It’s hard to stand out in the world of gaming mice. Gamers are fickle. Competition is hard. Everyone just needs to destress a bit. So why not implement that into the chassis?
HyperX has largely built their peripheral line on affordable devices and with the Pulsefire Dart, they’re moving into wireless territory. There’s nothing especially flashy with the Dart like you might see with Razer’s Viper Ultimate or the Logitech G Pro Wireless, although all the good basics are included. The wireless operates on the 2.4Ghz band, and the sensor is the super reliable Pixart 3389 with default DPI settings of 800, 1600 and 3200, which are good enough for most people out of the box.
The Omron switches are rated for 50 million clicks, although every human alive will change their mouse or spill something sugary on it that will force an upgrade before that happens. There’s customisable RGB lighting as well, if you care about that, and there’s six programmable buttons in total.
But that’s not the cool bit. The cool bit is on the sides of the mouse, something I’ve not seen in any mouse wired or wireless.
It’s a mini cushion! Because the Pulsefire Dart uses that ergonomic right-handed design — not too dissimilar from the Microsoft Intellimouse Optical and more modern takes on the chassis, like Zowie’s larger mice or the Logitech G502 — you’re naturally going to be gripping more of the mouse with your palm.
Knowing this, HyperX have added a little cushion in the rubber texturing that you can squeeze. It’s like having a mini stress ball built into the mouse, although it does come at a small cost. Because the structural integrity of the mouse had to be modified, not unlike the hyperlight gaming mice that have four million holes in them, you’ll can click the mouse if you squeeze in hard enough on the left side.
It’s a problem a lot of other mice have had this year, although it’s cropped up because they’ve been trying to make sub-50 gram or sub-60 gram mice. The Pulsefire Dart is nowhere near that territory, weighing in at 110 grams without a cable. It’s 150 grams with the cable, which is thankfully a standard USB-C cord with no amendments, so you can use the cord with other devices if you need.
And you might not even need the cord, because the Pulsefire Dart supports Qi wireless charging. It’ll take an age and a year to get the Dart up to full capacity through Qi charging, mind you, but if you’ve already got a Qi pad on your desk for your phone, it’s nice to know that you can drop the Pulsefire Dart on there too.
Beyond that, it’s a fairly standard, frills-free mouse. The sensor is perfectly reliable for gaming — most mice have the same sensors these days, so there’s little difference between them in the raw performance — although I would have preferred if the cushioning wasn’t as thick on the left hand side.
It’s retailing for $US99 through Amazon, which is about $US100 less than what you’d pay for the G Pro Wireless, and about $50 less than the Razer Viper Ultimate. Corsair’s Harpoon offering is going for about $138, which works out cheaper than the Pulsefire after a currency conversion. The Pulsefire Dart is coming to Australia, but local pricing and availability haven’t been announced yet. I’ll update those post when those details become available.
In the meantime, it’s just nice to see companies taking a fresh angle. Not everyone is going to want to squeeze their mouse for stress relief. But when so many peripheral makers are copying each other and innovation has largely been centred on reducing weight as much as possible, it’s refreshing to see a slightly different approach. It’s not for me personally, because I still love my super lightweight gaming mice, but I love that HyperX at least tried to be a bit different.
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