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When a product we test at PC Labs really stands out, it can earn our Editors’ Choice award, which distinguishes it as one of the best in its category for overall performance and value. In 2026, we're taking that recognition a step further with the introduction of the PCMag Lab Awards. These honors spotlight products that achieve measurable, standout lab results in specific areas, proving they are the best at what they do.
I’ve tested hundreds of TVs, and every time I do, I get plenty of concrete data for each one related to picture quality and gaming performance, including how bright the screen can get, how wide and accurate its colors are, and how responsive it is. That last characteristic is the measurement for our first Lab Award for TVs. The Samsung S95H, our latest Editors’ Choice winner for high-end OLED TVs, also earns our inaugural PCMag Lab Award for lowest input lag.
Input lag is the amount of time it takes for a display—whether it’s a TV or a monitor—to update what you see on the screen after receiving a signal. It takes time to process and show video, especially when it comes from an external source device like a PC or a game console, and that latency can be a big deal for video games. Read on for all the details of my input lag testing, the Samsung S95H's record-breaking speed performance, and why this spec matters if you're shopping for a TV.
Why Input Lag Matters for Serious Gamers
If there’s too much input lag, playing a game can feel sluggish and unresponsive. Whether you're playing Counter-Strike or Devil May Cry, you want to move the instant you press a button, and the slightest lag can hold you back. Latency can affect your offensive attacks, causing you to lose precious time identifying enemy moves before you even make your own.
Input lag is measured in milliseconds, but that’s not the only unit you need to understand when it comes to gaming responsiveness. All TVs, monitors, movie theater screens, phones, and basically anything that can show video do so by drawing individual frames one at a time, rapidly enough for the images to appear to move. How quickly a display draws those frames is called its refresh rate, measured in cycles per second, or hertz (Hz). Most inexpensive TVs and monitors have a refresh rate of 60Hz, while higher-end models can reach 120Hz, 144Hz, or 180Hz, and gaming monitors can go even higher.
Divide one second by a display’s refresh rate to find out the amount of time between each individual frame. For a 60Hz screen, that’s 16.67 milliseconds. For a 120Hz screen, that’s 8.3ms.
The higher the refresh rate, the smoother any movement looks to your eyes, and the faster you can identify what's happening on the screen. Seeing an enemy player in Call of Duty come around the corner at a smooth 120 frames per second (8.3ms between each frame you see) gives you four times as much time to react versus at a choppy 30fps (33.2ms between each frame).
Knowing exactly how many frames per second a game is running at is vital for fighting titles like Street Fighter 6 and Guilty Gear Strive, as well as for speed-running any game. In both cases, players can learn to recognize every frame of animation for the on-screen characters and use that to time their moves for optimal performance. A mere two or three frames can mean the difference between landing and dropping a complicated combo with Sol Badguy, or launching yourself across the map and standing still in Elden Ring.
My own skills aren't nearly polished enough for those activities, but for intermediate-to-serious gamers, windows of four to five frames at 60fps for a move or a glitch are easy to consistently nail, while three-frame windows require serious practice. Tricks that require inputs within one or two frames are difficult for even the best players to consistently hit. In all of those cases, you need to be able to see those frames as they're happening to react with the right timing, which is why I consider a TV good for gaming if it has less than one frame of input lag.
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How I Test TV Input Lag at PC Labs
I test input lag on TVs using the Leo Bodnar 4K HDMI Video Signal Lag Tester. It’s a small box with a USB port, an HDMI port, and a light sensor. When I connect the tester to my computer over USB and a TV over HDMI, it shows a series of three flashing boxes on the TV’s screen, along with some numbers. By placing the light sensor over one of those boxes, it can measure input lag from the signal's timing to the resulting flash. That input lag is shown on the TV, along with information identifying the signal type.
The Video Signal Lag Tester supports many different resolutions and refresh rates, with maximums of 1080p at 240Hz and 4K at 60Hz. When measuring input lag, I specifically place the light sensor near the top of the box in the middle of the screen. TVs refresh line by line from the top down, so placing the sensor over the top box always results in lower numbers and placing it over the bottom box results in higher numbers, sometimes by milliseconds. By using the same placement for each TV, I ensure consistency in measurements between them.
I record TVs’ 1080p120 and 4K60 input lags because 60Hz is the standard refresh rate across all TVs, and 120Hz is almost universal on higher-end ones. Input lag tends to scale closely, but not identically, to signal refresh rate regardless of a TV’s resolution, so the 4K60 input lag I measure on a given model will usually be about twice as long as the 1080p120 input lag I record. If a TV has a refresh rate of 144Hz or 180Hz, the numbers I record at 1080p144 or 1080p180 will probably be lower than its 1080p120 input lag. That said, if it’s less responsive at 120Hz than a different TV, using the higher refresh rate measurements won’t be a fair comparison.
That’s why I only use the 4K60 and 1080p120 input lag measurements when comparing multiple TVs, for consistency. I might measure input lag using other refresh rates for reference, but those numbers won’t be directly compared with other TVs.
An important note: I test TVs in Game mode, which, depending on the model, is either a distinct picture mode like Movie, Standard, or Vivid, or a completely separate feature that must be toggled on or off. (Incidentally, when not gaming, you should be using the Movie picture mode because it will offer the most accurate colors.)
This is vital to both measuring input lag and actually playing games. Game mode cuts down on video processing to reduce latency to a minimum, and typically makes a massive difference: A TV that lags 12ms with Game mode turned on might lag 120ms without it. That’s over a tenth of a second, or seven full frames at 60Hz.
Samsung's S95H Sets a New Speed Benchmark
The above chart shows the input lag of the Samsung S95H and five other TVs I've recently tested, for both 4K60 and 1080p120 signals individually and as a combined, aggregate score. In Game mode, the S95H has an input lag of 9.2ms with a 4K60 signal and 4.8ms with a 1080p120 signal. That’s the lowest input lag on a 4K60 signal I’ve measured in a TV, beating out the 2025 Roku Pro Series’ 9.4ms and the Vizio Mini-LED Quantum TV’s 9.5ms, and they both had higher 1080p120 input lags of 5.3ms and 5.2ms, respectively.
The S95H’s 1080p input lag is slightly higher than what I measured on the Hisense U65QF (4.6ms), Hisense U8QG (4.3ms), and LG G6 (4.6ms), but they all showed 4K60 input lags of over 10ms. Taking the two measurements together, the S95H is soundly the most responsive TV I’ve tested, with latencies of just over half a frame for both signals.
The Samsung S95H isn’t just stellar for gaming; it’s an all-around excellent TV. It stands out as the brightest OLED model I’ve tested, with excellent color performance. It’s also loaded with non-gaming features, including Apple AirPlay, Google Cast, and hands-free voice control with both Amazon Alexa and Samsung’s own AI assistant. On top of all that, it has a built-in 4.2.2-channel speaker system that delivers an immersive Dolby Atmos spatial audio sound field, which you can expand with a compatible Samsung soundbar, like the HW-Q990F, via Samsung’s Q-Symphony feature. In addition to a Lab Award for lowest input lag, all of these factors earned the S95H an outstanding 4.5-star rating and our Editors' Choice award for the best premium OLED TV.