How to Use the Ghosting Test
- Make sure your monitor runs at its highest refresh rate — check it with the refresh rate test.
- Watch the blocks move across the dark, grey and light lanes. Follow one block with your eyes.
- Look at the trailing edge and the thin gap inside each block:
- A dark or grey smear behind the block is ghosting.
- A bright or coloured halo behind it is overshoot (inverse ghosting).
- A crisp gap inside the block means the pixels are keeping up.
- Change the speed to see how blur grows with faster motion, or use Full screen for a cleaner view.
The fps counter shows how fast your browser is animating — it should match your refresh rate. If it doesn’t, motion will stutter regardless of the monitor.
Why the Three Backgrounds?
Pixels change at different speeds depending on the colours involved. Dark-to-light transitions are often fast, while grey-to-grey and dark-to-dark transitions are slower on many panels — especially VA panels, which are known for dark smearing. Testing all three shows the worst case for your monitor.
Ghosting by Panel Type
| Panel | Typical behaviour |
|---|---|
| TN | Fast response, little ghosting; weaker colours and viewing angles |
| IPS | Good response on modern panels; mild overshoot at the highest overdrive |
| VA | High contrast, but dark transitions can smear noticeably |
| OLED | Near-instant pixel response; only the blur from holding each frame remains |
Fixing Ghosting and Overshoot
Adjust Overdrive
Overdrive pushes pixels to change faster. Too low leaves trails; too high causes bright halos. Most monitors look best on the middle setting. Test each level here and choose the cleanest.
Increase Refresh Rate
At 144 Hz each frame is on screen for 6.9 ms instead of 16.7 ms at 60 Hz, so perceived blur is much shorter.
Try Motion Blur Reduction
Many gaming monitors have a strobing mode (often called ULMB, DyAc or MPRT) that flashes the backlight between frames. It makes motion much sharper at the cost of brightness and sometimes visible flicker.
Ghosting vs Input Lag
Ghosting is about how an image looks while it moves. Input lag is how long it takes for your actions to appear on screen. A monitor can have low ghosting but high input lag, or the reverse — they’re separate measurements.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is Monitor Ghosting?
Ghosting is a faint trail behind moving objects, caused by pixels that change colour too slowly. The previous image lingers for a moment, so a moving shape leaves a shadow of itself.
What Is Inverse Ghosting or Overshoot?
Overshoot is the opposite problem — the monitor's overdrive pushes pixels too hard, so they briefly go past the target colour. It shows up as a bright or coloured halo trailing behind moving objects. It usually comes from an overdrive setting that's too high.
How Do I Reduce Ghosting?
Change the monitor's overdrive (sometimes called Response Time, Trace Free or OD) in its on-screen menu. Try each level and pick the one with the least trail and no bright halo. A higher refresh rate also reduces blur.
Is Some Blur Normal?
Yes. Every LCD and OLED holds each frame on screen until the next one, so your eye sees some blur when tracking motion. That blur shrinks as refresh rate goes up. A long coloured trail, though, isn't normal and points to slow pixels or wrong overdrive.
Should I Use a Camera to Check Ghosting?
You can, but your eyes are usually enough. For a photo, use a fast shutter and pan the camera with the moving block. A still photo of the screen will show its own motion blur that your eyes don't see.
Related Tests
- Dead Pixel TestFill your screen with solid colours one at a time to spot dead, stuck or hot pixels.
- Monitor Refresh Rate TestFind out how many times per second your screen is really refreshing — and whether your high-refresh monitor is stuck at 60 Hz.
- PPI CalculatorEnter a screen's resolution and size to see its pixel density, dot pitch and how close you can sit before pixels become visible.
Last updated · Part of our display tests.