Measured in hertz ยท higher is better
Polling Rate Test
Move the mouse continuously inside the field. Keep going until the sample fills.
Before you start
The median on mouse is 523 Hz. Run the test and we will place you against it.
Compared against
A browser can only report events it was given. Treat this as a lower bound on your true polling rate.
The other device classes
Trackpad
Touchscreen
Curve is a fitted baseline plus 0 first attempts recorded here. The baseline is a curve, not a sample: no part of it is a real person. Baseline is an estimate: centred between the 125Hz office mouse default and the 1000Hz gaming standard. No published dataset was found for it. Per-device offsets are extrapolated, not measured. The baseline is dropped once a device class holds 5,000 real first attempts. See the full distribution.
Measure report rate
Press start, then move the pointer continuously inside this field for four seconds. Keep moving, do not pause.
Understanding your score
| Band | Hz | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 1000 Hz and above | 900 and above | Gaming standard. One report per millisecond or better. |
| 500 Hz | 400 to 899 | Common on mid-range gaming mice. |
| 250 Hz | 190 to 399 | Adequate for everything except competitive play. |
| 125 Hz | 90 to 189 | The USB default. Most office mice sit here. |
| Below 90 Hz | 89 and below | Either the browser is throttling or something is wrong. |
What polling rate is
Polling rate is how many times per second your mouse reports its position to the computer. At 125 Hz the gap between reports is 8 milliseconds; at 1000 Hz it is 1 millisecond. That gap is dead time, during which your movement has happened but the computer does not know about it yet.
The practical benefit of a higher rate is smaller and more consistent latency, not more precision. Going from 125 Hz to 1000 Hz removes about 7 milliseconds of average delay, which is real but modest. Going from 1000 Hz to 8000 Hz removes under 1 millisecond and costs measurably more CPU.
Why the browser number is a floor, not the truth
Browsers do not hand every mouse event to a page. They coalesce events to the display refresh rate and throttle them under load, which means the rate measured here is the rate the page received, not necessarily the rate the mouse sent.
In practice this test reads reliably up to about 1000 Hz on a machine that is not busy, and reads low if the page is loading, a video is playing, or the display is running at 60 Hz. If your result is far below what your mouse software claims, close other tabs and try again before believing it.
For an authoritative reading, use the manufacturer software or a dedicated USB analyser. This page is a quick check, and it is honest about being one.
The stability number
Alongside the rate, this test reports how much the interval between reports varies. A healthy wired mouse produces a tight, even interval. A wireless mouse on a congested 2.4 GHz band produces occasional long gaps, and those gaps are felt as stutter far more than a slightly lower average rate is.
A high average with poor stability is worse to use than a lower average with good stability.
Where polling rate sits among the delays
End to end, the delay between moving your hand and seeing the cursor move is the sum of several stages: the sensor sampling, the polling interval, the operating system passing the event on, the application drawing the frame, and the display showing it.
At 125 Hz the polling interval contributes about 8 milliseconds on average. On a 60 Hz display, the display alone contributes about the same. Raising the polling rate to 1000 Hz removes most of the first number and none of the second, which is why a high polling rate on a 60 Hz monitor is a smaller upgrade than it sounds.
The ordering is worth knowing before spending money. Display refresh rate is usually the largest single term, frame rate is next, and polling rate is a distant third once you are past 125 Hz.
Questions
- Should I upgrade my polling rate or my monitor first?
- The monitor, in almost every case. On a 60 Hz display the panel adds about as much delay as 125 Hz polling does, and going from 60 Hz to 144 Hz removes several times more latency than going from 500 Hz to 1000 Hz.
- Why is my measured rate lower than my mouse setting?
- Browsers coalesce mouse events to the display refresh rate and throttle them when busy. The number here is what the page received. Close other tabs, stop any video, and move continuously for the full sample before trusting a low reading.
- Is 1000 Hz better than 500 Hz?
- Marginally. The difference is 1 millisecond of average latency. It is real, it is measurable, and for almost everyone it is below the threshold of noticing. The jump from 125 Hz to 500 Hz is the one people actually feel.
- Does a higher polling rate use more CPU?
- Yes. Each report is an interrupt. At 1000 Hz this is negligible on any modern machine. At 4000 or 8000 Hz it becomes measurable and can cost frames in CPU-bound games.