As far as unnecessary things go, a 480Hz monitor is probably right up there alongside a smart salt dispenser. Most of us could only dream of achieving frame rates that high in the latest games, let alone having a monitor that could display. Yet there’s a prototype panel out there that can achieve this lofty 480Hz refresh rate.

Blur Busters got sent the prototype, which is indeed a true 480Hz panel running at 1080 which is also capable of 120Hz at 4K resolution. It seems as if there are indeed 480Hz monitors in development and possibly ready for manufacture soon.

As with anything high-end such as this, it’s probably going to be a case of diminishing returns. The difference between 240Hz and 480Hz is apparently noticeable to the naked eye, but it’s obviously nowhere near the jump from 60Hz to 144Hz, for example.

"Doubling the refresh rate, halves the distance between image copies in the stroboscopic effect. This also applies to things like FPS games (e.g. flick-turns while staring at crosshairs—and then seeing the 'stepping effect' of the turn," says Blur Busters. "In fact, even the 1000Hz report-rate of a gaming mouse is becoming a limiting factor—mouse manufacturers such as Razer, Logitech, SteelSeries, ASUS ROG, Zowie, and others, now need to release true-2000 Hz position report rates."

Having a 480Hz monitor is one thing, yet actually achieving frame rates that can capitalise on this is a different matter entirely. Even the most ludicrous machine is going to get bottlenecked somewhere trying to play the latest AAA games at 1080p but I guess at least you know you’re getting the maximum value out of your graphics card. It’s a nice theoretical thing, basically, but not the sort of thing that’s going to be sitting on store shelves and time soon.

Thanks ENTLVL820m for bringing this to our attention!