Ghosting Test

Ghosting Test — Check Motion Blur & Pixel Response

Watch moving blocks travel across the screen at several speeds at once. Trailing edges, smearing and inverse ghosting reveal how quickly your panel’s pixels can actually change — the real-world side of response time.

What ghosting looks like

“Ghosting” is a trail or smear that follows a moving object because the panel’s pixels can’t finish changing color before the next frame arrives. The blocks above move at three different relative speeds so you can see where your monitor starts to struggle. Watch the trailing edge of each block: a faint duplicate or a blurry tail is ghosting. A dark or discolored trail that appears ahead of or behind the object — often with overdrive set too high — is inverse ghosting, sometimes called overshoot or coronas.

Ghosting, response time and overdrive

Response time is how long a pixel takes to change from one color to another. Slow response times cause ghosting; very aggressive “overdrive” settings meant to speed pixels up can overshoot and cause inverse ghosting instead. Most monitors have an overdrive or “response time” setting in their menu with several levels. Use this test to find the level that gives the cleanest motion: increase overdrive until inverse ghosting (bright halos) appears, then step back one level.

How to run the test

Press Start motion and let the blocks sweep back and forth.
Adjust the speed slider — faster motion exposes ghosting more clearly.
Compare the three rows: the fastest row shows the most trailing.
Change your monitor’s overdrive setting and watch how the trails change.

Ghosting vs. refresh rate

Ghosting and refresh rate are related but separate. A high refresh rate shows more frames per second, but if the pixels are slow, each of those frames is still smeared. A panel needs both a high refresh rate and fast pixel response for genuinely clean motion. If motion looks poor even at a high measured refresh rate, slow pixel response — visible here as ghosting — is usually the reason.

An original test, not a clone

This test uses plain moving blocks of our own design. The concepts it checks — trailing, smearing and inverse ghosting — are universal display terms, but the graphics here are original and not copied from any other tool.