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Regardless of which smart TV catches your eye lately, manufacturers seem obsessed with pushing refresh rates as the ultimate selling point, right alongside the panel technology.
Whether you're hunting for a solid budget-friendly find or ready to drop serious cash on a flagship home theater setup, navigating the refresh rate landscape usually feels like wading through a messy swamp of technical buzzwords and overblown marketing hype.
Also: How to disable HDMI-CEC on your TV
But does a high refresh rate automatically mean you get a better picture? To help you find the right fit for your space and entertainment needs, I broke down what refresh rates are and how they affect picture quality.
What does refresh rate even mean?
A refresh rate, also known as frame rate, is the number of times a TV screen displays an image per second. Measured in hertz, there is a very complicated formula that electrical engineers use to calculate refresh rates, but it's easier to imagine your TV as a very fancy slideshow projector, with each frame a separate still image.
When a television's tech specs list the refresh rate as 60Hz, that means the screen can produce up to 60 frames per second. And as LED technology has improved, refresh rates are getting pushed higher and higher, with many modern smart TVs having rates on par with high-end gaming and professional PC monitors.
Almost all smart TVs can be lumped into one of three major groups based on refresh rates:
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