I just did quick measurements for vim 7.4 and emacs 23.4.1 in xterm, rxvt&#x2F;urxvt, and gnome-terminal. The results depend most strongly on the terminal type. emacs&#x27; latency is always a bit (0.1-0.3ms or so) lower than vim&#x27;s. Apart from that, xterm was around 1.1ms, (u)rxvt around 17.5ms, and gnome-terminal around 26.2ms. I wonder where the delay in rxvt compared to xterm comes from.