Should You Choose a Creator Laptop With a 120 Hz Screen?

Oct. 30 2022

Until recently, high refresh rates such as 120 Hz have been reserved for devices like TVs, monitors, and high-end smartphones and tablets. But not anymore: ASUS has released a whole lineup of 120 Hz OLED laptops, designed with content creators in mind.

You might be wondering if now is the time to switch to 120 Hz for your laptop display. The answer depends on what you use your laptop for.

Is a high refresh rate a great choice for a laptop? Is such a machine suitable for you? Or perhaps you don't need one yet? Read on to find out.

Before you decide if you need a laptop with a 120 Hz display, you need to first understand what exactly that number means.

Refresh rate relates to the number of images your screen can show you per second. Measured in Hertz (Hz), this is a good measure of how smooth the moving pictures you display will look.

For example, 30 Hz means that your screen is capable of displaying 30 images each second, so a 120 Hz screen will show you 120 images per second.

Hz vs FPS

Refresh rates are often confused with framerates, measured in frames per second (FPS). And it’s easy to understand why!

What you need to know is that refresh rate is used to describe the capability of the screen (which is fixed), while FPS is a measure of the "speed" of the video or a game you’re displaying (which can vary). These two measures do not always go hand in hand.

For instance, if you’re displaying a 24 FPS video (which is the usual cinematic frame rate) on a 120 Hz display, you’ll still see 24 frames each second. Your screen refreshes at the speed of 120 images per second, however. That means some frames of the video will be displayed more than once.

Another way to think about it is, the number of Hertz is the maximum FPS rate your display is capable of fully covering. Displaying the content of a higher FPS count than your display can handle will result in certain images not being shown, decreasing the smoothness of the image, sometimes even leading to latency.

High refresh rates can benefit content creators in any discipline.

We especially recommend such laptop screens for people who work with moving images, or any kind of content that isn't static.

The types of content creators that 120Hz displays are great for include:

In addition, 120 Hz displays also offer various benefits for those who work with still images:

So what advantages do the 120 Hz displays have for content creators?

The demand for high FPS counts is rising, especially among gamers. Game developers and designers who use a laptop at work need a high refresh rate screen as well.

When working on your content (whether it’s a cut-scene animation or the gameplay itself), you will want to view your work as the audience intends to see it.

Even casual gamers often frown upon games that run at anything below 60 FPS. A gaming monitor benchmark stands at 120 or 144 Hz. The highest-end ones are capable of displaying up to 360 frames per second! And all at high resolution!

Seeing your work on a display with less than a 120 Hz refresh rate might not allow you to accurately gauge just how smooth the gaming experience of your audience will be.

Professional video content is more and more often shot at 120FPS. Editing or viewing these works is smooth with a 120 Hz refresh rate.

Fast refresh rates will help decrease motion blur, allowing you to carefully analyze all the images your camera recorded. This means that not only you will be able to see how well the content was recorded ─ it's also more pleasant to do so!

The same is true for other tasks: any on-screen motion gains smoothness. Scrolling through internet pages, PDF documents, or image file folders, entertaining yourself by watching online videos or animations, or playing games in your free time all will benefit hugely from the smooth playback.

Have you ever gotten a headache because the fluorescent light above your head in the office got old and kept flickering? A similar thing can happen when using a display with a lower refresh rate.

Often related to as “flicker”, images flashing into your eyes at a lower rate can cause you to feel eye fatigue, especially during long working hours.

Screen flicker and jerky motion, along with blue light and glare, are often quoted as the main causes of digital eye strain. Combined with the advantages of OLED technology (lower blue light emissions), the 120 Hz displays in ASUS creator laptops can help you battle eye fatigue effectively.

Repeated exposure to digital eye strain often leads to eyesight damage, especially among younger people. Therefore, protecting your eyes with by choosing a high refresh-rate laptop is of utmost importance.

Some creators, especially graphic designers and illustrators, often use a stylus when working on their content.

Having a touch screen with a higher refresh rate and faster response time on your laptop can help make writing and drawing with a stylus much more pleasant by decreasing the latency, and making the experience more paper-like.

Of course, other parameters like wireless connection speed (if applicable) or software response time (which can be related to your computer's processing power) also contribute. But how quickly your screen can show what you're drawing plays an important role, too.

Many of the models in the ASUS creator laptop lineup come with a 120 Hz OLED display. Combining the advantages of OLED technology with a high refresh rate helps to create the ultimate content creation tool.

OLED screens carry multiple benefits for content creators. Vivid colors, a wide color gamut, deep blacks, PANTONE Validate color accuracy, and an extremely fast response time of 0.2 ms are all reasons why ASUS employs this technology in its laptops for creative professionals.

Combining the 120 Hz refresh rate with OLED's 0.2 ms response time offers a viewing experience and smoothness that equates to that of an LCD screen with a 165 Hz refresh rate. On top of the color benefits, this makes ASUS screens a much better choice than an LCD with a higher refresh rate.

Curious to learn more about OLED? Here is everything you need to know about OLED laptop displays

Having a high refresh rate display can benefit anyone's viewing experience, but admittedly, such screens come with a higher price. Those whose laptop’s primary function is data entry, document editing, or entertainment (watching movies, online videos) might not benefit from a 120 Hz refresh rate enough to justify the cost.

In addition, a higher refresh rate eats into a laptop's battery life, so if you do a lot of light work away from the desk, you may want to opt for an option with a lower refresh rate.

However, the refresh rates on most laptop displays with 120 Hz can be adjusted. You can still benefit from the health-related advantages of higher refresh rates and the more pleasant experience while stationary, and simply switch to a lower refresh rate when working on the go.

To change your display's refresh rate, right-click on your desktop screen, select ‘Display’, then ‘Advanced display settings’, and under ‘Refresh rate’, select a lower value.

We started this article by asking "Should you choose a creator laptop with a 120Hz screen?" If you're a content creator and care about smoothness and fluidity of motion while displaying your work, the answer is "Yes!”

For those on a budget who don't work much with moving content and use the computer to display more static images, the answer is "It's good to have, but not a necessity".

ASUS offers professional laptops at various price points, across its Vivobook Pro, Zenbook Pro, and ProArt Studiobook product lines. Check the related products below, or explore the whole creator laptop lineup!