Refresh rate test

How many times a second your screen is actually updating. Measured here, in about two seconds.

What was measured

The browser was asked to draw a frame as often as it could for two and a half seconds, and the gap between each pair of frames was recorded. The number above is the median of those gaps, turned into frames per second.

The median is used rather than the average on purpose: one frame arriving late - a notification, a background task - would drag an average down and misreport a screen that is otherwise fine. The middle value ignores it.

Why it can read lower than the number on the box

This measures what your browser is actually getting, which is not always what the panel can do. Several ordinary things lower it, and none of them means the screen is faulty:

• Battery saver. Most phones drop to the lowest refresh rate the moment it turns on, and that is usually the single reason a 120Hz phone reads 60.
• An adaptive panel settling down. Many screens vary their rate with what is on them, and a mostly static page is exactly the sort of thing they slow down for.
• The browser itself. A background tab is cut to roughly one frame a second, which is why this page refuses to answer at all if it lost focus while measuring.
• A connected display. On a laptop or desktop the figure follows whichever screen this window is on, not the fastest one attached.

A phone advertised at 240Hz is not a 240Hz screen

This one catches people out, because both numbers appear in the same marketing. The high figure is usually the touch sampling rate - how often the glass checks for your finger - and it is routinely quoted beside a display that refreshes at half that or less. They are different components doing different jobs, and only the display rate is what this page measures.

Is a higher number better?

For scrolling and games, a higher refresh rate is visibly smoother. But it is only worth anything if the device can actually produce frames that fast - a screen willing to show 120 a second is no help if the processor can supply forty. That gap is the thing worth knowing, and it is what the full benchmark measures: the refresh rate alongside the frame rate under load, and the slowest frames, which are what stutter actually feels like.