By Reiner A.·Oct 8, 2026

144Hz or 240Hz: How Big the Jump Really Is, and When It Is Not Worth the Money

Going from 60Hz to 144Hz cuts almost 10 ms between frames. Going from 144Hz to 240Hz cuts 2.8 ms — less than a third of that. It’s real, but small, and it only shows up if your PC holds 240 FPS in the game you actually play. For competitive shooters it’s worth it; for story games, that money does more in resolution or panel quality.

That’s the short answer, and it’s enough for most people. What follows is the why, because the why is what decides your case: some players have the PC to spare and 240Hz genuinely changes their aim, and some are about to pay double for a screen they won’t notice.

The number that explains the whole argument

Refresh rate is how many times per second the screen redraws. Turned into time, it’s how long you wait for a new frame:

Refresh rate	Time per frame	Cut vs. the previous step
60Hz	16.67 ms	—
120Hz	8.33 ms	−8.34 ms
144Hz	6.94 ms	−1.39 ms
180Hz	5.56 ms	−1.38 ms
240Hz	4.17 ms	−1.39 ms
360Hz	2.78 ms	−1.39 ms
480Hz	2.08 ms	−0.70 ms
600Hz	1.67 ms	−0.41 ms

Look at the right-hand column, because that’s where it gets interesting. From 120 to 144, 144 to 180, 180 to 240 and 240 to 360 you cut almost exactly the same amount: about 1.4 ms each time. That holds even when the number on the box doubles from 180 to 360.

The 60-to-120Hz step, on the other hand, is worth six times more than any step after it. Which is why everyone remembers the first time they saw a fast monitor, and almost nobody describes 144-to-240 the same way.

This is arithmetic, not opinion: one second divided by the refresh rate. And it sets the floor on what the monitor can contribute, not the total — your mouse, the game engine, the CPU, the GPU and the panel’s pixel response each add their own share.

Where you do notice it: motion clarity

The part most guides get wrong is that the big benefit of high refresh isn’t smoothness, it’s sharpness when things move.

Your monitor holds each frame on screen until the next one arrives — that’s sample-and-hold. Your eye doesn’t hold still, though. When you track an enemy running across the screen, your eye moves continuously while the image jumps in steps. That mismatch turns into a smear, and the panel isn’t what causes it: the cause is how long the frame sat there.

Blur Busters measured this often enough to turn it into a rule: 1 ms of persistence equals 1 pixel of motion blur per 1,000 pixels/second of motion. Run the numbers and each refresh rate’s blur floor falls out:

Refresh rate	Minimum blur at 1,000 px/s
60Hz	~16.7 px
144Hz	~6.9 px
240Hz	~4.2 px
360Hz	~2.8 px

This is where 240Hz has a solid case: 40% less blur than 144Hz. In a shooter where you’re reading names and silhouettes while you swing your view, that’s information you get back.

Two warnings about that table. These are ideal-condition figures: frame rate equal to refresh rate and pixels that change colour instantly. And it’s a floor, not a promise — a real panel always does somewhat worse.

Your PC has to produce the frames (where half of these purchases fall apart)

A 240Hz monitor can refresh 240 times a second, but it can’t invent game states your PC never calculated. If the game runs at 120 FPS, each frame still sits on screen for 8.3 ms and your persistence is that of a 120Hz display. The screen isn’t cheating you — you’re feeding it half the material.

And what decides that, in the games where it matters, is often not the graphics card: it’s the CPU. Esports titles get played at low settings and 1080p precisely to take work away from the GPU, and once you succeed the bottleneck moves to the processor and the game engine. On strong systems it’s common to see CS2 producing nearly the same frame rate at 1080p as at 1440p — a sign that a bigger GPU adds nothing there. If your target is a stable 240 FPS in competitive play, look at the CPU before the card.

At the other extreme, a modern AAA game at 1440p with settings maxed won’t reach 240 FPS on the most expensive PC you can buy. There, 240Hz is just a label.

Before buying, measure what you have: not the peak, but the average and the 1% lows in the games you actually play. It’s free and takes ten minutes — how to monitor FPS and temperatures free. And if the numbers come out low and you don’t know which part is holding you back, the diagnosis is in what is a bottleneck and how to avoid it.

The panel matters more than the number on the box

Two 240Hz monitors can behave completely differently, because the refresh figure says nothing about how fast the pixels change colour.

Put 240Hz on a slow panel and it drags the previous frame into the new one. The result is a monitor that refreshes 240 times a second and looks as blurry as a good 144Hz one — or worse, if the overdrive ships too aggressive and adds inverse ghosting on top. An OLED changes colour in a fraction of a millisecond; a good fast IPS takes around a millisecond; a cheap VA, considerably more.

That’s why you’ll regularly read on the Blur Busters forums that a 240Hz OLED looks about as clear in motion as a non-strobed 360Hz LCD. When the pixel adds nothing, all that’s left is the persistence in the table above.

There’s also a shortcut hardly anyone uses that buys more clarity than going from 144 to 240: backlight strobing (DyAc on BenQ, ELMB on ASUS, ULMB on G-Sync displays). It switches the light off between frames and cuts persistence far below what refresh rate alone would give. The price is brightness, it usually doesn’t coexist with VRR, and it tires some people’s eyes. Rtings measures it in their reviews and is blunt about something I agree with: nice to have, but don’t buy a monitor only for that feature.

The marketing worth naming out loud

The K/D study. At SIGGRAPH 2019 NVIDIA published a correlation between higher frame rates and better kill/death ratios in Fortnite and PUBG, drawn from anonymised data on its own users. It’s a correlation, NVIDIA says so itself, and the company publishing it sells GPUs and monitors. People playing at 240 FPS also tend to own better PCs, log more hours and care more about winning. It is not proof that the screen makes you better.
540Hz, 600Hz and “1,000Hz”. These are real: the BenQ ZOWIE XL2586X+ is a 24.1-inch 1080p 600Hz panel announced in January 2025. But look at the table — 480Hz to 600Hz is 0.41 ms. These are monitors for people who compete for money, with the hardware and the routine to use them.
Dual-mode numbers. Panels like the LG 32GS95UE do 4K at 240Hz or 1080p at 480Hz by grouping pixels. That isn’t 480Hz at native resolution, and you switch modes from the monitor’s menu, not between rounds.
A bad 240Hz against a good 144Hz. If the budget won’t cover both, the better panel wins. Better resolution, better contrast and better response show up in everything you do; the 2.8 ms only show up when the game is running flat out.

Decision table

Your case	What makes sense
You compete in CS2, Valorant or Rocket League and clear 240 FPS	240Hz, and here it’s money well spent
You play esports but land between 150 and 200 FPS	144-180Hz; the next upgrade is the CPU
You mix some competitive play with a lot of story games	144-180Hz and spend the difference on the panel
Story and open-world only, at 1440p or 4K	144Hz is plenty. Resolution, contrast and HDR give you more
You play with a controller or on console ports	120Hz is the useful ceiling; skip 240 entirely
You already own a good 144Hz monitor	Swapping it for a cheap 240Hz is a step backwards
You own a 240Hz OLED	Don’t chase 360Hz; you’re already in the good part

Frequently asked questions

Can you tell the difference between 144Hz and 240Hz? Yes, if the frames are there: 2.8 ms less waiting and 40% less motion blur. But it’s a subtle change — the kind you notice two days after going back, not the moment you turn the monitor on.

Do I need 240 FPS to buy a 240Hz monitor? To get the benefit, yes. Below that it still works perfectly, and with VRR there’s no stutter either, but the feel and the clarity will match the frames you’re producing, not the number on the label.

Which do I notice first, more Hz or better resolution? Depends what you play. In competitive shooters, the Hz. In anything else, resolution and contrast, by a wide margin. If you’re choosing both at once, start with what monitor size suits you, because size and resolution get picked together.

Can my graphics card handle 240Hz? The connector isn’t the problem: any modern DisplayPort 1.4 carries 1080p at 240Hz with room to spare. The frames are the problem. And remember Windows doesn’t switch to the maximum rate on its own — how to set up your gaming monitor.

What about 480Hz or 540Hz, are they worth anything? Technically yes, and less each time: 240Hz to 480Hz saves 2.1 ms; 480Hz to 600Hz saves 0.41 ms. Unless you play for a living, that’s a number for bragging.

What to look at next

Once you know which refresh rate you want, the next step is the specific model: the best value gaming monitor comparison goes tier by tier at current prices, and if you like the wraparound format there are the best curved gaming monitors. To hold high frame rates in esports, the buying order comes from the best GPU for your budget alongside the best CPU for your budget. And if you’re switching monitors to compete, your sensitivity needs redoing: what DPI to use in shooters.

Sources consulted

Published 8 October 2026. Figures and specifications verified on that date.