Not really, 120Hz produces a noticeable improvement over 60Hz, unlike "golden boutique speaker wire", just like 4k produces a noticeable improvement over 1080p.
It's not like everyone is going to be able to tell whether a given display is 60Hz or 120Hz, but all other things being identical, they will probably be able to tell which display is faster after using both.
Higher refresh rates tighten the feedback-response loop, creating a smoother and more direct interface to the computer, which is generally perceived as desirable.
Consider VR, where HMDs often have to refresh at 90Hz or 120Hz in order to reduce motion sickness. This actually isn't that different than operating a computer. The brain tends to quickly get very upset when it can't reconcile your visual field with your felt position in space, but even though most people don't get motion sick from looking at a computer display (some do), the refresh rate certainly affects it feels to use the display.
Oh come on. Fancy wires do nothing. 120Hz makes motion much smoother. It also reduces latency. Those make a big difference in many video games, or even just moving my mouse around and having it not skip two inches at a time.
Your cynicism over 120Hz should match your cynicism over 4k.
That, doesn't make any sense 4k allows monitors to push past 24 inches, though, on a 24 or less 2k is plenty for me, but the generation of 22 inch 1080p monitors was rough on the eyes.
Your mouse cursor aliasing test is sort of the tell here. Normal human beings are very hard put to be able to even detect the difference between a 60 Hz and 120 Hz display, and have to resort, as you do, to trickery and artifacts to measure it. And the use case at hand is text editting!
As far as 4k, not sure I understand? It's not a nonsense retina tablet or whatever, it's a 42" television with 100 DPI pixels I can see with my own eyes (well, when I put my reading glasses on -- presbyopia comes for us all). I bought it because it's cheap and it subtends 60 degrees of pixels small enough to be unresolvable, and sits farther than an arms length from my eyes (presbyopia again).
It's hard to tell the difference with smooth motion.
With rendered frames, the stuttering makes it meaningfully harder to click on fast moving things.
> And the use case at hand is text editting!
People were being dismissive about frame rates in general, so I gave an example that wasn't test editing.
The benefit for text editing is much smaller, but also if you're text editing then you don't need significant amounts of compute power to do text at 120. One big criticism disappears. You need that power for games, which actually benefit.
I've used 4k at 30Hz before, but I switched it to 60Hz with chroma subsampling for faster things.
> As far as 4k, not sure I understand?
They're both good but not necessary, and partly situational. But you're choosing to ignore the benefits of one.
A curmudgeon should dismiss both, and most people should want both.
I assume they have a reason, I just can't guess whatnot is.