Motion clarity test. The blur your rate makes.
Every screen without strobing holds each frame still until the next. When your eyes follow something moving, that still frame smears across them by the distance it travels in one frame. This reads your rate and shows that blur: the number, and the mark it happens to.
One check
- Motion clarity
One check after another, with your progress along the top and a plain verdict on each. Nothing you show the camera or say into the microphone leaves this page.
What it measures
Measured here, not assumed.
- Persistence
- How long each frame stays on screen: the refresh interval, 16.7 ms at 60 Hz, 6.9 ms at 144 Hz.
- Blur in pixels
- Persistence times speed. At 960 pixels a second, the speed reviewers use, one millisecond of persistence is close to one pixel of blur.
- The mark
- Single-pixel dots, two-pixel bars and four-pixel blocks, moving. Which tier holds is what your rate can show.
If it fails
The usual failures, and what fixes each.
- The dots smear
- That is 60 Hz doing what 60 Hz does. A higher refresh rate halves the blur each time it doubles; strobing modes shorten persistence at the cost of brightness.
- The mark stutters rather than blurs
- Frames are arriving unevenly. Run the frame pacing test, and close other programs.
- The rate reads 60 on a faster panel
- The system is running the panel at 60. Set the refresh rate in the display settings, and see the refresh rate test for the cause.
Where a browser stops
What it cannot tell you.
- This is physics from the measured rate, not a measurement of the panel. Strobing, slow pixel response and overdrive change what you see and are invisible to a page.
- Pixel response (grey to grey) needs a photodiode on the panel; reviewers measure it, a browser cannot.
- A pursuit camera can photograph the blur; the eye's impression is what this shows.
Privacy
Nothing leaves this page.
The camera and microphone are read on this page and stopped as soon as they have been measured. The clip you can play back lives in the browser's memory and is discarded when you leave. The location check discards the position. The internet test sends random bytes to this site and nothing else. The result is stored nowhere unless you ask for it by email, and then only the fact that an email was sent is kept.
Questions
Motion clarity test, answered
- Why does motion blur on my monitor?
- Because each frame stays lit until the next one, and your eyes keep moving while it does. The blur is the distance the object travels in one frame: at 60 Hz and 960 pixels a second, about 16 pixels.
- Does a higher refresh rate reduce motion blur?
- Yes, in proportion: 120 Hz halves the blur of 60 Hz, 240 Hz halves it again. That is the main reason high refresh panels look clearer in motion, separate from the smoothness.
- Is this a measurement of my panel's response time?
- No. Response time needs an instrument on the panel. This shows the blur that persistence alone produces at your measured rate, which is the larger part of what you see on most screens.
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