How to play Reaction time

Tap or click anywhere to start. The screen turns red and waits a random amount of time. The instant it turns green, click as fast as you can. Your reaction time appears in milliseconds. Click while the screen is still red and the round resets. Run five rounds and the average is your final score.

Tips

• Rest your finger lightly, do not press into the trackpad
• Watch the centre of the screen, not the edges
• Eat first, sugar and caffeine both help short reactions
• Five clean rounds is more honest than one lucky one

About Reaction time

Reaction tests are old psychology lab tools. Wilhelm Wundt was running them in the 1870s with mechanical timers and stop watches. Average human reaction time to a visual cue lands around 250 milliseconds. Below 200 is fast, below 150 is suspicious. Pilots, athletes and racing drivers all train to drop their numbers. Your phone or laptop adds about 30 milliseconds of input lag, so the real number is even faster than what you see.

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