Page 3 - Subjective Performance Tests
After plugging the HyperX Pulsefire FPS in, I drove the mouse through our series of revised standard tracking performance tests. This includes normal office usage in the Windows environment as well as gaming. Some graphics work and testing is done with Adobe Photoshop. Games used in this test include Overwatch and League of Legends. This spans multiple genres, and allows us to get a feel as to how the mouse responds in different situations. All testing was completed on the XTracGear Carbonic XXL in addition to the HyperX Fury S. Please note these are subjective tests, but we will attempt to make it as objective as possible with our cross reference testing methods.
As I have mentioned in the physical inspection, the HyperX Pulsefire FPS has a high middle area, which lends itself towards palm grip users. I personally found the Pulsefire FPS had enough width to support all of my fingers, even the ring and pinky fingers. This mouse does allow for either a palm or a claw grip, depending on the size of your hands, but it was more natural for me to hold the mouse in a palm grip. Despite the smooth surface, the side grips made holding onto the Pulsefire FPS quite easy. The sloping and shape of the mouse felt nice, and somewhat similar to the Fnatic Gear Clutch G1. The audible and tactile feedback on all of the secondary buttons were good, despite them not being Omron switches. None of the buttons exhibited any squeaks or abnormal sounds. As for weighting, I felt like the Pulsefire FPS was sufficient in its heft, especially for shooter games. I was satisfied with range of 400 to 3200 DPI, though some may think this ceiling is too low of a setting. Most experienced gamers actually keep their mouse at relatively low dots per inch, but even so, I think some more flexibility would have been nice.
As the HyperX Pulsefire FPS is meant to be a first-person shooter mouse primarily, I immediately dove in with Overwatch, a popular team based first person shooter. Generally speaking, FPS gamers look for mice that are easy to hold, and quick to respond, without having much heft. As such, the Pulsefire FPS responded in a way I expected. The mouse was very responsive, and allowed me to pull off full rotations without losing track of the position. There were no signs of spin out while playing, even when I really tried to make this happen. Overall, I never felt like the HyperX Pulsefire FPS held me back from my full potential. Its smooth movement also made gaming easier. In other games like League of Legends, I found the mouse to be fine for quick movements. Multiplayer online battle arena gamers generally favor either a smaller, simpler mouse, or a mouse with a boat load of buttons. The Pulsefire FPS fell more into the simplistic category, and it performed fine.
As for graphical work, the HyperX Pulsefire FPS never let me down. As it shares the same sensor as practically all the mice I have been using for a while now, I only expected such. I fired up Photoshop to test a few things. First, I did some lasso testing, to see if the mouse was capable of selecting predetermined elements in an image. This allowed me to check for not only tracking and precision, but also for jitter while moving about. Secondly, I performed the straight line test by trying to draw a straight line with the brush. This allowed me to test for mouse prediction. Some cheaper mice will "autocorrect" itself by predicting and drawing a flat line. While this may sound great, it will hamper you in both a graphical and gaming sense, as it hides the micro movements you may actually desire. For the Pulsefire FPS, it passed both tests with flying colors. There were no tracking issues and zero amount of jitter while using it at my preferred settings. The Pulsefire FPS picked up every small detail when I was off from creating a flat line. When testing the HyperX Pulsefire FPS at each of the sensitivity settings, I found the performance to deliver consistent performance at the lower three sensitivity settings. However, at 3200DPI, I did notice a bit of jitter, and felt like the cursor was a bit harder to control.
Overall performance of the HyperX Pulsefire FPS was excellent. Gaming was made easy with accurate and smooth tracking. There was no acceleration either. Improved from my daily mouse, the Fnatic Gear Flick G1, was the relatively low lift off distance. With the Flick G1, I often found moving the mouse off the mouse pad would jitter the cursor, even if only slightly. This can be annoying for those who lift up their mouse frequently. Thankfully, this is not the case for the HyperX Pulsefire FPS, as its low lift off distance keeps this from happening.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look - Hardware
3. Subjective Performance Tests
4. Conclusion
