Are laptop manufacturers committing "FRAUD" by listing refresh rates over response times?

[TheBigFatClown]

Fraud! There I said it dammit!

Okay anyway, are laptop makers committing fraud when they list a screen refresh rate of 144hz if the screen itself can't actually be updated with new pixel data that fast?
I'm no engineer here but what I've learned recently is that just because a screen is "refreshed" 144x a second doesn't mean any pixels on the screen have necessarily changed. And if no pixels have been given the proper time to change then what's the point of refreshing the screen 144x a second?
I'm pretty rattled at what I've learned lately since I've been a PC enthusiast for years and am only now learning this.
All thoughts and inputs welcome.
Thanks!

 

[cliffordcooley]

Good question. I feel no product should be sold with specs beyond any bottle-necking component.

 

[TheBigFatClown]

Good question. I feel no product should be sold with specs beyond any bottle-necking component.

Well, that's pretty hard to do to be honest. I'm okay with components being paired up together that aren't "perfectly" matched. But the deception on monitors here is how they are touting one bullet point versus another over the years. You used to see something like 5ms response time. Now all you see is 144hz or whatever it is. My ASUS laptop screen is a Panda that has a response time of 18ms (learned just recently). If you divide that by 1000 you get a maximum ever possible FPS of 55.56 on this laptop monitor. So my monitor can refresh the screen 144x a second but the pixels response times from gray-to-gray is 18ms. So what good is 144 screen refreshes? They could have just sold me a screen with a 60hz panel. And I wouldn't feel like I'm being lied to. Unless there is a scenario that I'm missing in which the 144hz would actually have a practical effect but I don't know what it would be.

Now, otoh, the GPU/CPU combination is very well matched for my laptop according to this link:
Bottleneck Calculator
And of course changing the resolutions you're using in-game can actually shift the balance of power between these 2 components.

But there is no deception involved in the marketing of the CPU/GPU combo. At least, not that I've discovered yet.

 

[TheBigFatClown]

So, I'm still thinking about my own question. And I'm thinking that the benefit of 144hz screen refreshes lies somewhere in the fact that even if not "all" the pixels can be changed in the given space of 1 second that at least "some" of them can which I believe leads us to the term "motion blur". And as I think back to the past, it seems like "motion blur" was a thing that was being hyped as a "good-thing". I can't remember for sure but I just wanted to throw this out there in case anybody has more input on this. Maybe partially updated pixel changes are easier for the brain to process? Or at least not disruptive to the action on the screen? Hmmmm? *shrugs*

Of course, a good snake oil salesman will always try spin a shortcoming of their product as a "benefit". Hehehe, so that's my "other" thought about the issue'.