This page opens the 10-key test set to five minutes. The records are the same mix as the standard test, invoice numbers, five-digit ZIP codes, quantities and amounts with cents, so a five-minute result can be compared directly with your one-minute one.
Why five minutes tells you more
Most people are fastest in the first minute. After that, small things add up: looking up from the keypad to find your place, a finger drifting off 5, a missed decimal point that wipes out a whole amount. A five-minute run shows all of that in your numbers. Use the gap between gross and net KPH as your guide: gross is every key you pressed, net only the entries you got exactly right. If gross holds steady but net falls, you are rushing; slow down until accuracy is back at 98% or more, the level Columbia Gorge Community College sets for its 8,000 KPH course goal.
How to pace the five minutes
Settle into a rhythm in the first 30 seconds rather than sprinting. Read the whole field before you start typing it, type it without looking down, then press Enter. If you notice a mistake before you move on, fix it with Backspace: a corrected entry costs a couple of keystrokes, a wrong one costs the whole entry in net KPH. The clock and live net KPH above the records show how you’re doing as you go.
After the test
The small keypad in the result counts errors per key. A cluster on 3, 6 and 9 points at the ring finger; on 0 and 1 at the stretch down from 4. Run the five minutes again later rather than straight away: a rested run is a fairer reading. For a quick daily check, the one-minute 10-key test is enough.