Although the refresh rate isn’t as important as, for instance, a monitor’s resolution or color accuracy, it still plays an important role in the overall viewing experience, especially when it comes to gaming.
A higher refresh rate means that your monitor’s image will update faster and, as a result, provide a smoother picture.
Everyday office or home monitors have a refresh rate of 60Hz or around that number, which means that they are updating their image 60 times in a second, while, for instance, gaming monitors have a refresh rate of 144Hz or even 240Hz, which is four times as much.
In other words, investment in high refresh rate gaming monitors makes sense for die-hard gamers, but for regular users, it is overkill.
Even though modern-day monitors automatically select the highest refresh rate, there are still occasions when you have to do it manually, which may present an issue for many, especially if you are not familiar with your OS eco-system, such as, for example, Windows 10. If that is the case, the following lines will clear your doubts about it.
How to Check and Change a Monitor’s Refresh Rate in Windows 10
To check/change your monitor’s refresh rate, you need to go to “Display Settings”. There are a couple of ways you can manage that and here are the two most common ones:
- Go to your desktop, right-click with your mouse and select “Display Settings”.
- Type “Display Settings” in your Windows search.
When you see it among the search results, just click on it.
- Scroll down until you see “Advanced Display Settings” link in a newly opened window and click on it.
- Right now, you will have all your display’s major characteristics in front of you, including the “Refresh rate”.
If you also want to change it, you need to click on “Display Adapter Properties” link.
- After that go to the “Monitor” tab and select it.
- Select the desired refresh rate from the “Screen Refresh Rate” box. Press “OK” and that is it.
Now, you will have your “Screen Refresh Rate” ready to change.
