BOE showcases world’s first 600 Hz laptop gaming display

60 Hz was the standard laptop screen refresh rate for more than a decade, but, with the GPU advancements from the past several years that allow hundreds of fps in some competitive titles, display refresh rates are now trying to catch up as much as possible. The good old 1080p and FHD+ screens are not that appealing anymore without a high refresh rate, and, every year, laptop OEMs try to one up each other with higher refresh rates, to the point where we now have the Alienware X17 R2  offering a 480 Hz screen option. Many AAA game titles still cannot benefit from these high refresh rates, yet the competitive FPS crowd is pushing for even faster screens. What insane rates could we see in 2023? Chinese display maker BOE thinks the market is ready for 600 Hz.

BOE is showcasing all sorts of display technologies at the World Display Industry Conference this year, from ultra-wide 34-inch Mini-LED gaming screens with 165 Hz refresh rates to Z-shape folding smartphone screens, and even a 16-inch 600 Hz laptop screen with 1.66 ns frame time. Unfortunately, the exact specs of the laptop screens remain a mystery. While OLEDs went from 165 Hz to 240 Hz this year, it is highly unlikely that BOE managed to more than double the refresh rate for laptop use. Most of the fast gaming displays use TN or IPS panels, so BOE may be using either of these. The resolution is probably not too high, either, maybe FHD or FHD+, seeing that the aspect ratio on the showcased laptop seems to be 16:10.

Even though insanely high refresh rate screens could certainly help with laptop marketing strategies, it should also be noted that BOE’s 27-inch 500 Hz display announced in early 2021 has yet to see commercial implementation. Back then BOE said that 500 Hz would be possible through an 8-lane eDP connection, but, as Tom’s Hardware points out, a 1080p image with 600 Hz refresh rate at 8-bit color depth would not work on current eDP 1.4 connections.

DisplayPort 2.0 is indeed a thing and DP 2.1 is also supported by AMD’s latest Radeon 7000 cards, but Nvidia is still limited to DP 1.4 at least on the latest desktop RTX 4000 cards, and the laptop variants will probably not get DP 2.0 support either. All things considered, it looks like we are still a few years away from seeing commercial devices featuring 600 Hz screens.

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