recently Overwatch 2, I started playing Wrecking Ball. Compared to my usual main Mercy, this game has a lot more disorienting movement, flying across the map and chasing fast-moving characters. So I was excited to play it on my Samsung Odyssey G6. The game has a 360Hz refresh rate, which is faster than any game I’ve played so far. I finally got more frames than I needed.
The Odyssey G6 is a 27-inch flat-panel OLED display with a 2,560 x 1,440 resolution. It supports AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, meaning it’s ready for HDR content, something other FreeSync-enabled monitors can’t necessarily do. That said, the standout feature here is the incredible refresh rate, faster than many will ever experience.
Photo: Eric Ravenscraft
The whole package
The Odyssey G6 Stand is easy to set up and use. Your monitor simply clicks into place on the sturdy stand, or you can bring your own monitor arm as it also supports VESA mounting. It rotates up to 60 degrees horizontally (30 degrees in each direction) and lets you rotate your screen in either direction for portrait or landscape orientation.
My only complaint about the rotation is that the stand doesn’t have a central hole to thread the cable through – there is a small rubber clip on the back to secure the cable in place, but if you plan on rotating the screen a lot, the cable may get tangled if not threaded properly.
Photo: Eric Ravenscraft
Faster than a speeding frame
When we tested the gaming laptop Razer Blade 18 (8/10, WIRED Recommended), it came with an astoundingly fast refresh rate of 300Hz, but we thought it was overkill. The human eye doesn’t really see “frames per second.” The brain is tuned to focus on things like contrast and movement, so even if you can technically see very fast flashing flicker artifacts, you might not actually notice much difference between a 120Hz display that refreshes 120 times per second and a 300Hz display that refreshes 300 times per second. This is because you’re not focusing on how quickly the image on the screen updates.
However, frame rate becomes much more important when tracking fast-moving objects (or players) in video games. With fewer frames per second, objects don’t seem to move at all, but rather make small jumps from one place to another. You can see this effect in action with this online tool: try comparing 24 fps with 120 fps (if your monitor supports it) with and without motion blur. The effect becomes pretty obvious.
It’s important to understand why this works, because the Odyssey G6 not only makes your movements smoother, Unnecessarily It’s smooth. I’ve been using the monitor for a few weeks now and I’m still deciding if this smoothness is a good thing. At certain points, I can’t help but wonder if my brain is bottlenecked in not being able to mentally update where my enemy Cassidy is 360 times per second.
