This one TV feature matters more than having the fastest refresh rate

While most of the specs hype around smart TVs tends to revolve around their resolution, brightness, and HDR (high dynamic range) formats, you’ll also see refresh rates (measured in hertz) come up as a frequent bragging point. Indeed, the way some product pages go on about them, you’d think that refresh rates were everything — as if specs that weren’t as fast as possible would be a disappointment. It’s why motion smoothing is still an option on TVs, even though it tends to lead to the “soap opera effect” when you watch movies or shows shot at 24 frames per second (fps).

What matters more these days is a feature called variable refresh rate, or VRR for short. In this guide, I’ll cover not just what it is and how it works, but what’s required for it, and why it matters far more than the fastest possible refresh technology. I guarantee it’ll change how you go about TV shopping.

What does variable refresh rate tech do on your TV?

Dealing with the realities of modern viewing

Once upon a time, refresh rates didn’t really matter on TVs. People were mostly watching antenna, cable, or satellite broadcasts, delivered to their TVs at a fixed rate, and further limited by the speed of cathode ray tubes. You’d mix things up occasionally with a VCR, a laserdisc player, or an early game console, but even those weren’t especially demanding.

Now, of course, TVs are all-digital, and a window to a lot more than just movies and TV shows. You might, for example, jump from a movie shot at 24fps to a YouTube clip shot at 60fps. Some people connect computers to their TVs for both work and entertainment, and consoles have become so advanced that a lot of people mistake a game like Madden or NBA 2K26 for a sports channel.

VRR adjusts refresh rates on the fly based on the details of an incoming video signal. If you’re watching a 60fps YouTube video, for example, it’ll set your TV’s refresh rate to 60Hz. With games, this technology is almost constantly in action, since frame rates are in flux depending not just on content, but how well a PC or console’s processor can keep up. A game with state-of-the-art visual effects might hit 60fps most of the time, but dip to 30fps or less during intense action scenes.

When a signal is coming from an external peripheral like a PC, console, media streamer, or Blu-ray player, VRR requires that your TV port, the connecting cable, and the peripheral itself support HDMI 2.1 or later. Earlier versions of HDMI are stuck at fixed frame rates. For the best possible resolution and refresh rate options, you can choose HDMI 2.2, but nothing’s really exploiting that yet.

Why are variable refresh rates such a big deal?

It’s about the right speed, not the fastest

Naughty Dog

A mismatch between frame rates and refresh rates doesn’t automatically spell doom. In fact, even a TV with a fixed 60Hz refresh rate should look good most of the time, as long as it’s not just simulating that with a motion smoothing option. Seriously, no matter how good your TV is, you should always disable smoothing immediately — it’s nice for sports and live news, but it can make something like Dune: Part Two or Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King look like it has the same budget as a ’90s episode of General Hospital.

The problem with fixed refresh rates is that in some circumstances, they can lead to artifacts like stuttering, i.e. a choppy look when frame rate falls. Perhaps the worst effect is “screen tearing,” caused by multiple frames being displayed simultaneously. You’re most likely to see stuttering and tearing in games, since it’s easier for frame rates to fall out of sync with refresh rates.

With both games and other apps, TVs without VRR can feel laggier, which is a deal-killer for a lot of people. The effect stems from the fact that if a frame isn’t rendered fast enough by a graphics processor (GPU), non-VRR sets display either the last frame or only part of the new one — hence tearing. Ironically, by forcing the pipeline to wait until each frame is rendered properly, VRR creates a more fluid experience as far as your eyes are concerned.

Maximum refresh rates are still important, don’t get me wrong. If a connected source is capable of frame rates over 60, you won’t be able to see those extra frames unless you’ve got a TV with 120Hz or better. Realistically, however, the further you go past 120Hz, the less likely you are to benefit. Even a top-of-the-line PC with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card is unlikely to push most games past 120fps, not when they’re rendered at 4K with maximum detail. There may be some benefit to a 144Hz TV when playing older games, or newer ones with lower resolutions or detail — but even that’s questionable. Anything over 144Hz is overkill, particularly given the limits of human anatomy. It’s already difficult for many people to discern frame rates past the 60fps mark.

So why are some TV makers bothering with 144, 165, or even 240Hz TVs? Bragging rights enabled by new panel and processor technologies, essentially. It looks more impressive to shoppers who don’t know any better, or who do know better but can afford the best of the best for its own sake.

If you’re like most people and have a fixed budget, your money is much better spent on a 120Hz TV with VRR and other use-case amenities than hunting for a model with the highest possible specs in every category. Samsung’s 240Hz TVs don’t support Dolby Vision — and that’s going to matter a lot more in the long run than refresh rates your eye can’t even register.