We review products independently, but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page. Terms of use. Gaming mice have never been a strong suit for HyperX. The Kingston subsidiary has risen to become one of the great names in gaming headsets, and its latest keyboard, the Alloy Origins, made a very strong impression (and copped a PCMag Editors' Choice) last year. But its mice, while showing signs of similarly strong craftsmanship, haven't enjoyed similar success. The newest, most feature-packed HyperX mouse, the Pulsefire Raid, is definitely a step in the right direction; the 11-button FPS-style mouse delivers a ton of functionality at an affordable price ($59.99). Unfortunately, it also comes with a couple of notable flaws. Getting Raid-Ready The Pulsefire Raid is relatively understated for a mouse with many distinctive features. It has a standard right-handed shape, but with a wide base and a strong curve on the left side, creating a small side hump that supports the base of your thumb. Your hand naturally falls into a comfortable position, guided by rubberized grips on the sides for your thumb and pinky that feel very cozy as long as you don't need to adjust your hand. Like most right-handed mice, the Raid is made for palm-style handling, and the shape allows for no wiggle room on the subject. While the Pulsefire Raid is of average size—5 by 2.8 by 1.6 inches—I'd argue that it feels a bit wide when you grip it. That distinction probably comes from the high point at the base of the thumb, which forces your hand to spread across the base of the mouse. At 3.35 ounces without cable, it's slightly lighter than the average gaming mouse. The top panel has six inputs: two main click buttons, a DPI selector in the center column, and three scroll-wheel inputs (clicking, tilting left, and tilting right). As I've said in other reviews, I'm a very big fan of scroll-wheel tilt inputs; they're more satisfying to use than the regular press and give you a lot of extra control. I'm glad to see more companies adopt them in mice at all price points. Then there are a whopping five buttons on the left side. You'll find two pairs of side macros set more or less on top of each other to create a four-zone square. I treat the buttons as paired off partly because the bottom two act as forward and back by default, and partly because the two top buttons are larger with rounded edges, while the bottom two feel thin and flat. The buttons are so close together that it's easy to confuse one for another if you stab at one of them quickly, which tends to happen while playing video games. Ahead of the side buttons, where the edge of your thumb should be, is a large "sniper" macro. Unlike most mice with this type of button, it doesn't default to dropping the DPI to facilitate precise clicking, but is simply another customizable input. It feels a bit strange for a mouse with this kind of button to lack this feature, but I confess I didn't miss it much. This belies a larger problem, though. The sniper button is fairly far forward, and my thumb did not reach it naturally. As a result, I rarely used the thumb macro. Moreover, the hump on the left side of the mouse, which creates great ergonomic support for my thumb when I'm holding the mouse naturally, impeded my ability to reach forward and press it. To use the macro, I needed to choke up on the mouse, which takes time and intention. Plus, doing that isn't very comfortable. I have somewhat stubby fingers, so this may not be a big issue for players with longer digits, but it seems notable that shape and button placement worked in tandem against me, considering that the overall shape isn't particularly large. If you can get past the shape and button placement, HyperX has not skimped on performance. Sporting a PixArt 3389 sensor, the Raid can detect accurately at up to 16,000dpi and up to 450 inches per second. Tracking at 16K sounds like a lot, and it is—more than most gamers will ever need. The tracking speed is about average for a good mouse, and most players won't lose any actions in everyday play. Alas, a Lack of NGenuity For its mice, keyboards, and occasionally headsets, HyperX offers a configuration app called NGenuity, which it claims is still in beta despite the fact that it's required for multiple products. More than with most mice, you really need to use NGenuity to use the Pulsefire Raid because the top two side macros and thumb button have no default functions—they literally do nothing unless you assign them something in the software. While I'm all for extra buttons, some of these inputs have intuitive functions (or maybe I've just come to assume so from testing many gaming mice) and it seems odd to leave them blank for users who don't want to use the utility. This runs contrary to the claim on the HyperX website, accompanied by an icon with Windows and Apple logos, that the Raid is multi-platform-compatible. With three buttons unassigned by default and no Mac version of NGenuity, Mac players should not buy this mouse. (I've heard from a HyperX rep that the company may remove the Apple logo.) For players who can download it, NGenuity is very intuitive for basic changes such as mapping buttons and changing DPI presets. Some of its more advanced features require a little extra navigation, however. The macro editor is buried inside the button remapping menu. The flow of selecting a mouse profile, then assigning it to specific apps, can also be a bit finicky. The Pulsefire Raid's profile-making options are also relatively limited. You can create as many profiles as you like on your system, but the mouse's onboard memory can only hold its default profile. If you want additional profiles on another device, you can export profiles from your PC and then import them to NGenuity on another system. This is not nearly as quick or convenient as carrying multiple profiles onboard, but at least gives you the option to bring profiles with you when you make longer and/or more permanent moves. A Great Value That's Not Quite Baked At the risk of cliché, I really wanted to like the HyperX Pulsefire Raid more than I did. It has a strong ergonomic design, lots of buttons, and features I like, and it's reasonably priced for what it can do. Unfortunately, many of those qualities come with compromises. For one, the shape is great until you need to use the thumb button. And it's great to have five side shortcut buttons, but you need to be careful to avoid getting tripped up in the heat of the moment. The Raid is one of the cheapest ways to a ton of shortcut and macro features, but there are better options out there if you can spend more or settle for fewer buttons. Bottom Line: HyperX's top-end gaming mouse, the Pulsefire Raid, offers a lot of functionality, but also poses a few key problems.

weiterlesen: RSS Quelle öffnen