diff --git a/test/test_dev.ml b/test/test_dev.ml
index 6416766..f9f9117 100644
--- a/test/test_dev.ml
+++ b/test/test_dev.ml
@@ -2354,11 +2354,16 @@ let () =
         fail
           "a printing program was diagnosed as one that is not polling, which \
            is the defect and not the symptom";
-      (* The wait is five seconds, so anything near it is the timeout being
-         reached rather than a slow machine. Two is the compromise: a cold
-         [llc] under dune's own parallelism is comfortably inside it, and a
-         run that blocked is comfortably outside. *)
-      if took > 2.0 then
+      (* The only job this number has is to sit under the daemon's own
+         five-second wait, so that "it answered" and "it gave up" cannot be
+         confused. It is not a measurement of how fast a module builds, and it
+         is deliberately not tightened into one: [listening] above records 6.8s
+         for a cold build under dune's parallelism, and a suite that goes red
+         on a loaded machine teaches whoever is running it to skim past red.
+         The two assertions that actually discriminate are the status and the
+         absence of the frame-boundary sentence; this one only rules out a
+         timeout that somehow reported success. *)
+      if took > 4.5 then
         fail "evaluating against a printing program took %.1fs" took;
       (* And the program's own text came back on the reply rather than being
          drained into nothing. *)