Ghosting test
Moving bars over different backgrounds. Follow a bar with your eyes and look at the edges: a darker trail means slow pixels, a lighter halo means too much overdrive.
Finding the best overdrive setting
- Open your monitor's on-screen menu and find overdrive. It goes by many names: Response Time, OD, Trace Free, AMA, Rampage Response.
- Start on the mid-grey pair at 960 px/s. Set overdrive to the lowest level and note the trail length.
- Step up one level at a time. The trail shrinks. When a bright outline appears behind the bar, you've gone too far: step back down.
- Repeat on the dark-on-dark pair. VA panels often smear here even when grey looks clean. Pick the level that looks best across both.
- With VRR on, check again at lower frame rates; some monitors overshoot more at low refresh.
| You see | Meaning | Try |
|---|---|---|
| Short trail, same shade as the bar | Normal for the panel's speed | Nothing, or one step more overdrive |
| Long dark smear on dark pair | Slow dark transitions (typical of VA) | Higher overdrive; raise black level slightly |
| Bright or coloured outline | Overshoot (inverse ghosting) | One step less overdrive |
| Blur but no trail | Persistence blur, not ghosting | Higher refresh or backlight strobing: see the UFO test |
Questions people ask
What causes monitor ghosting?
Pixels take time to change from one shade to another (response time). When they are slower than the refresh interval, part of the previous frame is still visible, leaving a trail behind moving objects. VA panels are known for slow dark transitions, which shows as dark smearing.
What is inverse ghosting or overshoot?
Monitors speed up transitions with overdrive, briefly driving a pixel past its target. Too much overdrive overshoots, leaving a bright or coloured halo behind moving objects. The best setting is usually the highest one that shows no halo.
Is 1 ms response time real?
Advertised figures are usually the fastest grey-to-grey transition at the most aggressive overdrive, often with heavy overshoot. Average real-world transitions are commonly several milliseconds. Independent reviews that measure full transition tables are more reliable than the box figure.
Can a cable or setting cause ghosting?
Not usually. Ghosting is panel behaviour. But dynamic contrast, motion smoothing on TVs, or a mismatched refresh rate can make motion look worse. Use Game Mode on TVs.