There was no going back, but with the diminishing returns offered by a higher and higher frame rate, is it really worth it to jump to a 240Hz monitor or are they just too expensive in your bet off? Lighting your money on fire. Well, let's answer those questions and maybe some you don't want answered as well.

And to do so, first we got to figure out if a higher frame rate will actually make you better at games or at least enjoy them more. And one big part of that is latency. Now, if you have a 60 FPS monitor for the love of God, please buy anything faster because you will have a latency of 16.67 milliseconds, which might not sound like much, but trust me, for gaming and even desktop use, this is an enormous penalty. But if you jump up to 120Hz, you'll get half the latency at just 8.33 milliseconds. This jump is definitely worth it based on input lag alone, not to mention the motion benefits you'll see, allowing you to finally keep up with your imaginary friends you don't have in online games, but can the same be said about 240Hz?

Well, going from 120Hz to 240Hz will cut the input lag in half yet again, going from 8.33 to 4.16ms, which is still a noticeable difference. But at this point, you're definitely getting into diminishing returns

Mid Range GPUs (1440p 144Hz-240Hz)
$300-$499

High End (4K 100Hz-240Hz)
$500-$799

Enthusiast (4K 144Hz-240Hz)
$800+

My Favorite Mounting Hardware. Affiliate links below. Commission earned.

Music

My Favorite HDR Videos

[thedisplayguy]

Thank you to Ruipro for sponsoring this video!

My Favorite HDR Displays (For Now). Affiliate links below. I earn commission on purchases.
Best 4K OLED Monitors

Mid Range GPUs (1440p 144Hz-240Hz)
$300-$499

High End (4K 100Hz-240Hz)
$500-$799

Enthusiast (4K 144Hz-240Hz)
$800+

[theendurance]

of course its worth it....people just cant afford it so they rationalize it with "oh you cant even see the difference". 240hz is a big step up from even 144hz

[_Gray_Fox]

Remember when the "silver foil hats" told us that the human eye couldn't see more than 60FPS

[pirx]

Meanwhile I upgraded to 480 hz and it's great

[budthecyborg]

Back in 1998 those fancy 19" CRTs ran 800x600 at 100hz, it was glorious.
Getting my first 120hz LCD in 2011 was only bringing videogames back to the old standard.

[LucidStrike]

As someone who plays single player games almost exclusively, no. 4K144 is more than enough. 🤷🏿‍♂️

[Eli-zbyj]

Next video: is upgrading to 480hz worth it ?
Now that's going to Hertz me

[Raivo_K]

Going up in refreshrate is much less noticeable than going down. Use 240Hz for a week and then go back to 144Hz or what ever you had before and you will notice a much bigger difference compared to moving to 240Hz. About five years ago one of my friends said he does not notice SSD being faster than HDD. I made a deal with him - i will clone his OS to SSD, let him use it for a week and then clone it back to HDD. Needless to say he noticed massive slowdown as soon as he went back to HDD. It's the same with higher refreshrates.

[Black-nftx]

I was using a 1080p 144hz LCD for multiple years with no issues but after upgrading my PC to a 7900xtx and 7800x3d I caved in and got a 4k 240hz OLED (MSI MAG 321UPX) from IBuyPower for $700 (its $840 on there normally) pre shipping and tax due to a promotion for 2x points. Its incredible looking comparatively. Started playing Remnant 2 right before it arrived and the difference is massive for that game. I don't get to use the full 240hz for it but I still get 130-140fps which is still great for multiplayer and most settings except shadows maxxed. For more competitive games like LoL, it feels great once I got used to it, though a bit less of a difference other than a bit better motion clarity. It felt a little strange switching from a 27" to a 32" for a day or 2. Can't wait for my roommate to get Space Marine 2 so I can finally try that game on this monitor since I got it for free for buying an AMD product (I'm not a big enough fan to play that game solo, though it looks fun)

[budthecyborg]

1:42 You need to make a graph of frame time vs. total system latency.
Running 30fps doesn't just mean you have 33ms input lag, your total end to end latency skyrockets.
DOOM Eternal on the Steamdeck OLED at 30fps has 101ms end to end latency, but jumping to 60fps drops total latency by 33% down to 68ms. 90fps cuts input lag down to 51ms.
Just going from 60fps to 90fps cuts 17ms off your total system latency even though the frame time at 90fps is only 5.5ms shorter than 60fps.
The benefit to total system input lag is triple that of just the measured frame time.

[Coffeeandacigarette]

It was worth it for me. I went from 120hz 10 bit ips @ 1440p to 240 hz 10 bit qd-oled @ 4k. It's much smoother and clearer. Ips had smeared black trails that blur. OLED pixels instantaneously change.

[adhizzle]

i went from overclocked 165hz 4k LG IPS to 240hz/480z dual LG OLED monitor. my IPS is low response but the OLED is crazy fast, 4k is very clear & 1080p 480hz is cool but blurry af. i noticed in 480hz 1080p mode i would experience a weird flicker on rocket league. have not tried other games yet. 240hz isn't as noticeable.
it's only worth it if your pc can support the high frames, i think 4k 240hz is enough for me but you can only run so many games at 4k. definitely 2.5k @ 480hz OLED with burn in and no flickering would be perfect. maybe in few years

[EspHack]

i just like 120 for consistency, all my devices do 120 and 120 evenly divides into all important video formats, from here its going to take 1khz for me to bother upgrading, anything below would be ok if it just happens to come with whatever else makes me upgrade

[qaki]

the 240 is my sweet spot for a refreshrate, because I can easily hit those fps numbers, 360-480 would be nice, but unfortunatelly not for my PC at the moment.

[thecarsonigen]

I feel like 240hz possibly the max I’d ever go for. Anything above that is a waste, especially as a gamer. If
You’re trying to max out your settings even 240hz is hard to reach. Most gamers are between 120 fps and 200 even sacrificing some graphics fidelity just for the sake of performance. An Rtx 4090 can barely get above 60 fps on Silent Hill 2 remake with max settings.

[FullFledged]

The problem is that in order to get the benefits of 240hz you also need 240fps... So in many cases you have to chose between pretty graphics or high fps and rather have pretty graphics personally. Also I would chose 144hz/fps native over 240 with frame gen and upscaling anyday 😑

[BLAZN_ECS]

From 4K/60 should I go 144hz or 240hz? (4070Ti)

[buttergolem]

I have no problem switching between my 2 monitors 144Hz to 240Hz and back. At this point it just feels a bit smoother but the difference is pretty small.

[emonkhan]

If you have 144hz or 165hz and are planning to upgrade to 240hz for better performance in your game, then you better be at least immortal, or you're just shifting blame when the problem is you. even then go for the 400+ hz monitors instead of 240 to feel some actual difference.

[jrei]

I went from 240 Hz to 360 Hz and it was life changing. You can definitely tell the difference. Got a 480 Hz on the way.