ASUS has announced a monitor with a refresh rate of 500Hz, especially aimed at gamers. The company claims that the ROG Swift monitor is the fastest display you can currently get. However, there are plenty of reasons not to run straight to the store as soon as the screen comes out.
“The display with the lowest latency and highest refresh rate ever,” is how ASUS describes the new monitor. The 24-inch screen offers a resolution of 1080p and has a tn panel, which allows high refresh rates. Thanks to G-Sync, the number of hertz is equal to the number of frames per second. In short: a screen for the real gamer.
But do you really need such a screen as a gamer? ASUS has focused entirely on the high refresh rate and that seems to come at the expense of other things. For example, the choice for a tn panel is somewhat outdated. Compared to IPS and VA panels, tn offers the least wide viewing angles, while the color reproduction is often disappointing.
In addition, in the last few years, ips and va panels have made significant progress in terms of both price and speed. There are now enough monitors on the market that offer both a high refresh rate and a high resolution.
Most 1080p and 1440p displays typically offer a refresh rate of 144Hz and 240Hz, while 4K monitors often have to make do with 60Hz. Experts state that you can indeed see the difference between 60Hz and 144Hz, but that it is already a lot more difficult to notice the difference between 144Hz and 240Hz.
To put it in numbers: a 60 Hz screen refreshes every 16.6 milliseconds, at 144 Hz that is already 6.9 ms. With 240 Hz you come to 4.2 ms and that is of course a much smaller difference, just like that the 2.8 ms of 360 Hz is a smaller step, as we wrote before in an article about tips for choosing the best game monitor. to find out.
Conclusion
Isn’t 500Hz a bit redundant then? The chance that you will actually see a difference seems very small. In addition, the hardware in your PC must also support such speeds.
And we haven’t even mentioned the price tag yet. ASUS has not yet given any insight into the price of the ROG Swift 500Hz, but the screen will probably not be cheap.
All factors added together will probably not ensure that all gamers want to get this monitor. A 27-inch 1440p monitor with a refresh rate of 144 to 165 Hz is more likely to be a good starting point for them.
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