Lately in Surveillance 2, I started playing Wrecking Ball. Compared to my usual main character, Mercy, it somehow involves even more disorienting movement, traversing the map and following fast-moving characters. That’s why I was excited to play on the Samsung Odyssey G6. It has a 360Hz refresh rate that’s faster than almost any other game I’ve played. I finally have more frames than I need.
The Odyssey G6 is a 27-inch flat OLED display with a resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels. It supports AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, which supports HDR content – something other FreeSync-compatible monitors can’t necessarily do. That said, the standout feature here is the incredible refresh rate, which is faster than many will have used before.
Photography: Eric Ravenscraft
The complete package
The Odyssey G6’s stand is a pleasure to set up and use. The monitor clicks into place on the sturdy stand, though it supports VESA mounts if you prefer to bring your own monitor arm. It can rotate up to 60 degrees horizontally (30 in each direction), and you can swivel the screen between portrait and landscape mode in either direction.
My only complaint about the rotation is that there isn’t a central hole in the stand to thread cables through. There is a small rubber clip on the back to hold cables in place, but if you plan on rotating the display a lot, you might end up tangling them if you don’t route them properly.
Photography: Eric Ravenscraft
Faster than a speedometer
When I tested the Razer Blade 18 gaming laptop (8/10, WIRED recommends), it had a blisteringly fast 300Hz refresh rate, which I thought would be excessive. Human eyes don’t exactly see in “frames per second.” Our brains are wired to focus more on things like contrast and motion, so even if we can technically see flickering artifacts that Quickly go to very high speedsIn practice, we might not notice much of a difference between a 120Hz display, where things refresh 120 times per second, and a 300Hz display, where things refresh 300 times, simply because we’re not focusing on how fast the image on the screen is refreshing.
However, frame rate becomes much more relevant when you’re trying to track fast-moving objects (or players) in video games. When there are fewer frames per second, objects will appear less like they’re moving and more like they’re making small micro-jumps from one place to another. You can see this effect in action with this online toolTry comparing 24fps to 120fps (if your monitor supports it), with or without motion blur. The effects become quite obvious.
It’s important to understand why it works the way it does, because the Odyssey G6 doesn’t just make motion feel fluid, it almost feels fluid. needlessly Smooth. I’ve been using this monitor for a couple of weeks now, and I’m still undecided on whether that smoothness is a good thing. At some point, I have to wonder if my brain is the real bottleneck preventing me from mentally updating where enemy Cassidy is 360 times a second.