Microseconds to Milliseconds (µs to ms)
1 microsecond equals 0.001 milliseconds exactly.
How to convert microseconds to milliseconds
To convert microseconds to milliseconds, multiply the number of microseconds by 0.001. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply milliseconds by 1,000.
milliseconds = microseconds × 0.001
Example: 10 microseconds = 0.01 milliseconds.
Months and years are not constant. This site uses the average Gregorian year of 365.2425 days, so one 'year' converts to 365.2425 days, not 365; use 'common year' for exactly 365 days.
About these units
Microsecond (µs)
One millionth of a second. Used for electronics and processor timing.
Writing a microsecond takes a Greek letter, mu, which stands for the prefix micro-, one millionth. Where plain text cannot display it, people fall back on the letter u and write us. The unit belongs to electronics and radio: a signal that repeats every microsecond has a frequency of 1 MHz, and a radio wave of that period is about 300 m long.
A microsecond is one millionth of a second, short enough that light in a vacuum crosses only about 1 km in 3.34 of them. Digital audio lives on this scale, because a CD sample at 44.1 kHz lasts about 22.7 microseconds and a 48 kHz sample about 20.8. A modern solid-state drive has an access latency of about 50 microseconds, and a camera flash lasts around 1,000. Relativity matters at this scale too: GPS satellite clocks would drift by about 38 microseconds per day without compensation. Wikipedia notes that the 2011 Japanese earthquake shortened the day by about 1.8 microseconds.
1 microsecond = 0.000001 seconds (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Microsecond; BIPM: SI Brochure, 9th edition
Millisecond (ms)
One thousandth of a second. Used for computer response times and sports timing.
Milliseconds sit on the border between what people perceive and what instruments must be built to catch. Nobody feels a single one: a human blink lasts roughly 100 to 400 of them, and the average resting heart cycle is about 860. The prefix milli- makes the unit exactly one thousandth of a second, so it is a handy yardstick for events a little too quick to notice but slow enough for a stopwatch-style instrument to capture.
A millisecond is one thousandth of a second, and the scale references are easy to picture. Light in a vacuum covers about 300 km in 1 ms, and sound in air covers about 34 cm. A film frame at 24 frames per second lasts about 41.7 ms, one cycle of 60 Hz mains power lasts about 16.7 ms, and a camera shutter set to 1/125 s is open for about 8 ms. Online gamers watch network latency in milliseconds, with typical broadband figures of 5 to 80 ms, and telephone engineers recommend keeping one-way delay under about 150 ms before conversation starts to feel awkward.
1 millisecond = 0.001 seconds (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Millisecond; BIPM: SI Brochure, 9th edition
Related conversions
- Milliseconds to microseconds (reverse)
- Microseconds to seconds
- Microseconds to minutes
- Microseconds to hours
- Microseconds to days
- Microseconds to weeks
- Microseconds to months
- Microseconds to years
- Microseconds to nanoseconds
- Microseconds to decades
- Microseconds to centuries
- Microseconds to millennia
- Seconds to milliseconds
- Minutes to milliseconds
- Hours to milliseconds
- Days to milliseconds
- Weeks to milliseconds
- Months to milliseconds
- Years to milliseconds
- Nanoseconds to milliseconds
- Decades to milliseconds
- Centuries to milliseconds
- Millennia to milliseconds
See all time units.