[nmstoker]

Sorry, might be obvious to some, but is that rate applied to the whole screen or can certain parts be limited to 1Hz whilst others are at a higher rate?

The ability to vary it seems like it would be valuable as there are significant portions of a screen that remain fairly static for longer periods but equally there are sections that would need to change more often and would thus mess with the ability to stick to a low rate if it's a whole screen all-or-nothing scenario.

[bracketfocus]

From what I understand, the laptop will reduce the refresh rate (of the entire display) to as low as 1Hz if what is being displayed effectively “allows” it.

For example:

- reading an article with intermittent scrolling

- typing with periodic breaks

[snailmailman]

I think windows has a feature built in on some adaptive refresh rate displays to dynamically shift the frame rate down (to 30, on my screen) or up to the cap, depending on what’s actually happening.

I remember playing with it a bit, and it would dynamically change to a high refresh rate as you moved the mouse, and then drop down as soon as the mouse cursor stopped moving.

I had issues with it sometimes being lower refresh rate even when there was motion on screen, so the frame rate swings were unfortunately noticeable. Motion would get smoother for all content whenever the mouse moved.

1hz is drastically fewer refreshes. I hope they have the “is this content static” measurement actually worked out to a degree where it’s not noticeable.

[pier25]

Who “decides” the frame rate? Does the gpu keep sending data and the monitor checks to determine when pixels change?

[moffkalast]

Probably the display board, anything else would be subject to OS and GPU driver support and it would never work anywhere.

[gowld]

Articles have animated ads, though.

[msephton]

On such an article it would not go down to 1Hz. It's checking if the image is changing or not.

[rmunn]

Which would make me want the refresh rate to be user-configurable. I would not mind at all if the 1 Hz refresh rate caused parts of the page I don't care about, such as animated ads to stutter and become unwatchable. If given the choice between stuttering ads but longer battery life, or smoothly-animated ads with shorter battery life, I'd choose the unwatchable ads every time.

Ideally, I would be able to bind a keyboard shortcut to the refresh-rate switch, so that the software doesn't have to figure out that now I'm on Youtube so I actually want the higher refresh rate, but now I'm on a mostly-text page so I want the refresh rate to go back down to 1 Hz. If I can control that with a simple Fn+F11 combination or something, that would be the ideal situation.

Not that any laptop manufacturers are likely to see this comment... but you never know.

[Mogzol]

I assume this will just be using Window's dynamic refresh rate feature, which you can turn on and off in the display settings, and when it's off you can set the refresh rate manually. I guess the question is whether they will let you set it as low as 1hz manually though.

[themafia]

Ad supported content industry: "Gee, we just can't figure out why anyone would use an ad blocker!"

[f1shy]

It would help making the ad less distracting, in some cases.

[goodpoint]

not with an adblocker

[pwg]

Run uBlock Origin and you will have few (and in most cases, none) animated ads.

[nmstoker]

Got it. Thanks!

[londons_explore]

With current LCD controllers but new drivers/firmware you could selectively refresh horizontal stripes of the screen at different rates if you wanted to.

I don't think you could divide vertically though.

Don't think anyone has done this yet. You could be the first.

[alok-g]

I believe E-ink displays do this for faster updates for touch interactivity. Updatimg the whole display as the user writes on the touch screen would otherwise be too slow for Eink.

[KolibriFly]

Today it's mostly "all-or-nothing" at the panel level, but under the hood there's already a lot of cleverness trying to approximate the behavior you're describing