How to check your screen refresh rate
Buying a 144Hz monitor does not mean you are running at 144Hz. A surprising number of high-refresh displays sit at 60Hz for months because nobody changed the setting.
Check what you are actually getting
The reliable way is to measure it rather than read it from a settings panel, because settings can report a mode the link never negotiated. A browser-based test that samples animation frame timing over several seconds will report the rate your display is genuinely presenting at. Let it run for at least ten seconds to settle, and close background video and animations first.
Cross-check that figure against your operating system display settings. If the two disagree, trust the measurement.
Why it is often lower than advertised
- The rate was never changed from the default. Both Windows and macOS frequently default a new display to 60Hz.
- The cable cannot carry it. High resolution combined with a high refresh rate needs the bandwidth of a recent DisplayPort or HDMI standard. An older cable will silently negotiate a lower mode instead of failing outright.
- The port cannot carry it. Some HDMI ports on older graphics cards top out well below what the monitor supports, while the DisplayPort output on the same card handles it fine.
- A hub or adapter is in the path. Docks and USB-C adapters are a very common bottleneck.
- Battery saving is capping it. Laptops routinely drop to 60Hz on battery.
Getting the full rate
Set the rate explicitly in your display settings rather than trusting the default. If the rate you want is not offered, the limit is in the cable, the port or the driver — work through those in that order. Use the highest-standard cable that came with the monitor, prefer DisplayPort on a desktop, and connect directly rather than through a dock while testing.
After changing anything, measure again. A setting that appears to apply but produces no measured change means the link fell back.
Refresh rate versus response time
They are different things and both matter. Refresh rate is how many times per second the panel is updated. Response time is how quickly a pixel can change colour once it is told to. A 165Hz panel with slow pixels will still smear in motion, because the pixels cannot finish transitioning before the next frame arrives. A moving-object test shows this directly: watch the trailing edge of a moving box for a visible smear or a dark ghost.
Variable refresh rate
Adaptive sync matches the display refresh to the frame rate the source is producing, which removes tearing without the input latency of traditional vsync. It is worth enabling on both the monitor and the graphics driver. On a small number of panels it can cause visible brightness flicker in dark scenes at low frame rates — if you see that, capping the frame rate slightly below the panel maximum usually resolves it.