The jump from 60Hz to 144Hz removes 9.7ms from every frame; the jump from 144Hz to 240Hz removes just 2.77ms. That single comparison explains why the first upgrade feels transformative and the second feels like a rounding error to most people who buy it.
The mathematics of refresh rate are unforgiving in a way marketing never mentions. Each step up buys a smaller absolute improvement than the one before it, because you are dividing a fixed second into ever finer slices. 240Hz is a real upgrade — it is just a much smaller one than its price premium implies.
Note
Key Takeaways
- 144Hz refreshes every 6.94ms. 240Hz refreshes every 4.17ms. The gain is 2.77ms.
- The 60 to 144 jump was 9.7ms — roughly three and a half times larger.
- A 240Hz panel only shows 240 unique frames if your PC renders 240 FPS. Otherwise it repeats them.
- Panel quality usually matters more than the last 96Hz. A good 144Hz IPS beats a mediocre 240Hz TN.
- 240Hz makes sense for competitive shooters at low settings, where the frame rate is genuinely there.
- Above 240Hz the returns shrink again — 240 to 360 is worth just 1.02ms.
The Numbers That Actually Matter
Refresh rate is easier to reason about as frame time than as a frequency, because frame time is what you actually experience.
| # | Refresh rate | Frame interval | Gain over previous step |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 60Hz | 16.67ms | — |
| 2 | 144Hz | 6.94ms | 9.73ms |
| 3 | 165Hz | 6.06ms | 0.88ms |
| 4 | 240Hz | 4.17ms | 1.89ms |
| 5 | 360Hz | 2.78ms | 1.39ms |
| 6 | 500Hz | 2.00ms | 0.78ms |
Row 2 is the reason high refresh gaming became mainstream. Nearly ten milliseconds is a large enough change that essentially everyone notices it immediately, on the desktop as much as in games.
Row 4 is what you are being sold when you upgrade from 144Hz. Under two milliseconds — smaller than the variation your mouse sensor and display processing introduce on their own. It is measurable, and a trained competitive player can use it. It is not the same category of change.
Tip
Compare the whole ladder before buying, not just the two options in front of you. Going from 144Hz to 240Hz costs you a real premium for 2.77ms. Going from 60Hz to 144Hz costs less and buys 9.73ms. If you know anyone still on 60Hz, that is where the money should go.
Your Frame Rate Has to Be There
This is the constraint that invalidates most 240Hz purchases, and it is entirely predictable in advance.
A 240Hz monitor showing a game at 120 FPS is displaying each frame twice. The panel refreshes 240 times a second, but only 120 of those refreshes carry new information. You have bought the ability to display frames your PC is not producing.
So the question is not "would 240Hz be better" — it always would. The question is whether your machine sustains something close to 240 FPS in the games you actually play. In a competitive shooter at low settings on a strong CPU, quite possibly. In a modern single-player game at 1440p with settings turned up, almost certainly not, and no monitor changes that.
Refresh rate is CPU-limited far more often than people expect. Pushing past 200 FPS is usually a CPU problem rather than a GPU one, which is why players chasing high frame rates run low settings — it moves the bottleneck. If your GPU usage sits well below 100% while your frame rate disappoints, you are already at that ceiling; our guide to diagnosing low GPU usage covers how to confirm it.
What You Give Up to Get 240Hz
At any given price, a monitor is a set of compromises. Pushing refresh rate higher usually means accepting less somewhere else.
Historically that meant panel type — 240Hz was TN-only, with poor colour and narrow viewing angles, while 144Hz gave you IPS. That gap has largely closed, but the pattern persists in a different form: at a fixed budget, the 240Hz option is usually the worse panel. Lower resolution, weaker contrast, worse HDR, or a smaller size.
The trade is worth stating plainly. A 1440p 144Hz IPS monitor and a 1080p 240Hz panel often cost about the same. For most people the first is the better display for the great majority of what they do, including gaming. Resolution and panel quality affect every minute you spend at the machine; the last 96Hz affects the moments when your frame rate is high enough to use it.
Panel technology is the bigger lever here, which is why OLED versus Mini-LED for gaming monitors is a more consequential comparison than this one for most buyers.
Response Time Is the Hidden Variable
A high refresh rate is wasted on a panel that cannot change pixels fast enough to keep up, and this is where a lot of 240Hz marketing quietly falls apart.
At 240Hz the panel has 4.17ms to complete a pixel transition before the next refresh. A panel with slower transitions is still smearing the previous frame when the next one arrives, so you paid for 240 refreshes and are seeing something blurrier than a good 144Hz panel would give you.
This is also where the advertised numbers become unreliable. Manufacturers quote grey-to-grey figures measured under favourable conditions with aggressive overdrive, and the "1ms" on the box frequently does not describe how the panel behaves in normal use. Our breakdown of GtG versus MPRT response times covers why the two numbers measure different things and which one relates to perceived motion clarity, and monitor overdrive and ghosting covers what happens when a panel is pushed past what it can cleanly do.
A well-tuned 144Hz panel can look cleaner in motion than a badly tuned 240Hz one. Refresh rate sets the ceiling; response time determines how much of it you get.
Who Should Actually Buy 240Hz
There is a real case for it, and it is narrower than the marketing suggests:
Competitive shooter players running Counter-Strike, Valorant, Apex, or Overwatch at low settings, on hardware that genuinely sustains 200 FPS or more. Here the frame rate exists, the games are built around fast target acquisition, and the reduced frame time is usable.
Players who already have a good 1440p 144Hz panel and are adding a second competitive-focused display rather than replacing their main one.
Anyone for whom the price difference is immaterial. 240Hz is not worse than 144Hz in any respect except cost and the compromises made to reach it. If those do not bind, take it.
Everyone else is better served putting the money into resolution, panel quality, or the GPU that would let them use the refresh rate they already have.
What About 360Hz and Beyond?
The pattern continues and gets more extreme. 240Hz to 360Hz buys 1.39ms. 360Hz to 500Hz buys 0.78ms.
These panels exist for professional and near-professional competitive play, where a fraction of a millisecond in target acquisition is a real edge across thousands of engagements. They are also genuinely impressive to look at in motion.
For essentially everyone else they are a demonstration of diminishing returns rather than a purchase. The frame rate requirement becomes extreme — 500 FPS in a modern title is a serious CPU undertaking — and the perceptual gain over 240Hz is small enough that blind comparisons become unreliable.
Getting the Most From What You Have
Before upgrading, confirm you are actually using the refresh rate you own. This is more common than it should be.
Windows defaults new displays to 60Hz and does not tell you, which means a meaningful number of people who bought a 144Hz monitor have never run it above 60 — see why a 144Hz monitor runs at 60Hz. Beyond that, configuring variable refresh correctly matters more to perceived smoothness than the last few dozen hertz; our guide to G-Sync, V-Sync and frame cap settings covers the combination that actually works.
And if the problem is that your frame rate is uneven rather than low, refresh rate is the wrong lever entirely — what 1% lows measure covers the number that describes how smooth a game genuinely feels.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is 240Hz noticeably better than 144Hz?
It is noticeable in direct side-by-side comparison, particularly in fast horizontal motion, and much less so in isolation. The gain is 2.77ms per frame against the 9.73ms you got moving from 60Hz to 144Hz. Most people identify the first change instantly and struggle to identify the second reliably without a reference display next to them.
Do I need 240 FPS to use a 240Hz monitor?
To see 240 unique frames per second, yes. Below that the panel repeats frames, and you get the benefit only up to whatever frame rate you actually sustain. A 240Hz display running a game at 120 FPS is functionally a 120Hz display for that game, though variable refresh keeps it smooth rather than juddery.
Is 1440p 144Hz better than 1080p 240Hz?
For most people, yes. Resolution and panel quality affect everything you do at the machine, while the extra refresh rate only pays off when your frame rate is high enough to use it. The exception is competitive shooter players running low settings, who benefit from the refresh rate and care less about resolution.
Will 240Hz make me better at competitive games?
Marginally, and only if you are already at a level where 2.77ms of frame time matters. It reduces the delay between the game state changing and you seeing it, which is a genuine if small advantage. It is a far smaller factor than practice, and smaller than making sure your existing display is properly configured.
Does a higher refresh rate reduce input lag?
Yes, modestly. A finished frame waits less time before being displayed — 4.17ms at most on a 240Hz panel against 6.94ms at 144Hz. This is separate from frame rate and from the lag introduced elsewhere in the chain, and it is a smaller contributor than either.
Is 165Hz worth it over 144Hz?
Barely. The difference is 0.88ms per frame, which is below what most people can perceive. Many 165Hz panels are 144Hz panels running slightly overclocked from the factory. Do not pay a premium for it, but there is no reason to avoid it if the panel is otherwise the one you want.
The Bottom Line
If you are on 60Hz, buy 144Hz. That upgrade removes nearly ten milliseconds from every frame and it is the most noticeable display change available at any price.
If you are already on 144Hz, the honest answer is that most people should spend the money elsewhere. 2.77ms is real but small, it only arrives when your frame rate is genuinely near 240, and the 240Hz option at your budget is usually the weaker panel. Put it toward resolution, toward a better panel, or toward the GPU that would let you use the refresh rate you already own — and if you play competitive shooters at 200 FPS and none of that applies, buy the 240Hz and enjoy it.
Sources
- Blur Busters, UFO Test: Frame Rate and Refresh Rate Measurement, retrieved 2026-08-13, https://www.testufo.com/
- Display Ninja, 144Hz vs 240Hz — Which Refresh Rate Should I Pick?, retrieved 2026-08-13, https://www.displayninja.com/144hz-vs-240hz/
- VESA, Adaptive-Sync and DisplayPort, retrieved 2026-08-13, https://www.vesa.org/featured-technologies/mainstream-displays/displayport/
- Microsoft Support, Change the refresh rate on your monitor in Windows, retrieved 2026-08-13, https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/display-graphics/change-the-refresh-rate-on-your-monitor-in-windows
- KTC, 144Hz vs 240Hz vs 300Hz: Can You Feel the Difference?, retrieved 2026-08-13, https://us.ktcplay.com/blogs/product-comparisons/144hz-vs-240hz-vs-300hz-difference
