It is literally impossible to respond to input in 10ms on most platforms, for various reasons. The USB input lag of 12-30ms and the 60Hz refresh rate of most monitors being just the first two.
The basic advice regarding response times has been about the same for thirty years [Miller 1968; Card et al. 1991]:
- 0.1 second is about the limit for having the user feel that the system is reacting instantaneously, meaning that no special feedback is necessary except to display the result.
- 1.0 second is about the limit for the user's flow of thought to stay uninterrupted, even though the user will notice the delay. Normally, no special feedback is necessary during delays of more than 0.1 but less than 1.0 second, but the user does lose the feeling of operating directly on the data.
- 10 seconds is about the limit for keeping the user's attention focused on the dialogue. For longer delays, users will want to perform other tasks while waiting for the computer to finish, so they should be given feedback indicating when the computer expects to be done. Feedback during the delay is especially important if the response time is likely to be highly variable, since users will then not know what to expect.
That’s the prevailing statistic, but your original number isn’t that wrong either:
Humans can perceive much smaller latencies.
If you look at the Card & Miller reference, at least some humans can perceive differences in ~50ms vs 100ms latencies when typing (in my limited testing, it’s likely you can!). There’s some newer research I don’t have handy that I believe found error rates decreased and NSAT improved until around at least 30ms (if not 20ms).
On that note, humans can definitely distinguish 60hz vs 120hz reliably (about 8ms faster per frame).
Even faster: with a reference (eg when dragging on a touchscreen), humans can distinguish down to at least 1ms vs 10ms of latency: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4
And you can probably distinguish metronomes that are off by about 1-2ms. Much smaller for other things (like metronomes that slightly slower or faster than one another).
60Hz monitors definitely prevent it, but I'm pretty sure USB lag is far less than 12-30ms. My USB mouse can make a round-trip to a remote server faster than that.
How'd you get that number? USB defaults to polling at 125Hz and a lot of devices go at 1000Hz (or higher). The rest of the pipeline should be a fraction of a millisecond. I guess bad debouncing hardware can add a lot more, but that's far from USB's fault.
It's mostly due to OS-level USB stacks being quite terrible for latency for the most part, especially on Windows. Though I might've misremembered the exact numbers.
"Most" includes standard issue corporate hardware for office drones, bottom of the barrel laptops bought as gifts to children, and ultra cheap Android phones in developing countries.
there are plentiful OLEDs in 4k with refresh rates from 100Hz to 480Hz. your problem is a small size problem. 15” is targeted more towards portable work monitors, not gaming in 2026
that 4K monitor has touch and pen support too. and it was $300. you'd be hard-pressed to find such a thing for $3,000 and even then you wouldn't have high refresh rate
