Gaming laptops with 144Hz, 240Hz, 360Hz & 480Hz high refresh screens

This article explains why a high refresh-rate screen should be a must on your gaming laptop in this day and age, and also compiles for you a complete list of all the available notebooks equipped with 144Hz or the newer 240Hz, 360Hz, and 480Hz display options, with some of their important traits and links towards more detailed reviews and guides.

If you’re not interested in the technicalities, you can jump straight to the complete list via this link, to the subsection of more recent launches with 300Hz and 360Hz panels, and the scroll down for other options.

For years, most laptop screens were standard 60 Hz panels with response times in the 20-60 ms range. In very few words, that means that the content displayed on such a screen was refreshed 60 times a second, with a delay between the time the frame was rendered on the GPU and when it was actually displayed in front of your eyes. That was, and still is perfectly fine for everyday use and movies, but a 60 Hz screen suffers from various graphics artifacts in games, such as screen tearing, especially in those that quickly transition between moving scenes.

Game developers allow us to address this problem by enabling VSync, but VSync comes with issues of its own (like increased input lag) and most competitive gamers prefer to keep it disabled.

High refresh-rate screens with faster response times are meant to alleviate tearing and stuttering without adding lag, and such panels are now available on most good-quality gaming laptops.

In all fairness, they’re still not going to completely address all the issues, but they come closer to offering a smooth and glitch-free gaming experience. In theory, that perfect gaming experience is achievable if you run a game at let’s say 144 fps on a 144 Hz screen all the time, but that’s impossible to get in practice, as frame rates are variable. And here’s where technologies like Nvidia GSync or AMD FreeSync and ActiveSync come in, which sync the screen’s refresh rate to the game’s refresh rate, making sure that the screen only refreshes when the hardware outputs new content.

Since most gaming laptops are based these days on Nvidia GPUs, there are some that offer GSync, but primarily in the higher-tier ranges, as this technology doesn’t come cheap. We’re not going to focus on GSync or FreeSync in this article, but we’ll mention which of the devices in the following list supports it.

If you’re on a tighter budget and cannot reach out for a GSync laptop, I would still recommend having a 144+ Hz panel on your to-get list, as the refresh alone will alleviate most potential gaming issues. Just make sure to pick the right hardware that can handle the games you’re interested in. If you’re into casual games, you’ll want a computer with a GTX 1050Ti/GTX 1650/RTX 3050 GPU or higher, while if you plan to run AAA titles, get at least a GTX 1060/1660Ti/RTX 3060 build.

Of course, there’s also the question of whether a 240/300/360 Hz screen is worth getting over a 144 Hz panel, and the answer is: it depends. If you’re a regular gamer, you’ll hardly tell the difference between the these options, as the jump from 144 to 240+ Hz is much more subtle than the jump from 60 to 144 Hz. On the other hand, if you’re a competitive player and you’re into fast action-paced shooters, MMOs or driving games, then every little bit is going to count and a 300/360 Hz panel will help. Just make sure to pair such a display with the kind of graphics that can actually run the titles you’re interested in at high 300+ fps.

You should also consider whether you want a TN or an IPS panel on your computer. Generically, TN screens offer shorter response times, which translate in diminished ghosting, but also narrower viewing angles and poorer colors. IPS screens on the other hand display nicer colors, get better contrast and wide viewing angles, but some of them are pretty slow, which can be a disadvantage in those fast games. The recent IPS panels are no longer slow, with many options offering an advertised response time of 3 ms (with Overdrive), so as of 2021-2022, opting for a TN panel no longer makes sense on a modern laptop, unless you’re on a very tight budget and looking to buy an older device at a good discount.

One final aspect to discuss here is the resolution of these screens. For the last years, most high-refresh rate screens have been FHD – 1920 x 1080 px resolution, but as of recently, there are also some FHD+ (1920 x 1200 px) 16:10 options, as well as a handful of QHD 120 to 240 Hz and even 4K 120Hz panel options. We’ve covered laptops with 4K 120Hz screens in this post, and we’ll also touch on the mid-tier best-balanced QHD and QHD+ options in a separate article, while in here we’ll mostly focus on the FHD 300 and 360Hz options.

With all these in mind, let’s jump to the actual list of gaming laptops with high refresh-rate screens. It includes both mid-range and high-tier options, with links towards more detailed reviews and updated configurations and prices at the time you’re reading the article.

Modern laptops with 480 Hz and 360 Hz screens

480Hz FHD panels are available as of 2022 as the fastest displays that you can get on laptops, a step-up from the 360Hz panels available in the past. We’re going to list these options separately in this section, and continue with the mainstream 240/144Hz options below. I’d still advise you to make sure that you’ll actually benefit from having a 300+Hz panel on your computer, and don’t just buy into the hype here.

You should know that 480Hz/360Hz screens are mostly only available on higher-tier configurations (RTX 3070 or 3080 or later, with very few 3060 exceptions) of a handful of laptops out there, so aiming for this sort of display will limit your options. In comparison, sub-240Hz screens are available with all sorts of mid-tier more affordable models. Also, keep in mind that most of the laptops mentioned below with an FHD 480Hz/360Hz display option are also available in other screen variants, including QHD 165/240 Hz or even 4K 120Hz.

And here’s the second part of this section with laptops available with 300Hz screens. We’re not mentioning those already listed above, but in some cases, those might also be available with FHD 300Hz displays on mid-tier 3060 configurations.

That aside, I’ve mostly included latest-gen products in here, and only a handful of the older 2019-2020 laptops that are still shipping with 300 Hz displays.

Update: As of recently, most premium-tier laptops are also available with a middle-ground QHD or QHD+ panel with 165Hz or 240Hz refresh rate. The increased resolution allows for sharper image quality, while the 165-240Hz refresh should still suffice for the vast majority of gamers here. We’ll have a list of gaming laptops with this sort of screen in a separate article.

Lightweight laptops with 144Hz and 240 Hz screens

And here’s a complete list of full-size laptops with 120/144/240 Hz screens, latest generations hardware and GSync (in some cases).

Full-Size laptops with 144Hz or 240Hz screens

*advertised BTW response time, not measured

The other BTW (Black to White) response time numbers above are based on measured test results from notebookcheck.net and laptopmedia.com, as we do not currently have the capabilities to test these in our reviews. Take them with a grain of salt and do your own research if response times are a crucial factor in your decision process.

That’s about it for this article on gaming laptops with fast 144Hz, 240Hz, 360Hz, or even 480Hz screens. We’re constantly updating the list, but if you spot any issues or any product that should be in here and is not, please get in touch in the comments section below. That aside, if you’re interested in more details on gaming notebooks, our master article on the best gaming laptops of the moment is a good place to start your research.