Is "Input lag" important?

[Sunbed]

Now I have just read this:
TFT Central review of Benq XL2410T - bit about input lag

and this:
TFT Central feature on input lag

Now I know the feeling is that, to most people, input lag isn't really important. However, I'm looking at the numbers and the difference seems quite big to me...

5-10ms for the Benq compared to 20-30ms for some... so say I went from my old 60Hz PVA to the Benq for example, is that like dropping my ping in-game by 10-20ms?!

I'm sure I'd notice this. I mean, people buy 1000Hz mice over 125Hz ones for that extra 8ms or whatever it is, so 20-30ms on a monitor sounds like a fairly big deal, no?

Imagine you are at LAN with virtually no ping, then 20-30ms lag on your monitor seems important!

Just to put my feelings into perspective, I like to play FPSs with ultra low settings to get them as smooth as possible, anyone who has played any competitive FPS will know what I'm getting at.

 

[cmndr_andi]

If you are a competitive gamer then input lag can be a fairly big issue, since the lag time between you making an input ("click") and it being output on the screen ("bang") can really throw off your game.

That said, most modern consumer monitors (apart from some of the high-end ones with fancy scalers that throw in a lot of input lag) average input lag between 10 and 20ms. Since each frame on a 60Hz monitor refreshes ever y 16.7ms - then this means most monitors have an input lag of around one frame or less. Generally, this is fine and at this level other factors usually make a larger impact in the total lag.

For other uses, it doesn't matter so much because you don't need to respond so fast and you get used to the lag.