TV Refresh Rates Explained: 60Hz, 120Hz, and Beyond

If you're in the market for a TV, you've probably heard a lot about "speed." When ads and reviews talk about how fast a TV is, they're referring to the panel's refresh rate, or how often it changes the picture. Television and movies don't show actual motion so much as they do dozens or hundreds of distinct images per second like a huge flipbook (or, well, a reel of film). The more images—or frames—a TV displays per second, the faster it is.

Faster refresh rates should result in smoother, better TV, right? Logic and marketing agree on this correlation, but the reality is more complicated.

What Is 3:2 Pulldown?

Before we can clear up the confusion, we must establish two important things about video. First, you can't add detail beyond what is already in the source footage (you can synthesize information with image processing, but it doesn't actually add detail that isn't there; it only polishes it a bit). Second, the vast majority of video source footage doesn't exceed 60Hz. When you stream a movie online or watch a Blu-ray disc, you see a 1080p or 4K picture at up to 60 frames per second (fps), though it is more likely either 24 or 30fps.

For movies specifically, especially ones that were recorded on film, the original footage is captured at 24 frames per second and then upscaled to 30fps through a process known as 3:2 pulldown, which distributes the source images so they can be spread across 30 frames every second instead of 24. Those frames are then interlaced (combined and shuffled) to 60 frames per second to match the 60Hz refresh rate of most TVs. Of course, any content that was originally recorded at 60 frames per second can match a 60Hz TV's refresh rate without any pulldown or interlacing.

What Is the Soap Opera Effect?

Once a TV's refresh rate rises above the rate of the content you're watching, it starts performing tricks to deal with the lower frame rate. For example, in the case of a 120Hz TV, it needs to fill in the 60 additional frames to hit its native 120Hz refresh rate after the pulldown process kicks the initial number of frames to 60 per second. The TV fills in the spaces with either black frames, copies of the original frames, or best-guess "middle" frames.

To create these new frames, the TV combines and processes the data from the surrounding frames and then generates what it thinks should go there. You're looking at more individual pictures as the screen draws them, but these pictures weren't originally present—the TV is generating those additional pictures on the fly.

These synthesized frames can smooth over the motion of the content, but that isn't always a good thing. Artificially pumping the content's frame rate to 60 or above (usually 120Hz for higher-end TVs) can produce what's known as the "soap opera effect." It makes the TV show or movie look unnaturally fluid and probably unlike what the directors, cinematographers, and engineers intended.

Fortunately, this effect usually only kicks in when the TV is putting too much work into synthesizing frames and pumping up the frame rate artificially. In other words, it happens when your TV's motion smoothing features are turned on. If you disable these features, film and TV should look like film and TV; characters don't look like weird vampires moving around the screen.

Motion Smoothing: Good for Sports

Although motion smoothing can make movies and TV shows look strange, it can be helpful for live sports and video games. When you're watching sports, for example, and the camera pans quickly horizontally, you might notice choppiness or "tearing" (the effect in which part of the image seems to hang behind what's on the rest of the screen for a moment). This is a common issue related to how TVs draw frames. Motion smoothing can help reduce this effect with live sports without producing the soap opera effect as it would with with TV shows and movies captured at a lower frame rate.

Generally, if what you're watching involves seeing real people talk, disable the higher refresh rate so they don't look like creepy dolls. If what you're watching involves seeing real people run into each other (sports) or fake people attacking each other in an artificial environment (video games), enable the higher refresh rate mode. We recommend you set the refresh rate to a low or a medium level if you have the option, though; the most zealous motion modes can still make the picture look unreal.

Do You Need Super-Fast Refresh Rates and VRR for Video Games?

Although 120Hz refresh rates on most midrange and high-end TVs work well, don't expect to see any real performance improvement from refresh rates of 240Hz and above. These higher-than-most-content refresh rates have rapidly diminishing returns, and you aren't likely to see much of a benefit unless you're an avid gamer.

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Most video games strive to run at a consistent 60 frames per second, though higher-end gaming PCs can push past that. Newer hardware and older games can easily shoot past 120 frames per second, for instance, if the game doesn't cap the frame rate. A TV that can reach those numbers is always welcome for gaming, which is why higher-end gaming monitors can hit 360Hz and above.

However, tearing becomes a big danger here if your TV can't keep pace with the game's frame rate, which brings us to variable refresh rate (VRR). VRR doesn't futz with frames or perform any significant synthesizing; it just lets the panel adjust its refresh rate on the fly to match what's coming through your game console or PC. It's very useful, for example, in first-person shooters where you might need to rapidly spin around to aim. Without VRR, tearing can become a visual problem.

There are two brand-based VRR features for which gamers should keep an eye out, AMD FreeSync and Nvidia G-Sync. These tools let the TV work directly with your PC's Radeon or GeForce graphics card, respectively, to offer better framerate syncing than standard VRR. Many of our top TVs for gaming offer one or both of these features.

For other TV tips, check out our easy fixes for common TV problems. And if you're setting up your home theater, our guides to choosing the right TV screen size and managing your cables can help.