While not exactly huge, the ASUS ROG Harpe Ace Aim Lab Edition certainly was a larger mouse, which is why it comes as no surprise that a Mini variant eventually followed suit. Contrary to what one may expect, the Harpe Ace Mini isn't just uniformly scaled-down from its bigger brother. Rather, ASUS was wise enough to acknowledge that a shape doesn't necessarily translate well to any size, and accordingly adapted a more selective approach. While the width has largely been retained, the Harpe Ace Mini is much shorter than the regular Harpe Ace, and the hump has been reduced in volume to account for the reduction in overall size. The result is one of the better shapes to come from ASUS in recent years, though it doesn't necessarily lend itself to smaller hands than the Harpe Ace, but rather different grip styles. In terms of weight, at 48 g the Harpe Ace Mini lands 6 g below the regular Harpe Ace, which is roughly in line with the difference in size. Build quality is just as solid as on the Harpe Ace Aim Lab Edition: there is no rattle when shaking the mouse, no creaking or flexing of the shell when applying lateral pressure, and actuating the side buttons by pressing below cannot be done irrespective of how much force is used. The only flaw I could find pertains to the base, which doesn't appear to be fully even on my sample, leading to minor scratching depending on surface location.

While the Harpe Ace Aim Lab Edition still shipped with mechanical switches for the main buttons, the Harpe Ace Mini comes with the latest internals also found inside the Harpe Ace Extreme or Keris II Ace. For the main buttons, ROG Optical switches are used, which turn out a bit lighter than on the aforementioned mice. Actuation is quite snappy, though the moderate to high pre-travel dilutes button response somewhat, and the right main button on my sample ends up being mushier than the left one. The very low degree of lateral movement deserves positive mention, however, as the button pieces barely move even when trying to provoke it. The side buttons are outfitted with surface-mounted switches from Kailh, which too are familiar from the Harpe Extreme, and which score with very low pre and post-travel, along with even actuation. Due to their size, feedback is slightly lacking, though less so compared to many other 2-pin switches. The scroll wheel encoder comes from TTC (blue, yellow core), and both noise levels and tactility are on a good level, as the steps are quite nicely separated from each other, and the noise still within an acceptable range. The feet are the usual pure PTFE feet fare, albeit with a differently colored backing on the white Harpe Ace Mini, and they glide well. A set of larger of replacement feet is included in the box, which is always welcome.

Unlike the Harpe Ace Extreme or Keris II Ace, the Harpe Ace Mini doesn't ship with the ROG Polling Rate Booster by default. As such, it is limited to USB full-speed, and therefore a polling rate of 1000 Hz. Remarkably enough, this isn't much of a detriment to performance, however, as the Harpe Ace Mini manages to be neck and neck with the aforementioned mice. As (almost) always with ASUS mice, CPI deviation is nonexistent, general tracking flawless, as MotionSync is permanently enabled, and all polling rates are perfectly stable. Furthermore, motion delay sits at no more than 0.5 ms relative to the Logitech G403 (control subject), which is almost on par with VAXEE's 1000 Hz wireless mice running competitive mode, which are regarded as the best in this discipline. In fact, the Harpe Ace Mini barely shows any difference between wired and wireless, and this extends to click latency as well. While wired operations shows an average of 0.5 ms, wireless operation clocks in at just 0.6 ms, which is less than what many competitors muster at 2000 or even 4000 Hz, and just barely slower than ASUS's own numbers at these polling rates when using the ROG Polling Rate Booster. Of course, it still is USB full-speed, which is why standard deviation and therefore consistency will be worse compared to USB high-speed mice, but this is still a highly impressive showing, and marks the lowest click latency delivered by any USB full-speed wireless mouse thus far. In short, even though the Harpe Ace Mini "only" does 1000 Hz, it still is among the most responsive wireless mice currently available.

Whereas the Harpe Ace Extreme only comes with a 200 mAh battery, the Harpe Ace Mini has a 300 mAh battery installed, of which it makes great use. Without illumination, ASUS cites up to 139 hours of battery life, and with illumination, up to 79 hours are cited. The software includes a percentage-based battery charge indicator with single-digit precision, and since the Harpe Ace Mini has a fuel gauge IC, the readings are indeed accurate and reliable. As such, I'm able to gauge battery life rather well, and since the indicator went down by 5% for every four hours of continuous use with illumination enabled and at default brightness (50%), the roughly 80 hours indicated by ASUS indeed seem to be correct. Since Bluetooth support is also on board, even more battery life can be squeezed out of the Harpe Ace Mini if needed. Unfortunately, the charging cable is a step back compared to earlier ROG mice. Visually, the new cable is almost indistinguishable from the old one, but flexibility is clearly worse, albeit still decent enough to allow playing while charging without feeling overly impaired. It appears that ASUS is quite aware of new regulations for USB cables, which is why this new cable is following suit with the likewise stiffer charging cables seen on the Viper V3 Pro and Pro X Superlight 2.

As with other recent ASUS mice, the Harpe Ace Mini gives one the choice between Armoury Crate and Armoury Crate Gear, the latter of which is a stripped-down version of the former, containing only the peripheral-related part of the behemoth of a software that is Armoury Crate. Compared to previous versions, Gear no longer installs any services, which is good, but still launches multiple Chromium instances and other parts of the software on startup, which is bad. In addition, the RAM footprint has increased, and at upwards of 200 MB, the RAM allocation at least isn't much slimmer compared to Armoury Crate proper. Ideally, when exiting Armoury Crate Gear, all related processes should be terminated as well, but as of now, that isn't the case, which is why Armoury Crate Gear continues to be a nuisance.

Overall, there is not much to criticize about the Harpe Ace Mini, except for one thing: the price. At $129.99, the Harpe Ace Mini costs less than the Keris II Ace by as much as what the ROG Polling Rate Booster goes for, so the pricing is consistent at least, but $129.99 for a USB full-speed wireless mouse is a tough sell in 2025, even for one as expertly executed as the Harpe Ace Mini. At the same time, for those who simply do not care about high polling rates, the restriction to 1000 Hz isn't necessarily a downside, and in terms of performance, the Harpe Ace Mini is trading punches with many 4000 or 8000 Hz mice. As such, for those who've always wanted a shorter Harpe Ace, the Harpe Ace Mini is worthy of our Recommended award regardless, along with the Expensive badge.