Sony has finally added PS5 VRR support through a system update on April 25, but only select television and monitors are compatible with it. With the technical improvements in framerate and graphical performance coming with the much-requested feature, many PS5 owners are rightfully wondering if this is the proper time to upgrade their televisions and monitors.
Is PS5 VRR worth it?
For the uninitiated, VRR stands for Variable Refresh Rate, and while that can sound like scary technical jargon, it’s an important feature that reduces lag and prevents screen-tearing. By synchronizing the framerate of a game on PS5 with a television’s refresh rate on the fly, the gameplay is more fluid and better detailed.
Whether PS5 VRR will matter to you will depend on how much you care about a high framerate and what types of games you typically play. Those who favor genres which require fast-switch action like competitive multiplayer shooters, fighting games, and racers will benefit greatly from the feature, so long as they have a screen that can support it. In fact, Sony has provided a list of about fifteen games which will be receiving a patch within the next few weeks to take advantage of the feature. By switching on “Apply to Unsupported Games” in the image above, other popular games like Elden Ring and Tales of Arise can also receive a boost in performance despite not being technically supported yet (at the time of this writing). That said, those who don’t worry much about the difference between 30fps and 60fps can likely wait to upgrade.
Either way, it would be prudent to be aware of which televisions and monitors currently support PS5 VRR to check whether you need to upgrade in the first place and to keep an eye on your particular brand of choice for future discounts. A very handy list of compatible hardware that can take advantage of the feature can be found on Reddit, with many Gigabyte monitors and numerous LG, Samsung, Sony, and TCL televisions making the cut. However, a handful of the televisions listed currently implement the feature poorly, with some turning off Local Dimming in order to compensate.
To get a bit technical, a part of the trouble is that the PS5 is limited to a 48-120hz VRR range, while many television and monitors have a broader 20-120hz range. This means that performance modes that cap a game’s framerate below 48fps at, say, 30 or 40 fps won’t receive much of a boost from the feature at all. It’s unclear at this time if this limitation is due to the firmware or hardware, but the hope is that through future patches Sony will be able to expand the feature’s range as well as its compatibility list.
For more guides, you can check out when the PS5 will get the quick resume feature and how to fix the PS5 when it gets stuck on the ‘closing the game or app’ screen.
