What is mouse polling rate and why does it matter?

Polling rate is the frequency at which your mouse reports its position to the PC, measured in Hertz. A 1000 Hz mouse sends a new position every 1 ms; an 8000 Hz mouse sends one every 0.125 ms. Higher rates reduce input-to-display latency and smooth cursor motion during fast flicks, but only the upper bound of motion smoothness changes — aim and accuracy still depend on the sensor, your sensitivity, and the display refresh rate. Below 500 Hz the cursor visibly stairs on high-refresh monitors.

Is 1000 Hz enough, or should I run 4000 or 8000 Hz?

For 144 Hz to 240 Hz monitors, 1000 Hz remains the sweet spot for almost every player. The measured end-to-end latency benefit of moving from 1000 Hz to 4000 Hz is roughly 1.5 ms on a 360 Hz display, and CPU usage roughly quadruples because every report has to traverse the USB and HID stacks. 8000 Hz is worth it only on 360 Hz+ panels paired with a modern CPU; weaker systems can drop frames under the interrupt load. The /mouse/latency tool will show whether the extra rate translates to a measurable gain.

How can a browser measure 8000 Hz when most APIs cap at the display rate?

The PointerEvent API exposes getCoalescedEvents(), which returns every raw input sample the browser received between two paints — even when the page renders at 60 or 144 Hz. This tool reads those coalesced events, takes the hardware timestamp on each, and computes intervals directly. The classifier looks at the median interval and the p99 stability, not the rendered frame count, so a 4 kHz mouse on a 60 Hz monitor still reads as 4 kHz.

Why does Firefox report a lower polling rate than Chrome?

Firefox historically throttled pointermove coalescing to the display refresh rate, so a 1000 Hz mouse looked like 144 Hz in the browser. Recent versions expose coalesced events more faithfully but still differ from Chromium. If this tool reports 240 Hz in Firefox and 1000 Hz in Chrome for the same hardware, the mouse is fine — the browser is the bottleneck. For an authoritative reading use a Chromium-based browser, or check the rate in your vendor driver.

What does a high jitter (CV) value mean?

Coefficient of variation is the standard deviation of intervals divided by the mean. A perfect 1000 Hz mouse produces intervals tightly clustered around 1.0 ms and a CV under 5 percent. Above 15 percent the report stream is uneven — common causes are a flaky USB port, a powered hub, wireless interference on 2.4 GHz, or a CPU pinned at 100 percent. High jitter hurts tracking aim more than a slightly lower median rate, so prefer a stable 1000 Hz over an unstable 4000 Hz.

Do wireless and Bluetooth mice really hit 1000 Hz?

Modern 2.4 GHz gaming dongles routinely sustain 1000 Hz and a few flagships hit 4000 or 8000 Hz with their high-speed dongles. Bluetooth LE HID is hard-capped near 125 Hz on most stacks because of the connection interval. If you pair a 1000 Hz wireless mouse over Bluetooth instead of its dongle, this tool will show 125 Hz and that is by design, not a defect. Use the bundled receiver for the rated rate.

Short answer

Mouse polling rate is how many times per second your mouse reports its position to the computer, measured in Hz. 125 Hz is standard for office mice, 500–1000 Hz is typical for gaming mice, and the newest models reach 4000–8000 Hz. This page reads the browser's coalesced pointer events with hardware timestamps and shows your real, effective polling rate.

Mouse / 04

Polling rate.

Move your mouse continuously inside the field. Every coalesced pointer event is recorded with its hardware timestamp. We measure intervals between samples, not aggregate frame rates — so 4 kHz and 8 kHz mice produce truthful readings, not 240 Hz aliasing.

Notes

Method: getCoalescedEvents() captures the sub-frame samples Chromium queues per requestAnimationFrame; event.timeStamp is the hardware-delivery monotonic clock. Reported Hz is the inverse of the median inter-arrival interval, computed only over moving samples (≥0.5 px). Tiny pauses are excluded. Open this page in a Chromium-based browser for the most accurate read — Firefox does not always coalesce.

Move continuously inside this field Begin moving 3–5 seconds is plenty

Inter-arrival distribution — samples

0 2ms 4ms 6ms 8ms 10ms

Reported rate

0 Hz

collect a few seconds of motion

Median int.

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CV (jitter)

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p1 fastest

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p99 slowest

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Sustained

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Burst peak

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Moving samples

Window

0.0s

Honest measurement

Browser coalescing is the ceiling. Chromium delivers up to ~8 kHz on Windows when raw input is available; Firefox typically caps around 1 kHz. The reading below is your mouse's effective rate as seen by the page — the OS or driver may filter further before this point.