Lately in Surveillance 2, I started playing Wrecking Ball. Compared to my usual main game, Mercy, it somehow involves even more disorienting movement, whipping around the map, and tracking fast-moving characters. So I was excited to play on the Samsung Odyssey G6. It has a 360Hz refresh rate, which is faster than almost anything else I’ve played on. Finally, I finally have more frames than I need.
The Odyssey G6 is a 27-inch flat OLED display with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,440. It supports AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, which supports HDR content, something other FreeSync-compatible monitors can’t necessarily do. That said, the most notable feature here is the ridiculous refresh rate, which is faster than many will have ever used before.
Photography: Eric Ravenscraft
The complete package
The Odyssey G6 stand is a pleasure to set up and use. The monitor snaps onto the sturdy stand with a single click, though it supports VESA mounts if you prefer to bring your own monitor arm. It can swivel up to 60 degrees horizontally (30 in each direction), and you can rotate the screen between portrait and landscape mode in either direction.
My only complaint about the rotation is that there is no central hole in the stand to route cables through. There is a small rubber clip on the back to keep cables in place, but if you plan on rotating your monitor often, you may end up with tangled cables if you don’t route them properly.
Photography: Eric Ravenscraft
Faster than a high-speed frame
When I tested the Razer Blade 18 gaming laptop (8/10, WIRED recommendation), it offered an incredibly fast 300Hz refresh rate, which I thought was excessive. Human eyes don’t exactly see in “frames per second.” Our brains are tuned to focus more on things like contrast and motion, so while we can technically see flickering artifacts that scroll by at very high speeds, in practice we might not notice much difference between a 120Hz display, where things refresh 120 times per second, and a 300Hz display, where they refresh 300 times, simply because we’re not focusing on how quickly the image on the screen updates.
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 tool . Try comparing 24fps to 120fps (if your monitor can handle it), with or without motion blur. The effects become quite obvious.
It’s important to understand why this works this way, because the Odyssey G6 doesn’t just make motion smooth. It almost makes it unnecessarily fluid. I’ve been using this monitor for a few weeks now and I’m still not sure if such fluidity is a good thing. At some point I wonder if my brain is the real bottleneck that prevents me from mentally updating the location of the enemy Cassidy 360 times per second.
