Summary
- MSI unveiled a 600Hz monitor, but it’s likely a marketing gimmick with limited practical value.
- The difference between refresh rates beyond 360Hz is imperceptible for most users.
- Most games won’t even run at 600 frames per second, making this monitor unnecessary for the majority.
High refresh rate monitors are cool. But there’s a very fine line between cool and outright gimmicky. We’ve seen monitors with some insane refresh rates, and this one might have the craziest we’ve seen yet—but really, almost no one needs it.
MSI has announced the MPG 242R X60N, with its main factor being the fact that it has a 600Hz display. This is about ten times the standard 60Hz we’ve had on a lot of monitors years ago, and means that your games will be displayed at a whopping 600 frames per second if your GPU allows for it. Simply crazy. Like it’s standard fare with most hardware releases these days, we have “AI-powered” buzzword tools like “AI Vision” and an “AI Crosshair,” but these are ultimately just marketing gimmicks. The monitor has a color gamut covering 93% of the DCI-P3 color space and 119% sRGB, and it also has VESA DisplayHDR 400 certification. We also have HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4a, and USB Type-C with 98W of output so you can fast charge your devices with it. The monitor has a 4-way adjustable stand and KVM support for multi-device control.
The main marketing gimmick here, however, could be argued to be the 600Hz panel that we have here. There are a few reasons why a very specific subset of people might want to buy this, but for the vast majority of folks, this is just not worth it at all. 240Hz and even 360Hz were worth it, but everything above it has diminishing returns. Some people might see the difference more clearly, but the difference between 500Hz and 600Hz is virtually imperceptible to the naked eye for most people. If you say you do, you’re either an extremely seasoned esports player or you’re lying. A jump from 360Hz to 600Hz almost halves the time between frames displayed on your screen from 2.78ms to a mere 1.67ms. As a reminder, there are a thousand milliseconds in a second, so the monitor is really just displaying frames thousandths of a second faster.
Then, we have the problem that unless you have a really powerful PC, almost no games will run at 600 frames per second. Games like Counter-Strike 2 might, but some more demanding games will make you struggle to crack 200 or even 100, and that’s in a very generous scenario. The truth of the matter is that almost no one will be able to notice the difference here because there’s practically not much of a difference to begin with. This is just pushing the envelope for the sake of pushing it. I’m not against innovation as long as it’s something actually useful, but I would seriously make the argument that this is not useful at all.
Related
ASUS Reveals an Unnecessarily Cool 500Hz Gaming Monitor
This 500Hz monitor is cool, but will it save you from losing to a random 11-year-old? Probably not.
If you want to get one of these, keep an eye out at your retailer of choice. Although again, it’s probably a dumb idea.
Source: MSI
