Mouse Polling Rate Test — Check Your Mouse Hz Online
Move your mouse in steady circles inside the pad. The tool counts position reports per second — live, average and maximum — using coalesced events where your browser exposes them.
Move your mouse here in circles to start measuring.
Results appear after the first full second of movement.
What polling rate means, in milliseconds
Polling rate is easiest to feel when converted to time. A 125 Hz mouse can sit on new information for up to 8 milliseconds before reporting it; at 500 Hz the worst wait is 2 ms; at 1,000 Hz it is 1 ms; at 8,000 Hz it is an eighth of a millisecond. Compare those waits with the frame times on the display side — 16.7 ms at 60Hz, 6.9 ms at 144Hz, 4.2 ms at 240Hz — and the shape of the story appears: on a 60Hz office setup, even a 125 Hz mouse is rarely the bottleneck, while on a 240Hz esports setup a slow-reporting mouse can be a meaningful slice of the total delay between your hand and the screen.
There is a cost side, honestly stated. Higher polling loads the CPU with interrupts — 8,000 reports a second is real work, and on older processors it can cost frames in the very games it is meant to help, which is why several pro players settle at 1,000 or 2,000 Hz. Wireless battery life also falls as polling rises. The right setting is the highest one your system absorbs without the frame rate suffering, and you can verify that trade-off directly: run this test, then run the FPS test benchmark with your mouse moving, and watch whether the lows dip.
How to get a clean reading
- Use a wired connection or the mouse's 2.4 GHz receiver, plugged into a rear motherboard port where possible.
- Move in steady medium circles covering most of the pad — not tiny jitters, not violent flicks.
- Let it run the full measurement window; the average over many seconds is the number to trust.
- If seconds vary wildly, suspect the USB path or wireless interference before the mouse itself.
- Compare against the rate set in the mouse's own software; a mismatch usually means the browser cap described in the FAQ, not a faulty mouse.
Polling is one leg of the delay relay — the rest is covered in the input lag test, and the display's share is measured by the refresh rate test.
Frequently asked questions
What is mouse polling rate?
It is how many times per second the mouse reports its position to the computer, measured in hertz. A 125 Hz office mouse reports every 8 ms; a 1,000 Hz gaming mouse every 1 ms; high-end models reach 4,000 or 8,000 Hz wirelessly.
Why does my reading look lower than my mouse's rating?
Browsers cap and batch pointer events, and the operating system may coalesce them. The tool counts coalesced events where the browser exposes them, which recovers most reports — but very high rates above 1,000 Hz can still read low here versus dedicated desktop software. The limit is stated, not hidden.
Does polling rate matter for gaming?
It trims the first leg of input lag and smooths high-refresh tracking: at 240Hz a frame is 4.2 ms, so an 8 ms report interval can straddle two frames. Most players feel the jump from 125 to 1,000 Hz; beyond 1,000 the returns shrink fast.
How do I raise my polling rate?
Gaming mice set it in their companion software or with a hardware button or combination. Office mice are fixed at 125 Hz. Check that your receiver is in a good USB port — hubs and interference can cause drops the graph here will show as uneven seconds.
Why should I move in circles?
Steady circular motion generates a constant stream of movement events at all speeds, which gives an even per-second count. Fast straight flicks produce bursts and pauses that make the rate look spikier than it is.