Keyboard Latency Test — Measure Your Key Response Time

Keyboard latency is the time between a key being physically pressed and the system registering the event. It includes debounce delay, USB polling interval, and OS processing time. Typical values range from 1ms to 30ms of pure hardware latency.

Under 80ms total (reaction + hardware) is excellent. 80–150ms is good for gaming. 150–250ms is average. Above 300ms may feel sluggish. Note that this test includes your human reaction time, so lower scores require both a fast keyboard and fast reflexes.

Yes. A 125Hz polling rate means the keyboard reports to the PC every 8ms, adding up to 8ms of variable latency. A 1000Hz polling rate reduces this to just 1ms. Most modern gaming keyboards support 1000Hz polling.

The test records the timestamp when a target key appears on screen, then records when your keypress event fires. The difference is your reaction + input latency combined. It uses performance.now() for ~1ms precision. Results will include your human reaction time as the dominant factor.

Yes. Practice improves your reaction time, which dominates this score. For hardware improvements: use a wired keyboard at 1000Hz polling, reduce software input processing, and close background applications. Gaming keyboards with optical switches and low debounce firmware will give the lowest hardware latency.