Refresh Rate vs Response Time: Which Actually Affects What You See (Legion Go)
Refresh Rate vs Response Time: Which Actually Affects What You See explained, with the Legion Go's own measured figures as the worked example: refresh rate is how often a panel redraws; response time...
Aisha Bello
The short version
Legion Go, rAM 16GB LPDDR5X — Refresh Rate vs Response Time: Which Actually Affects What You See. Measured on hardware rather than argued from theory, on a device we rate for detachable controllers, one of which works as a vertical mouse.
Refresh rate is how often a panel redraws; response time is how quickly a pixel changes. A high refresh rate with slow pixels still looks smeared.
Why this matters: Marketing leads with refresh rate because it is a bigger number, but response time is what causes visible ghosting.
What is going on underneath
A 120Hz panel presents a new frame every 8.3ms. If a pixel takes 20ms to complete its transition, it is still changing when the next two frames arrive, which the eye reads as a trail behind moving objects. OLED transitions are effectively instant, which is why a 60Hz OLED can look cleaner in motion than a slow 144Hz LCD.
What you actually notice
Take the Legion Go as a worked example. It was the heaviest device in this group by 176g. That is the difference this makes once you stop reading specifications and start using the thing.
| Specification | Legion Go |
|---|---|
| Display | 8.8in IPS, 144Hz, 500 nits |
| Chip | AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme |
| RAM | 16GB LPDDR5X |
| Storage | 512GB NVMe |
| Weight | 854g |
| Battery | 49.2Wh |
| Play time | 1h 50m in demanding titles |
The spread across devices
One worked example is an anecdote. Here is how the figure that drives this behaviour actually varies across the hardware we have measured in this category — same test, same conditions, so the spread is real rather than an artefact of who reviewed what.
| Model | Display | Price | Our score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legion Go | 8.8in IPS, 144Hz, 500 nits | £699 | 3 / 5 |
| Steam Deck OLED | 7.4in OLED, 90Hz, 1000 nits HDR | £479 | 5 / 5 |
| ROG Ally X | 7in IPS, 120Hz, 500 nits | £799 | 4 / 5 |
| Switch OLED | 7in OLED, 60Hz, 400 nits | £309 | 4 / 5 |
What counts as good here
It helps to have a number in mind before you start comparing. Across the gaming Hardware we have measured, the useful thresholds are the ones where a difference stops being visible: below them you notice, above them you are paying for a specification rather than an experience. The Legion Go reports 8.8in IPS, 144Hz, 500 nits for display, which sits comfortably on the right side of that line, and AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme for chip. Treat anything materially below those as a real compromise and anything materially above as a number you are unlikely to feel.
Checking it yourself
- Reproduce the conditions rather than trusting a one-off reading — run the same task three times and take the average.
- Note the figure your device reports and the figure it actually achieves; on the Legion Go those diverge under sustained load.
- Change one variable at a time. Brightness, background sync and ambient temperature all move this number independently.
- Compare against the manufacturer’s stated figure and treat any gap as the cost of real-world conditions, not as a fault.
- Repeat after a firmware update — this is one of the numbers that moves without an announcement.
Reading it off the spec sheet
On a gaming Hardware listing this usually appears as the display line — the Legion Go quotes 8.8in IPS, 144Hz, 500 nits. That figure is necessary but not sufficient: the chip entry (AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme) constrains it in practice, and the two are almost never presented together. When you see one quoted without the other, assume the omitted one is the weaker of the pair.
How to use this when buying
For motion clarity, weight panel technology and response time at least as heavily as the refresh number.
A fast panel with slow pixels is still a slow panel.
Behind this piece
Every product covered here was bought at retail and lived with for at least a fortnight before a word was written. Battery figures come from a scripted day rather than a manufacturer estimate, and sustained performance is measured warm — after half an hour of load — because that is the state a device spends most of its life in.
Where a firmware update changes a result, the piece is re-tested and the change noted rather than quietly corrected. No review unit arrives with conditions attached, and no score is agreed in advance with anybody.
Where to go next
If you are weighing this against the rest of the gaming we have covered, the category archive lists every review in date order. The closest comparisons we have published are Refresh Rate vs Response Time: Which Actually Affects What You See (PlayStation 5 Slim) and Refresh Rate vs Response Time: Which Actually Affects What You See (ROG Ally X).
For the reference material behind these figures, the specification pages carry the measured numbers, and the common questions collect what people ask once something is in daily use.
