What is a good reaction time?

What does a good reaction time look like on a browser test?

Under 250 ms is good. Under 210 ms, the result screen starts calling you skilled, and under 180 ms you are close to the human limit. The table below is the exact scale behind the badge on your result screen. So the number you see and the label you get always agree.

Read the lower bands as a nudge, not a diagnosis. A 300 ms median on an old laptop is usually a normal person on slow hardware. The badge can't see your hardware, so it only labels the number. You know your own setup, so add that context yourself.

All values are milliseconds as displayed, with nothing subtracted. We chose not to apply a hardware correction. The delay differs from setup to setup, and in our view one flat figure would look more precise than it really is. Our piece on how accurate online reaction tests are explains that choice in detail.

Why do lab studies say 213 ms when the screen says 280?

The lab number has the machinery taken out. The screen number has it left in. The most cited modern figure comes from Woods and colleagues (2015), who measured 1,469 adults aged 18 to 65. Their raw average was 231 ms. Their own apparatus added 17.8 ms, and once they subtracted it, the average became 213 ms with a standard deviation of 26.8 ms.

A browser adds far more than 17.8 ms. One study measured online experiment platforms and found that the screen, input device, operating system and browser add roughly 71 to 87 ms in total (Anwyl-Irvine and colleagues, 2021). Add that to 213 and you get 280 to 300 ms. That is what an average adult should expect to see on screen.

You will also meet 273 ms, often quoted as "the average human reaction time". It does not come from a paper. It is the median of tens of millions of clicks on one reaction-test website, published on that site's own statistics page.

It is still a useful number, and it sits right where an on-screen median should. But it describes people who chose to take a reaction test on whatever device they had. So read it as an on-screen figure, not a lab one.

So when a forum post says "average is 250, you are slow", ask which scale they mean. On the lab scale, 250 is a little slow. On the screen scale, 250 is quick.

Is 200 ms, 250 ms or 300 ms a good reaction time?

200 ms on screen is very good. It lands in the skilled band. Take off the device delay and your true reaction is probably around 120 to 130 ms, close to the fastest a visual reaction gets. Few people reach it without jumping the gun. If you do, check that you weren't guessing the change, and then enjoy it.

250 ms on screen is good. Your true reaction is roughly 170 ms. That is more than a full standard deviation quicker than the corrected lab average. The result screen still puts it in the standard band, because we made that band wide on purpose. It has to hold most people in the middle, and 250 sits at its quick end.

300 ms on screen is ordinary. Subtract the device delay and you are near 220 ms. That is within one standard deviation of the corrected lab average. The badge says warming up only because the standard band ends at 290, and the edge had to go somewhere. Nothing about your nervous system is wrong at 300.

We think two things matter more than which of these you hit. Was it the median of several rounds, or one lucky round? And can you repeat it tomorrow on the same device?

How fast can a human reaction possibly be?

Never under 100 ms, and rarely under 150 on screen. Light has to reach the eye, and the signal has to travel to the visual cortex. Then a decision forms, and a command travels down the arm to the finger. That chain alone takes more than a tenth of a second.

Athletics uses the same floor. Under World Athletics technical rules, a sprinter who leaves the blocks within 100 ms of the gun is charged with a false start. The reasoning is that nobody can have heard the gun yet.

This test applies the same rule. Any round under 100 ms after the green signal is voided, because it can't be a response to the signal. Everything above that line counts. We don't try to guess whether a fast round was a reaction or a lucky press. No machine can tell those apart, and we would rather keep an honest reaction just above the line than let a filter throw it away.

The fastest people don't break the floor. They sit just above it, and what marks them out is consistency, not the odd quick round. Consistency is also how you tell a real 180 from a fluke. The real one keeps coming back.

Does age change what counts as good?

Yes, but less than most people assume. How much depends on where the data came from. In the Woods lab sample, reaction time slowed by about 0.55 ms per year of age. So the average 60-year-old was only about 22 ms behind the average 20-year-old. That gap is smaller than the round-to-round noise in your own results.

Large browser datasets show a much steeper slope, closer to several milliseconds per year. Part of that gap is the device. Older users are more likely to be on older, slower hardware, and a browser can't separate the person from the machine.

So the two figures measure different things. A page that quotes one without saying which scale it is on will mislead you. The guide to average reaction time by age puts both slopes side by side.

How should I read my own number?

Take the median of five rounds, on one device, with the tab in front. Then compare it with your own earlier medians. That is a comparison you can trust. A comparison with a lab study is only rough, and a comparison with a stranger on a different device is mostly noise.

• Woods and colleagues found that one person's trials swing about 40 ms around their own average. One round tells you almost nothing. Five rounds and a median tell you something.
• Hold the conditions still. Same device, same input method, same browser, similar time of day. A 144 Hz monitor and a wired gaming mouse can take close to 10 ms off the displayed number without changing you at all.
• Phones read slower than mice. In the runs recorded on this site so far, touchscreen medians sit clearly behind mouse medians, which matches published touch latency figures. The sample is still small, so take it as a direction rather than a number.
• Keep the tab in the foreground. Browsers slow their timers in background tabs on purpose, so a measurement taken there is broken, not just slow.

Want to check the scale yourself? The reaction time test runs five rounds, each with a random wait of 1.5 to 7 seconds. It times the moment you press, not the moment you let go, and reports the median. Your history stays on your device, so you can always compare with yourself.

Frequently asked questions

Is 186 ms a good reaction time?

Yes. On screen, 186 ms is in the skilled band and quicker than most browser scores. On the lab scale, 186 ms is the fast edge of the typical range in the Woods study, where most people fell between about 186 and 240 ms. Either way, it is a good number.

Is 213 ms a good reaction time?

It depends on the scale. As a lab figure, 213 ms is exactly the corrected average for adults, so it is normal. As an on-screen median it is quicker than most. It means your true reaction is near 130 to 140 ms once device delay is removed. On this test, a 213 ms median earns the standard badge, at the fast end of that band.

Is a reaction time under 150 milliseconds possible?

On screen, almost never for real. The physical floor for a visual reaction is about 100 ms, and a browser adds 70 to 90 ms on top. So a genuine on-screen score should not drop much below 170. A score under 150 usually means the click was anticipated or the hardware is unusually fast. This test still counts it, because nothing above 100 ms can be proven to be a guess.

Does a 144 Hz monitor give me a better reaction time?

It gives you a better displayed number, by about 5 ms on average. At 60 Hz, the green waits up to 16.7 ms for the next frame. At 144 Hz, it waits under 7 ms. Your nervous system is unchanged. A 1000 Hz mouse saves a few more milliseconds in the same way. If you compare scores across devices, these differences are big enough to move you from one badge to another.