Average Reaction Time

What is the average reaction time?

For a simple visual reaction task — wait for a color change, then click — the average adult lands at about 273ms. Auditory reactions are slightly faster (around 250ms) because sound reaches the brain a little quicker than a processed image, and touch is faster still (~150ms). The number you see online most often, 250ms, comes from the raw stimulus-to-press time; the 273ms figure also folds in display and input lag from a typical browser test.

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Why reaction time varies

Your score swings with sleep, caffeine, age, time of day and even screen refresh rate. A 60Hz monitor can silently add up to ~16ms versus a 144Hz panel. Mental fatigue and alcohol push the number up; warming up with a few practice rounds pulls it down. That's why a single click is noise — average at least five attempts before you trust a result.

Simple vs. choice reaction time

A simple reaction task has one signal and one response (the test here). A choice reaction task forces you to pick the right response among several, and that decision step adds 100–200ms. Don't compare a choice-reaction figure from a driving study with a simple-reaction click test — they measure different things.

How reaction time is measured

A high-resolution timer starts the instant the stimulus changes and stops on your input event. Browser tests use performance.now(), which is accurate to well under a millisecond, so the dominant error is your hardware, not the clock. The relative comparison between players stays fair even if absolute values drift a few ms by device.

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