Synthetic gas (syngas) fuels are promising energy sources in the future. In the current work, laminar flame speeds of typical syngas with different H-2 contents were studied using both experimental measurements and kinetic simulations. Measurements were carried out using the Bunsen method with the flame area derived from the OH planar laser-induced fluorescence (OH-PLIF) images; while kinetic simulations were made using CHEMKIN with two mechanisms: GRI-Mech 3.0 and USC-Mech II. The OH-PLIF based Bunsen method was validated with previous results. Both the experimental and simulated results indicated that the flame speed of syngas increased with H-2 concentration, which, based on the simulation, is attributed to the rapid production of highly reactive radicals and the acceleration of chain-branching reactions by these radicals. In general, predictions with both mechanisms agreed well with measurements, especially for fuel-lean conditions; simulations with USC-Mech II gave better agreement with experimental results at Phi = 0.8 and 0.9 (discrepancy <5%). (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.