Measured in scroll ticks per second ยท higher is better
Scroll Test
Scroll inside the field. Both directions, ten seconds.
Before you start
The median on mouse is 14.1 ticks/s. Run the test and we will place you against it.
Compared against
Trackpads emit continuous deltas rather than detents, so they produce much higher numbers. Ranked separately.
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 on a plausible wheel notch rate, with trackpads faster because a flick is continuous. 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.
Scroll inside this field
Press start, then scroll steadily in one direction for a few seconds before changing direction. Steady runs are what make the reversal check work.
Understanding your score
| Band | ticks/s | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Very fast | 26.0 and above | Free-spin wheel or a trackpad flick. |
| Fast | 18.0 to 25.9 | Above average. |
| Average | 10.0 to 17.9 | A normal notched wheel. |
| Below average | 5.0 to 9.9 | Heavy detents or a slow hand. |
| Slow | 4.9 and below | Check for skipping first. |
The fault this actually finds
The common scroll wheel failure is a worn encoder: as you scroll in one direction, the occasional tick registers in the opposite direction. On a web page it looks like the content jumping back a line while you scroll down.
This test counts every tick and flags any that reverse direction against the run of travel. Scroll steadily in one direction for a few seconds. If reversed ticks appear, the encoder is failing. That is a hardware fault and no driver setting will correct it.
Skipped ticks, where the wheel turns but nothing registers, show up as a rate lower than your hand movement suggests and are usually caused by debris in the encoder wheel.
Why trackpads score higher
A notched mouse wheel produces one discrete tick per detent, and there is a physical limit to how fast a finger can move it. A trackpad reports continuous pixel deltas, so a single flick generates a burst of events that no wheel can match.
Because of this the two are ranked separately. Comparing a trackpad flick to a wheel is comparing two different actions that happen to arrive as the same event type.
What a scroll event actually contains
A wheel event carries a delta and a mode. The mode says whether the delta is measured in pixels, lines, or pages, and it is the clearest signal of what produced the event. A notched wheel usually reports lines, or pixels in large fixed steps. A trackpad reports pixels in small, often fractional steps.
That difference is why this page ranks the two separately, and it is also how the site guesses whether you are on a mouse or a trackpad in the first place. The guess is visible next to your result and you can override it.
Smooth scrolling in the browser or the operating system rewrites these deltas before a page sees them. If your reported rate looks strange, turning smooth scrolling off will usually make the numbers match your hand.
Free-spin wheels change the shape of the result
Some mice offer a free-spin mode that releases the detents and lets the wheel run on its own inertia. One flick can generate hundreds of ticks over several seconds without your hand touching the wheel.
That produces very high numbers here, and they are real events. It is worth knowing what you are looking at: a free-spin result measures the flywheel, a notched result measures your hand. Both are ranked in the same distribution because both are what your setup can do, but a free-spin score and a notched score are not the same achievement.
The tick counter shows your rate over time as well as the total, so a free-spin run is easy to recognise: a burst at the start followed by a long decaying tail.
Questions
- Does smooth scrolling change my result?
- Yes. Browser and system smooth scrolling interpolate between real wheel events, which changes both the count and the timing a page receives. Turn it off if you want the number to reflect your hardware.
- Why does my page jump up while I scroll down?
- That is a failing scroll encoder emitting occasional reverse ticks. This test will flag them. It is a mechanical fault inside the mouse and it gets worse over time.
- My wheel skips. Can I fix it?
- Sometimes. Skipping is often debris in the encoder, and compressed air occasionally clears it. If the encoder itself is worn, the part has to be replaced.
- What is a normal scroll speed?
- Around 14 ticks per second on a notched wheel. Trackpads report far higher numbers because they emit continuous deltas rather than discrete detents, so they are ranked on their own curve.