TCL has demonstrated an astonishingly fast display panel during DisplayWeek 2024. The brand’s new beast was able to reach a 1,000Hz refresh rate, and without sacrificing a high resolution.
LCD and OLED-based panels have improved drastically over the years. However, they still struggle to beat the good old chunky CRTs in motion clarity. In an attempt to finally best the nostalgic tech, TCL has presented the world’s first 1,000Hz refresh rate panel. Yes, this bad boy can technically display 1,000fps without skipping a single one – at least in theory.
Why is that? Well, there are very few games out there where quadruple-figure frame rates are achievable, even with the best graphics card. Upscalers like Nvidia DLSS and AMD FSR lend a helping hand, and frame generation goes a step further. Still, even if you find a compatible title, no cables are capable of transmitting that amount of continuous data. This is especially important as the screen resolution is 4K. Usually, high refresh rate panels stick with 1080p because HD lends itself to faster speed.
Though we would have liked to see such speed on an OLED-based technology, LCD is the way to go for high-refresh displays for now. Where OLED and QD-OLED monitors max out at 4K 240Hz or 1440p 360Hz, LCDs already offer 540Hz – albeit at 1080p.
An OLED-based panel rocking such speed would be perfect as it would also leverage OLED’s lightning-quick pixel response times. These tend to hover around 0.03ms compared to LCD’s 1ms. That said, during this gathering, VESA did show a 480Hz OLED panel running the UFO test as part of its ClearMR demos. Fortunately, 1,000Hz OLEDs are expected to become available by 2027.
Mark Rejhon from Blur Busters explains that “higher resolutions amplify refresh rate limitations due to higher static resolution versus unchanged motion resolution (at the same MPRT persistence), so higher-resolution, wider-FOV, and higher-detail content have more human-visible benefits from 1000Hz.”
2027 isn’t that far ahead when considering such an improvement. Also, brace yourselves for the mandatory “human eye can’t see above x fps.” I can’t imagine how it would feel moving from my 144Hz VA to a blistering 1,000Hz OLED. I better start saving already.