While the Katar Pro Wireless was a poor offering even at its low price, the Katar Pro XT managed to be both good and affordable. How does the Katar Elite Wireless stack up, then?

Much like the Katar Pro XT, the Katar Elite Wireless is equipped with Corsair's Marksman sensor, which I believe to be based on PixArt's PAW3399. Performance is accordingly good: CPI deviation is appreciably low, polling stable across the board, but general tracking is quite messy. The latter is surprising, as the sensor is capable of hardware MotionSync, yet this feature remains unused, much like on the M65 RGB Ultra Wireless. Speaking of which, much like the latter the Katar Elite Wireless is said to have a 2000 Hz polling rate, but this yet again is simply faked by duplicating identical updates in a single packet. Hence, the 2000 Hz polling option is functionally equivalent to 1000 Hz, albeit with worse tracking. Other than that, performance is serviceable. Wireless motion delay is around 1.5–2 ms, which is mostly due to the lack of a dedicated wireless extender. Latency aside, the absence of a wireless extender is relevant in that plugging the wireless dongle directly into a USB 3.x port is known to potentially introduce issues with wireless interference. Given that even $60 mice come with wireless extenders these days, I definitely would've expected to see Corsair include one on the Katar Elite Wireless.

Click latency is a mixed bag on the Katar Elite Wireless. Much like previous Corsair mice, a setting called "Button Response Optimization" is present, which effectively controls the debouncing of the main buttons. Without debouncing, click latency is incredibly low at just 1.4 ms, but inadvertent double-clicking is likely to eventually follow, since the Katar Elite Wireless utilizes traditional mechanical switches instead of optical ones. Once that happens, enabling debouncing is the only option, but this has click latency increase to 9.2 ms in wireless (2.4 GHz) operation, which isn't really competitive. Furthermore, regardless of whether debouncing is enabled or not, the Katar Elite Wireless suffers from slam-clicking; that is, unintentional clicks occur upon resetting the mouse with some force. During gaming in particular, it is not uncommon to reposition the mouse, and the mouse clicking by itself in those situations is certainly an undesired behavior. Competitors such as Logitech, Razer, or ASUS solve this by introducing a higher debounce time upon mouse lift-off, and I'd be pleased if Corsair would follow suit on future releases.

The wireless experience is quite pleasing on the Katar Elite Wireless. Corsair cites a battery life of up to 60 hours using 2.4 GHz wireless without illumination, which seems believable given the battery capacity of 500 mAh. Bluetooth is on board as well, allowing one to squeeze out more hours when doing something that doesn't require low latency. Unfortunately, the battery charge indicator within the software isn't particularly accurate or useful, so gauging anything is impossible for me. Luckily, charging itself is exceptionally speedy at up to 0.522 A, which actually exceeds USB specifications. Given how fast the charging is, the charging cable not being the most flexible isn't much of a concern. For the record, the charging cable is significantly improved over that of the M65 RGB Ultra Wireless, which was unusably stiff. Despite the 500 mAh battery, the Katar Elite Wireless weighs just 68 g, which is respectable given the lack of externally visible holes. For comparison, the largely similar Fantech Aria XD7 weighs 61 g while featuring a smaller battery.

When it comes to the buttons, the Katar Elite Wireless is outfitted with Omron switches for the main buttons, which provide a snappy button response, some pre-travel notwithstanding, and post-travel is remarkably low. The same goes for the side buttons, which too have some pre but zero post-travel. That said, the forward button in particular is weirdly loud on my unit. An encoder from Kailh is used for the scroll wheel, which is low on noise, but lacking in the tactility department, resulting in scrolling that is a bit too smooth for my liking. The feet, on the other hand, are a clear upgrade over previous Corsair releases, being thicker and made of pure PTFE without any dye.

Much like other Corsair mice, the Katar Elite Wireless is compatible with Corsair iCUE, which continues to be a major resource hog. A sizable RAM footprint and non-negligible CPU usage make uninstalling iCUE a very desirable prospect. Thankfully, doing so is not much of a loss on the Katar Elite Wireless, as save for some lighting effects, everything important can be saved to the on-board memory, and given how useless the battery indicator is, doing without iCUE is perfectly possible.

Overall, I have a really hard time rating the Katar Elite Wireless. It sits in a curious spot where one could make an equally good argument for or against it. That said, I've ultimately decided against giving our Recommended award, but given that there aren't that many worthwhile wireless mice of this shape archetype around, fans of this type of shape may find the Katar Elite Wireless an interesting option nonetheless. The main competitor is the Fantech Aria XD7, which has similar performance, lower weight, similarly good buttons, a wireless extender included, and much better software, for $68.80. The Razer Orochi V2 too is battery-driven, lacks a wireless extender, weighs less or more depending on which battery type is used, has lower click latency, but otherwise similar performance, and too suffers from a resource-heavy software, for $69.99. Lastly, the Logitech G305 typically retails for $49.99, has a comparable shape, comparably low click latency, great performance and buttons, but weighs significantly more.