Ghosting vs inverse ghosting: reading trails behind moving objects

How this is calculated

Every pixel takes time to change from one shade to another. When that change is slow, part of the old image lingers for a frame or two, which you see as a faded copy or dark smear behind a moving object. Monitors use overdrive to speed up those changes, pushing each pixel briefly past its target. Too little overdrive leaves ghosting. Too much makes pixels overshoot, which shows as a bright or colored edge, often called inverse ghosting or coronas. The motion pattern puts the same target on three backgrounds because transitions behave differently: dark to light, light to dark, and mid gray changes all have their own speed. VA panels, for example, are often slowest in dark transitions, so the trail on the black band can look worse than on gray. There's a third kind of blur that no overdrive setting fixes. Most screens hold each frame steady until the next one arrives. When your eyes follow a moving object, the image smears across your retina for the whole frame. That persistence blur shrinks with higher refresh rates and with backlight strobing modes. Follow the target with your eyes for a few passes. Then try fixing your eyes on one spot while it passes. Trails that only appear when you follow the target are mostly persistence blur.

Verdict

Use the motion pattern to compare, not to grade. Run it at your highest refresh rate, change one setting at a time and keep the speed the same. Pick the overdrive level where dark trails are short and bright halos are barely visible. A browser can't measure response time, so treat review measurements as the numbers and this test as your own eyes on your own unit.