Auditory Reaction Time Test
Measure how fast you react to sound. Wait in silence, click the instant you hear the beep — five attempts, averaged and ranked.
Auditory Reaction Time Test
Click to start. The pad won’t change — when you hear the beep, click as fast as you can. Averaged over 5 tries.
Turn your sound on — wired headphones or speakers give the truest score.
Attempts
0 / 5Auditory reaction time is the gap between a sound reaching your ear and your response to it, in milliseconds. Sound takes a shorter path to the brain than sight, so most people land at 140–160 ms in lab conditions — some 30–50 ms quicker than reacting to a visual cue. That head start is why sprinters leave a starting gun faster than a starting light, and why FPS players hear footsteps before they see anyone. Online, device audio latency stretches the number: expect around 240 ms here.
Click the pad to arm a round. After a random 1.5–4.5 second silence a short beep plays and a high-precision timer counts the milliseconds to your click. Nothing on screen changes when it fires — the pad looks identical before and during the beep, so there is no visual cue to lean on, and the random delay means anticipating never pays: click early and the round resets. Five attempts are averaged; trust the average, because single tries swing by 30–50 ms.
Your audio gear is part of the score. The beep is scheduled with the Web Audio API and the timer is corrected for the output latency your browser reports — but Bluetooth headphones buffer another 100–300 ms the browser never sees, and your result absorbs all of it. Use wired headphones or built-in speakers, and confirm sound with the test-beep button first.
How your auditory reaction time ranks?
| Average | Rank | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Under 130 ms | Superhuman | At the edge of human physiology — verify with wired audio before bragging |
| 130–170 ms | Excellent | Lab-grade reflexes; typical of trained athletes and top esports players |
| 170–200 ms | Fast | Sharper than most people on their best day |
| 200–230 ms | Above average | Comfortably quicker than the ~240 ms online average |
| 230–270 ms | Average | Right around the typical result for an online sound test |
| 270–320 ms | Below average | Common when tired or distracted — or a hint of audio latency |
| Over 320 ms | Keep practicing | Usually Bluetooth buffering or fatigue rather than slow reflexes |