Skip to content
Browser Screensaver

Response Time Test

Black and white blocks moving together on grey. Overshoot shows as a bright edge behind the dark block and a dark edge behind the light one.

Press F for fullscreen, Esc to exit.

What the response time test shows

This is the pattern for tuning an overdrive setting. The paired black and white blocks force transitions in both directions at once, and a panel pushed too hard reveals it as inverse ghosting — a halo of the opposite colour trailing each block.

The grey background is deliberate. Grey-to-white and grey-to-black are the transitions overdrive tuning is aimed at, and they are the ones where overshoot is most obvious.

How to tune overdrive with this pattern

Set overdrive to its lowest setting and run this. You should see a soft trail behind the blocks. Step the setting up one at a time until the trail disappears, then look for the opposite artefact: a bright halo behind the dark block, or a dark one behind the light block.

The right setting is the last one before overshoot appears. On most monitors that is the middle option, not the highest — the top setting almost always overshoots badly and exists mainly for the specification sheet.

What this test cannot tell you

This shows you a pattern; it does not measure anything. The browser cannot see your panel and cannot time a pixel transition. Manufacturer response-time figures come from lab equipment, and they are usually best-case grey-to-grey numbers that do not describe normal use anyway.

Questions

Does this measure my response time in milliseconds?

No, and no web page can. Measuring a pixel transition needs a photodiode aimed at the panel. What this gives you is a clean, hard-edged moving reference so you can see and compare trailing and overshoot yourself.

What is inverse ghosting?

Overshoot: the panel pushes a pixel past its target value to get there faster, so a bright halo trails a dark object or a dark halo trails a bright one. It is caused by too much overdrive and is usually more distracting than the ghosting it replaced.

Why is the background grey?

Because grey-to-white and grey-to-black are the transitions overdrive tuning targets, and where overshoot shows most clearly. A black background would hide half of what you are looking for.

Is the response time test free?

Yes — free, with no account, no download and no limit. It is a web page, so it runs on any device with a modern browser.

Do I need to be fullscreen?

For anything involving the whole panel, yes. Press F, or the fullscreen button. On a desktop browser F11 also hides the browser toolbars, which matters for the tests where a bright strip at the top of the screen would affect what you are looking at.