What Is Monitor Overdrive?

Overdrive — often labelled “Response Time,” “OD,” “Trace Free,” “AMA” or similar in your monitor's menu — is a setting that pushes extra voltage to the pixels so they change colour faster, which reduces motion smearing and ghosting. But it is not “more is better.” Too little overdrive leaves a smeary trail behind moving objects; too much overshoots the target colour and creates a bright or coloured “inverse ghost” (also called overshoot or coronas). The right setting is the one that is fast without overshooting — usually a middle option like “Normal” or “Medium,” not the maximum. The best level can also change with your refresh rate.

Why overdrive exists

Every LCD pixel takes time to shift from one colour to another — its response time. If pixels change too slowly for the refresh rate, moving objects leave a faint trailing smear: ghosting. Overdrive combats this by driving the pixels harder so they reach the new colour sooner. Done right, it sharpens motion. The catch is that if it drives them too hard, they overshoot past the target colour before settling, which the eye sees as a bright halo or trail on the leading edge of motion.

The two failure modes

• Too little overdrive — ghosting. A soft, dark trailing shadow behind moving objects. The pixels are lagging the refresh. Our monitor ghosting fix guide covers this symptom in full.
• Too much overdrive — inverse ghosting / overshoot. A bright or colour-fringed trail, often ahead of or around the moving object. This looks worse than mild ghosting to many people and is a sign you have turned the setting up too far.

How to find the right setting

The method is simple and takes a couple of minutes:

• Open a moving test — a scrolling image, or the UFO motion test from Blur Busters, which is designed to reveal ghosting and overshoot.
• Step through your monitor's overdrive levels one at a time. Watch the trailing edge of the moving object.
• Pick the highest level that still shows no bright overshoot halo.If the top setting adds coronas, drop down until they disappear. That balance point — frequently the middle option — is your best setting.
• Re-check if you change refresh rate: a level that is clean at 144Hz can overshoot at 60Hz, and vice versa, so the ideal setting is not always the same across every mode.

What overdrive will not fix

Overdrive tunes pixel-transition smearing; it does not change your refresh rate, cure screen tearing(that is an adaptive-sync or V-Sync job — see should I turn on V-Sync), or reduce input lag. On some monitors, the highest overdrive setting can even add a little latency. Treat it as a motion-clarity tuner, set it once per refresh mode, and leave it. If your monitor still smears at its best overdrive setting, the panel itself may be slow — something to weigh when shopping via our panel types explained guide and best 144Hz monitors roundup.