One of the reason I bought a 144hz screen, since I don't game, was hearing people say how much better it was even for normal desktop use, like the mouse was supposed to be so much smoother... Boy, I was disappointed. I am sure in gaming it's much more noticeable, but for non gaming use, high refresh rate are not worth it in my opinion
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iPad Pro How big of a deal is the “ProMotion” display?
- Thread starter Benz63amg
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Eh, it's less about the cursor for me and more about larger animations. It's much more noticeable when swiping between desktops or minimizing / maximizing applications. Stuff like that.
Like others have already said, for me ProMotion is noticeable, so much so that I immediately saw the difference when I tried a ProMotion iPad at the store (and my eyes aren’t the best). Now I‘m using a 10,5 inch iPad Pro and I see ProMotion whenever I use it, it’s not like it fades away so that I would start not noticing it.
I would pay a little extra to have it, but it’s not a deal breaker or a major selling point for me. Between having it and not having it, I’d want to have it, but this wouldn’t be among the most important specs I’d check for my next buying decision.
I have an iPhone XR which doesn’t have ProMotion and never have I used that device and thought “this needs a higher refresh rate.” Maybe some people do, but I don’t. So it’s not a problem for me going from a ProMotion iPad to a non-ProMotion iPhone. I think ProMotion is more useful in iPads because I’d imagine you notice and enjoy it more on a larger display.
To illustrate how non-Earth shattering ProMotion is, when I compared my iPad Air 2 to my iPad Pro 10,5, what stood out to me the most in terms of display were bezels and colours, not ProMotion.
I would pay a little extra to have it, but it’s not a deal breaker or a major selling point for me. Between having it and not having it, I’d want to have it, but this wouldn’t be among the most important specs I’d check for my next buying decision.
I have an iPhone XR which doesn’t have ProMotion and never have I used that device and thought “this needs a higher refresh rate.” Maybe some people do, but I don’t. So it’s not a problem for me going from a ProMotion iPad to a non-ProMotion iPhone. I think ProMotion is more useful in iPads because I’d imagine you notice and enjoy it more on a larger display.
To illustrate how non-Earth shattering ProMotion is, when I compared my iPad Air 2 to my iPad Pro 10,5, what stood out to me the most in terms of display were bezels and colours, not ProMotion.
Can someone remind me again what pro motion is? Like what is the difference that I would absolutely notice. I want to see if I notice it. ;-p
Seriously though - I know I’ve asked before, but can’t remember exactly what it is. Obviously my iPP has it, so I don’t know how much I’d notice if I didn’t have it myself, but I used a 6th gen iPad for months in between pros, and don’t remember anything really standing out like that (other than the overall display, which wasn’t even super drastic at the time since I was coming from a pro that had larger bezels).
Seriously though - I know I’ve asked before, but can’t remember exactly what it is. Obviously my iPP has it, so I don’t know how much I’d notice if I didn’t have it myself, but I used a 6th gen iPad for months in between pros, and don’t remember anything really standing out like that (other than the overall display, which wasn’t even super drastic at the time since I was coming from a pro that had larger bezels).
I've used iPads with and without ProMotion. While you could tell the difference between the two, it isn't worth the added expense to me. It doesn't provide any additional functionality or capability. Just a somewhat nicer experience. For some people that is enough to justify the added expense.
I think that the hyperbole surrounding ProMotion is simply a way to help up-sell Pro iPads. Before ProMotion was released, nobody (those now claiming that ProMotion is must-have) was complaining about the refresh rate of the iPad display.
People will be complaining about regular Promotion in the future once we have Super Promotion or something. 😆
It essentially makes for a smoother UI navigation. Most noticeable while scrolling. When slowed down (as in video) the 60hz vs 120hz refresh rate is apparent though not as dramatic in use (non slo-mo)
Last edited:
Make sure it’s actually running at 144Hz, sometimes it defaults to 60 for some reason. That said for non-gaming, I’ll take 4K over 144Hz, even though I do like the smoothness of 144Hz.
I would be able to tell, and it is quite nice. It feels quite a bit smoother and the Pencil latency is smaller (but not much). So it’s a cool thing, but not necessarily something you can’t do without. For example, I actually find True Tone a bigger deal.
I bought my iPad Pro 10.5 because of the ProMotion display - it was just so fluid and beautiful! I mean I needed to upgrade from my iPad 2 (this was in mid 2017) but was going to wait an extra 6 months but it tipped me over the edge.
Frustrates me to use non ProMotion iPads now.
Frustrates me to use non ProMotion iPads now.
ProMotion 120 Hz, although it will drop to 48 Hz for 24 fps video content. At 48 Hz, there won’t be any artifact - telecine judder - unlike when converting 24 fps stuff to 60 Hz.
48/24=2 so the math works.
60/24=2.5 so the the math doesn’t work which can cause issues with the video. Most won't notice those issues unless they have a trained eye but they’re there.
This video exaggerates the effect, to help in the understanding of what is 3:2 pulldown judder.
To put it simply, a regular iPad can suffer from such judder, but an iPad Pro won't. However, most people don't notice it anyway on a regular iPad, so it may be irrelevant to most mainstream consumers.
What ProMotion does NOT do is frame interpolation for movies like most 120 Hz TVs may do. It’s good that ProMotion doesn’t do this because it’s bad practice, and causes the Soap Opera Effect, which I can’t stand.
Also, I believe with static images, ProMotion can drop to as low as 24 Hz, thereby saving power.
However, for most people (including in this thread), ProMotion is about smoother web page scrolling and UI navigation and stuff like that, since it’s running at 120 Hz instead of 60 Hz. If you scroll Safari on a non-ProMotion Display beside a ProMotion display, it's easy to see that the ProMotion one is considerably smoother if you're actually looking for it. However, I don’t really care that much about that because I don’t actually read web pages while I’m scrolling. I wait until I stop scrolling before I read anything. Similarly I don't really care that much smoother swiping from the home screen to the next screen of app icons. It's nice, but not a deal breaker feature.
Last edited:
Same here.
Wide colour gamut and True Tone are much more important to me than ProMotion. I will never buy another iPad for myself without these two features. ProMotion is nice but optional.
What this means is I wouldn't buy an entry level iPad, but I would consider buying a future generation iPad Air. The iPad Air has both WCG and True Tone, but no ProMotion.
Mainly in terms of fast moving content (games; videos) everything looks 'smoother' - there's less blur on objects in motion across the screen. To an extent this also goes for scrolling through a page quickly, though the value in that is minimal IMO. Additionally, if you're using the iPad+Pencil for art purposes, you might notice a little less latency between pushing the pencil across the screen and the line appearing, but again, mainly when you're doing it exceptionally quickly. Just note-taking probably won't look any different.
Top end gaming laptops are now coming with 240Hz screens, so this is already a thing!
I have both promotion and non-promotion devices and I only really notice the difference when comparing side by side. Otherwise, it’s pretty much unnoticeable for me. And my eyes are fine.
Some people barely see it, for others it’s more obvious. It could be less about a difference in eyesight and more a difference in the way an individual’s brain collects or processes/fills in visual information. Who knows unless studies are done. In any case, asking others about this won’t really help because answers vary so widely. Also whether 100% love it or 100% don’t care, it ultimately means nothing to you, because it’s a subject thing. You just have to go to a store and see how it benefits you. Maybe switch back and forth between a promotion device and non-promotion device once or twice to see how drastic the change is.
Some people barely see it, for others it’s more obvious. It could be less about a difference in eyesight and more a difference in the way an individual’s brain collects or processes/fills in visual information. Who knows unless studies are done. In any case, asking others about this won’t really help because answers vary so widely. Also whether 100% love it or 100% don’t care, it ultimately means nothing to you, because it’s a subject thing. You just have to go to a store and see how it benefits you. Maybe switch back and forth between a promotion device and non-promotion device once or twice to see how drastic the change is.
You can say that again. I have a friend who swears by keeping his TV on 120Hz even though he's watching normal television, and it makes every show look so weird and unnatural.
Yeah.. The funny thing is that there is not one algorithm able to do that interpolation without generating artefacts all over. For one actually able to take in some information from these 120 frames per second and not just "feel the Hz", it always looks terrible to see all the object morphing.