Ghosting Test

Watch shapes move across your screen to see how much blur and trailing it leaves behind.

  1. Press Start.
  2. Follow one shape with your eyes as it moves.
  3. Look for faint copies or smears trailing behind it.
Dark background
Mid grey
Light background

Press Start. The shapes only move while the test is running.

Track the shape with your eyes

Blur is easiest to judge when your eyes follow the shape, like following a ball in a game. Staring at one spot makes every screen look blurry.

How the ghosting test works

Each shape jumps a little further across the screen on every refresh. Pixels need a few milliseconds to change from one shade to another; if they're too slow, the shape leaves a faint copy of itself behind, called ghosting. Some screens overcorrect and leave a bright or dark halo instead, called overshoot or inverse ghosting. Testing on dark, mid and light backgrounds matters because panels are often slower at some transitions than others; slow dark-to-grey changes are common on VA panels.

On a high refresh rate screen the shapes look sharper because each step is smaller. Check yours on the refresh rate test.

Reducing ghosting

  1. Raise the refresh rate to the maximum your screen supports, in your display settings.
  2. Try the overdrive setting in the monitor's menu (often called response time or trace free). Pick the level with the least trailing and no halos.
  3. Turn off motion smoothing on TVs, or use Game mode, which usually gives the clearest motion.

Frequently asked questions

The shapes stutter instead of moving smoothly.

Close other tabs and apps, and check your refresh rate. Stutter is usually the computer missing frames, not ghosting.

Why is there no setting faster than 1440 px/s?

Faster than that, shapes cross a phone or laptop screen in a fraction of a second, which is too quick to follow.