I’m So Damn Tired of Monitors With High Refresh Rates and Nothing Else

Big numbers meant to promote big, expensive monitors are set to bore my eyes out of their sockets. The fabled 8K resolution remains a pipe dream when no company wants to make native content that supports it. Now Samsung is back offering another “world’s first” blistering fast QD-OLED monitor with its new Odyssey OLED G660SF that seems high on its own supply thanks to a 500Hz refresh rate. It’s the new, prime example of why efforts to create the highest-refresh monitor turn our attention away from true innovations in display design.

The Samsung Odyssey OLED G6 G60SF’s big selling point for nearly $1,500 is its 500Hz refresh rate. Otherwise, it’s a QHD, 2,560 x 1,440 resolution panel with a 0.03ms response time and a claimed peak brightness of 1,000 nits with HDR. For the uninitiated, a refresh rate determines how many times a display can refresh an image per second. Essentially, Samsung’s latest expensive OLED can refresh an image 500 times in a second. That combines with the frames per second (fps) of how many times a game renders an image in a game. So if you somehow manage to push a game up to 500 fps, Samsung’s monitor can technically display every frame.

There have been several 480Hz OLED displays, like LG’s UltraGear 27GX790A-B. Not that you would actually be able to notice the difference at those high refresh rates. The average layperson would barely be able to distinguish the difference in smooth gameplay after reaching 120 fps. Only gaming pros could possibly notice such qualities up to 240 fps running on a 240Hz monitor. Some games like Overwatch 2, Apex Legends, or Valorant may benefit very slightly from 360Hz displays, but only if you have a gaming machine beefy enough to hit above 240 fps with natively rendered frames.

Professional gamers won’t buy a monitor with different specs than the one they play on at a live tournament. Monitor maker Zowie provides a large number of the monitors for many first-person shooter tournaments. For years, that monitor was the Zowie XL2540, but recently the company proclaimed its XL2586X+ 600Hz is the new standard for Counter-Strike 2 tournaments going forward. These panels aren’t OLED, either. They’re fast-TN LCD monitors, which are optimized for high speed and low response time. They’re not built to look the best, especially compared to the deepest, inky blacks typical of organic light-emitting diode technology, either.

Samsung’s G60SF has built-in heat pipes that are supposed to reduce the rare risk of OLED burn-in, but without the 500Hz refresh rate, it’s merely a 1440p OLED monitor which you can find for a third of the price at 240Hz. The new 500Hz monitor will be available in Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia, with rollout to “additional global markets” sometime later this year. If you have $1,488 on hand, you’re probably better off getting any number of quality 4K displays and still saving hundreds of dollars.

This year was the advent of the 240Hz, 4K resolution OLED monitor. Practically every major monitor maker released what I would consider the perfect specs for gaming on a flatscreen. I reviewed the $900 Alienware AW2725Q QD-OLED monitor earlier this year, and it was a solid option in every way that matters. I’ve had the chance to see multiple brands’ 4K displays in person, including Samsung’s $1,300 Odyssey OLED G81SF. There was nothing wrong with it based on my brief time with the display, though it is a pricey panel compared to similar products from other brands.

Gamers are already spoiled for choice, and that’s a problem for these larger companies with their desperate need to stand out. The real monitor innovations are already here, but they’re far more niche and lack the big number draw of high-refresh displays. I’ve seen head-tracking displays from Lenovo for the purpose of directional sound. There is a growing number of lenticular, 3D displays from Lenovo and Samsung as well. The $2,000 Samsung Odyssey 3D is a truly unique viewing experience, though the cool depth effect you get in games is marred by a limited number of supported titles. There are other monitors to be excited about, like LG’s 5K2K bendable OLED, which the Gizmodo team saw at CES 2025 this year.