HyperX Pulsefire Dart Wireless Mouse Review – Ready, Willing and Able

[Nexy]

I've been a long proponent of HyperX products. In the past, I've reviewed three different headsets from the company, these being the Cloud Alpha S, the Cloud revolver and the Cloud Stinger Wireless. On all three accounts, the headsets have been well befitting of the HyperX name, being affordable, highly functional and well built. This is very much the same with memory offerings from the company, in my previous experience. Making a change from my reviews of HyperX headsets, I'm going to look at the HyperX Pulsefire Dart wireless mouse with a slight addition of the ChargePlay Base.

I want to talk about the Chargeplay Base first. It's not really what this review is about, but ties into the Pulsefire Dart itself. The HyperX ChargePlay Base by HyperX is a wireless Qi charger that can be used to charge any Qi-compatible item, which includes my S10 Plus and, naturally, the Pulsefire Dart wireless mouse. The base can charge one item at up to 10W and, using both pads, two items at a total of 15W. Fortunately, there's always the option of using any third-party Qi charging base.

That's one of the rarer features of the HyperX Pulsefire Dart. Most wireless charging devices require propriety tech to charge them up, not so here, thanks to the inclusion of Qi charging. There is a slight downside with Qi charging, you need to place the mouse (or whatever else) in a specific place on the pad. Fortunately, the pad and mouse never failed to link together. I can't say exactly how good the base is at charging up the mouse - there is a reason for that, one that I'll get into later.

Before that, let's talk price. The HyperX Pulsefire Dart comes in at an RRP of £109.99 or - and this is completely bewildering - $99.99 or €99.90. How HyperX can justify what is essentially a 40% price hike in the UK is beyond me. This is a grave shame because, for $100/€100, the Pulsefire Dart comes in at a very attractive price. This is a gaming mouse with premium features (wireless charging) at a budget price.

So, in addition to the premium feature of wireless charging, what can you expect to find with the HyperX Pulsefire Dart? It offers up to a very respectable 16,000 DPI and tracks at 450IPS. As for the reliability of the buttons, it's designed to last up to fifty million clicks. What the PulseFire Dart has a little worse than premium products is in response time, coming in at 1ms, though you are hardly likely to notice any delay between clicking and the game, or whatever you're doing, taking action. That's by far the most important aspect here, it does exactly what you want it to and when you want it to.

With respect to the wireless capabilities, you really shouldn't have any issues with range. How far away does one keep their mouse from their tower and/or laptop? I don't personally use the extension, though the testing I did with it showed no change in performance. Where it could be useful is with connecting your mouse to a console, something that tends to be a bit further away than a PC tower when in use. As for the battery length, the purported fifty hours of life rings true, with it being very easy to leave on charge overnight as required.

So how about the build quality and feel of the Pulsefire Dart? Here is where you'll find more of a link to the relatively cheap price of the mouse. The mouse comes with just two side buttons as well as the usual left, right and middle button/mouse wheel. In addition to these is one small button that changes the DPI of the mouse, with multiple settings being made available by the software made available by HyperX. I'll get to the software in a little while.

Needless to say, everything feels extremely sturdy. The Pulsefire Dart does have a bit of size to it. This could be a detriment to those with smaller hands, but I find it very comfortable. This was aided and cushioned by grips on both sides of the mouse. Through extensive use (300+ hours), neither the grips nor the buttons have shown any signs of wear, nor have the pads on the bottom of the mouse, offering a very smooth glide and ease of use.

If there's anything else worth saying, the only other thing I can think of is that it's far from the flashiest mouse around. It's simply black all over with the exception of LED lighting for the HyperX logo and along the sides of the mouse wheel. Personally, I have no issue with this, really liking the minimalist approach.

Let's talk issues. There aren't many with the HyperX Pulsefire Dart. Indeed, were it not for one monumentally useless and infuriating aspect, I wouldn't have been able to find a single flaw with the mouse. What is this flaw? The software. HyperX has some software called NGenuity that, contrary to its name, doesn't have a considerable amount of ingenuity. Not only did it take the software almost a week to actually recognise the Pulsefire Dart, but it would also break.

It has conflicts with other software, like Sennheiser's audio suite for their wireless headset. Furthermore, it loses detection of the mouse if you switch between wired and wireless mode and, at times, hangs or simply crashes. As for the settings made available, I don't have any major complaints nor praises, with the options being limited - you can have up to five customised DPI settings to scroll through and you can change the colour of both the LED mouse wheel and logo.

This is fine, I don't expect something magical, it does what it says on the tin. At least it would when it worked, that being the major issue. Any mouse supported by said software should be detected immediately and the software, ideally, shouldn't hang, crash or have conflicts with software for wireless headsets that means you have to close that to use this.