Reaction Time Test
Wait for the signal to change, then click as fast as you can. The number is your click latency in milliseconds, and it includes your screen, your mouse and your browser as well as you.
The wait before the signal is random between one and five seconds, so the test cannot be gamed by counting. Clicking early does not score.
What a typical number looks like
Human visual reaction is roughly 200 to 300 milliseconds, or two to three tenths of a second, and most results here land in that band. A quarter of a second, 250 ms, is an entirely unremarkable score, and so is anything a little either side of it.
The number is not only you
What this measures is how long a click took to reach the browser after the screen changed, and every link in that chain is inside the result. A 60 Hz screen only draws a new frame every 16.7 milliseconds, so part of your score is spent waiting for the display; a 144 Hz screen redraws every 6.9. Add mouse polling, a wireless link, a busy tab and a laptop trackpad, and a slow-looking result says as much about the hardware as about the person holding it. It diagnoses nothing. No score here is a medical finding or evidence about your health, your age or your attention.
Getting a fair reading
- Take five goes and use the middle one. A single result is mostly noise.
- Do not click early. Guessing the signal is a false start, not a fast score.
- Keep the same mouse, screen and browser, or you are comparing machines.
- Close anything working hard in the background.
Reflex against rate
Reaction is one click as early as possible. Clicking speed is many clicks in a row, and a completely different measurement – the gap between a 200 ms and a 300 ms result is 100 ms, about the same as one click at ten per second. If it is the rate you want, 10 seconds is the standard and the rest are on the click speed test page. To time something by hand instead, use the stopwatch.