What is your real input lag?
Every click travels through a chain: your mouse, your PC, your monitor. Each link adds milliseconds and what you feel is the total. Put your setup in and see the whole chain in numbers — including which link is actually costing you the most.
How this is calculated (every number, in the open)
This is an estimate built from the delays each part of the chain is known to add, not a measurement of your specific machine. Your real figure depends on your drivers, your game engine and your USB stack, so treat it as a map of where your milliseconds go rather than a stopwatch reading. Every constant used is listed here so you can check the reasoning instead of trusting us.
| Step | How it is worked out |
|---|---|
| Mouse polling wait | 0.5 × (1000 / polling rate) |
| Mouse sensor and firmware | 1.0 ms |
| Game and render pipeline | (1000 / FPS) × 1.5 with low latency mode on, × 2.5 with it off |
| Game engine, driver and system | 3.0 ms |
| Monitor scan-out wait | 0.5 × (1000 / refresh rate) |
| V-Sync penalty | + 1000 / refresh rate, only when V-Sync is on |
| Panel signal processing | OLED 2.0 · TN 2.0 · IPS 3.5 · VA 5.0 ms |
| Pixel response (practical GtG) | OLED 0.3 · TN 1.0 · IPS 4.0 · VA 7.0 ms |
The half-interval figures are averages: sometimes your movement lands just before a poll or a refresh and the wait is near zero, sometimes just after and you pay the full interval. Over a session the average is what you feel.
What the numbers usually mean
Three things surprise most people the first time they see the chain broken out.
The monitor is usually the biggest single block. On a 60 Hz IPS panel the display alone accounts for roughly 16 ms before the game has done anything wrong. That is why a refresh rate upgrade is felt so immediately, and why no mouse can rescue a slow screen.
Frame rate is the cheapest milliseconds you will ever buy. Going from 60 to 144 FPS removes more delay than every peripheral upgrade on this site combined, and lowering a couple of settings costs nothing. Turning on your driver's low latency mode is free and removes roughly one frame of queue.
Polling rate above 1000 Hz is a rounding error. The jump from 125 Hz to 1000 Hz is real and worth doing — about 3.5 ms. The jump from 1000 Hz to 8000 Hz saves under half a millisecond, and on some systems the extra CPU load costs you more frame rate than it gives back in polling.
Fix the link that is actually costing you
Esports monitors
Refresh rate, panel type and processing lag measured per model.
Ultralight mice
Weight, sensor and polling rate, with what each one really changes.
Magnetic keyboards
Actuation distance and Rapid Trigger, the input side of the chain.
Buying guide
What each spec does before you spend anything at all.
Questions people ask
What is input lag?
Input lag is the time between you moving your mouse and the screen actually showing the result. It is not one delay but a chain of them: the mouse has to notice the movement and report it, the game has to simulate and render a frame, and the monitor has to receive that frame, process it and change its pixels. Each link adds milliseconds, and what you feel is the sum. That is why upgrading one part can feel like nothing: if your monitor is adding 15 ms and your mouse is adding 1.5 ms, a faster mouse cannot fix what the monitor is doing.
Does a higher polling rate actually reduce input lag?
Yes, but by less than most people expect, and with sharply diminishing returns. Polling rate is how often the mouse reports its state. At 1000 Hz it reports every millisecond, so on average you wait half a millisecond for your movement to be picked up. Going to 8000 Hz cuts that average wait from 0.5 ms to about 0.06 ms: a real improvement, but under half a millisecond in a chain that usually totals 20 to 50 ms. The jump that genuinely matters is from 125 Hz to 1000 Hz, which saves about 3.5 ms. Above 1000 Hz you are refining a part of the chain that is already small, and on some systems the extra CPU load of 8000 Hz costs you more in frame rate than it saves in polling.
Why does frame rate affect input lag so much?
Because the game can only react to your mouse when it builds a new frame. At 60 FPS a frame takes 16.7 ms, so your movement waits for the next one, and the render pipeline usually holds one or two frames in flight on top of that. At 240 FPS a frame takes 4.2 ms and the same pipeline costs a quarter as much. This is why frame rate is often the cheapest place to find milliseconds: lowering settings costs nothing and can remove more delay than any peripheral you could buy. Turning on the low latency mode in your driver (NVIDIA Reflex or AMD Anti-Lag) removes roughly one frame of queued latency and is free.
Should I turn V-Sync off to reduce input lag?
For competitive play, yes. V-Sync holds finished frames back so they are shown in step with the monitor refresh, which removes tearing but adds up to a full refresh interval of delay, and more when the queue fills. On a 144 Hz monitor that is around 7 ms of pure waiting. The better answer for most people is a variable refresh rate display (G-Sync or FreeSync) with a frame rate cap a few frames below the refresh rate: you get no tearing and almost none of the V-Sync penalty.