Of course the paintEvent does not take 220ms? My mistake, on my embedded arm the paintevent takes ~7ms.

Its a kind of speedometer that is painted...The background makes up of four bitmaps because the meter can be in four different states.

Qt Code: 
  1. paintNeedle.drawPixmap(mPixmapXCoord, mPixmapYCoord, setBitmap());
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...takes ~5ms and the rendering of the needle below takes about ~2ms.

I wonder if it is more effective to render the background states instead?