When testing your reflexes online, the final score in milliseconds is a combined measure of your biological nervous system speed and the technical latency of your testing environment. If you test at 250ms, your brain's actual reaction might be 180ms, with the remaining 70ms introduced by your monitor, mouse, browser, and operating system. Understanding this latency is crucial to accurate benchmarking.
1. Display Refresh Rate & Frame Latency
The time it takes for a visual change to register on your screen is limited by your monitor's refresh rate.
- 60Hz Monitors: A standard office screen redraws the display once every 16.67ms. On average, this introduces 8.3ms of frame delay before the color green physically appears.
- 144Hz Monitors: High refresh rate gaming screens reduce this frame interval to 6.94ms, cutting frame delay to about 3.5ms.
- 360Hz Monitors: Elite gaming displays update every 2.78ms, reducing display latency to less than 1.5ms.
2. Input Devices and Polling Rates
Once you click or tap, the signal must travel from the input device to your computer.
- Touchscreens: Mobile digitizers add significant latency. Mobile operating systems deliberately delay touch registration by 50ms to 120ms to distinguish taps from scroll gestures.
- Standard Office Mice (125Hz USB Polling): A basic mouse reports clicks to the computer once every 8ms.
- Gaming Peripherals (1000Hz+ Polling): Wired gaming mice report updates every 1ms or less, virtually eliminating input report latency.
3. Browser and OS Lag Factors
Operating system compositors, browser rendering loops, and graphics drivers introduce further delays:
- V-Sync (Vertical Synchronization): Having V-Sync enabled in your graphics driver or browser locks frames to prevent tearing, but can add 16ms to 50ms of input delay.
- Browser Engines: Chrome, Safari, and Firefox handle main-thread events differently. Standard reaction tests can be delayed if the browser's JavaScript engine is busy processing background tasks.
System Calibration on reflexbench
To address hardware discrepancies, reflexbench features a built-in Hardware Calibration system. Accessible via the Settings and Accessibility panel, it auto-detects your screen refresh rate and touch capabilities, applying appropriate offsets (subtracting 70ms for touchscreen inputs and 10ms for screens under 60Hz) to estimate your true neural conduction speed.
Check your hardware calibration
Calibrate your display rate and input device to ensure your scores are normalized accurately.