Imagine what it would be like if your everyday computing experience was transformed. That's what happened when I discovered the power of a display with double the refresh rate of my MacBook Air, even though I mainly use it for programming. I've developed a minor annoyance that's turned into a major gripe. The smooth, buttery display of my MacBook Pro has spoiled me. That top tier 120 hertz refresh rate is something else. Scrolling through websites, sifting through code, it's just a different experience. Let's just say that your eyes won't let you forget what you're missing. The official word from Apple is clear. Their site claims a 6K resolution at 60 hertz for an external display. But the word on the street is quite different. Users have been saying they can get faster refresh rates, such as 144 hertz. I happen to have a couple of displays here, but I'm going to try it with this MacBook Air. I'm connecting it to my trusty old Thunderbolt dock. It's actually one of my favorite docks. I'll link to it down below so you can check it out. And that dock goes to one external monitor. Although it looks like the monitor only supports up to 60 hertz. All right, let's see. Still looks kind of 60-ish. Yeah, it's the monitor. It doesn't support high refresh. Only 60 hertz is the maximum. Kind of like Apple Studio display. And even their expensive display is only 60 hertz. So those people that got 144 hertz, they're probably using a different monitor that supports that. I think I need to go shopping. I've stumbled upon this beast that does not rob the bank. A 34-inch gaming titan, branching 144 hertz refresh rate, just like the word on the street said. It may not have the sharpest resolution, but it's armed with HDMI, DisplayPort, USB-C, and a curved screen. I mean, look, I don't have super high expectations. I've never heard of J-Link. I don't know what that is. But it does have the specs that I'm looking for. I'm not expecting like a studio display quality here. I just want to see if I can improve the refresh rate of what comes with the MacBook Air. I also picked up a USB-C to DisplayPort cable for this to have the most direct route from the Mac to the monitor. This thing is huge. But the monitor itself has standard 34-inch curve. It fits like a charm on my 72-inch desk. And guess what? I'll make do with the space. It's as adjustable as a contortionist at a circus show. If you're tall like me and have a stand-up desk, you'll appreciate tilting this up. It may actually be a good way to work. The first order of business, I reach for a Thunderbolt 4 USB-C to USB-C cable. What's the one you got? And there it is, a seamless digital canvas that stretches wider than the... What the f***? Who wrote this s***? It works, okay? It works quite nicely. First things first, a deep dive into the display settings. And low and behold, 120 hertz. We have options for 100 hertz, we have options for 60 hertz, and it defaults to 120. Yeah, it does feel a bit smoother than this. This is supposed to be 144 hertz display. Why am I getting 120 hertz? Let's try a different resolution here. This is going to scale down the resolution. Ooh, no. How about if we scale this up? That's not right. That's 4K, but we need a wide resolution. So I need to have it set to this. Okay, looks decent. It's clearly not the same kind of pixels. I don't even see pixels on the MacBook Airscreen. Here, I can kind of see them. Feels like there's maybe like a couple of layers. Yeah, it's not perfect. Especially if you're close to it. If you're sitting further away, it's okay. But really, I'm trying to improve my refresh rate experience. For that, it seems like it's doing a good job. Except I'm not getting 144 hertz. I'm only getting 120. I paid 444. Have I been scammed by J-Link? On the Amazon page, it clearly says that this monitor supports 144 hertz. Which word on the street says that's what MacBook Airs can get. I can't deny it, though. 120 hertz is a noticeable step up from 60 hertz that the MacBook Airscreen throws at me. It even holds its own against the MacBook Pro display. But I'm still kind of disappointed. The elusive 144 hertz remains... Well, elusive. I've stumbled upon this nifty little website. It's like a digital gym where my new monitor can flex its refresh rate muscles. Thanks, JGPT. That was... well, well said. 60 for this one. Let's take this window... Bring it up here. Refresh? It's like a billboard in here. There it is. 120. It does feel smoother. I don't know what I'm going to do with a browser this huge. There are a bunch of other nausea inducing kestic and run on this website. If you're into that sort of thing, some of these might even be useful for testing monitors side by side. Especially gaming monitors like this J-Link one. You're probably not going to be able to even tell from a video because the YouTube compression and the frame rate changes and this is going to be a 30 frame per second video. So you're probably not even going to... Do you even see that? I don't know. Do you see that? So I find a post that you actually have to use a DisplayPort cable to get 144. I'm glad I bought that one because I'm going to try it now. Okay. This is what I have here. I'll link to this down below. On one side is DisplayPort. On the other side it's USB-C. So I'm going to plug it in to see if that helps the situation. Okay. So I'm plugged this. It's a nice cable. Thunderbolt 4. I don't know why that didn't work. It's annoying. If you know why that doesn't work, let me know down in the comments below. I hope this will work. Plugged in. Okay. Oh. Actually that looks much better even. I don't know. Maybe subjective, but it looks brighter and feels a little bit better. Oh, let's see. Can I drag one of these windows? Yeah. Wait, it's not 144 yet. Is it? 120. Oh. 144 is there. There it was. In all its glory. That 144 hurts. That was the word on the street. It's finally showing up in my Display Settings for this monitor. And the results were, well, quite stunning. That's really nice. It might not come through on this 30 frames per second video that you're watching right now on YouTube. But there were no slowdowns and no choppiness. This was the first time I ever experienced 144 hurts on a MacBook. The fluidity was simply unparalleled. I don't know what this is doing on the back end to the GPU. The GPU is working. It's definitely not at 100 percent, not even close. Here it says GPU is at 12, 13 percent. Let's unplug this thing and see what the GPU comes down to. Now it's at 14.7 percent. I don't think that having that monitor plugged in was really contributing that much to the GPU usage here. Oh wait, now it's at 1 percent. So I guess it was actually contributing. According to this chart, at least, the GPU history. This is where the monitor was plugged in. And this is where the monitor wasn't plugged in. So it's contributing to GPU usage, but not that much. Once more games are available for Macs, this might be a game changer. Did I just say that? I did. Nice had that. For now though, I'll enjoy my fluidly scrolling code and documents. Hey, if you enjoyed this, you might like this video next where I hook up my MacBook Air to multiple displays, which is something you can't do out of the box. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you soon.