Software

I can only repeat what I wrote in my Pulsefire Surge review: the NGenuity driver software for HyperX mice has the potential to be good, but needs some tweaking. It's a bit laggy at startup, but saves settings quickly. But that isn't the main problem.

Unfortunately, performance options are very limited in the software, which I think is alright for most casual people, but if you are a power user, you might want to fiddle with some sensor settings. Currently, the only performance option you can adjust is the resolution. There are a total of five available CPI levels, but you can reduce this number to one if you'd like. You can also assign different lighting colors to each step, which flash on for a few seconds when you change levels, and that's pretty much it; no polling rate, no LOD, no button-response options. Thankfully, the button customization options aren't limited as you can reprogram all buttons with many different functions. You can also create macros with the macro editor. Naturally, there are profile options you can access on the main screen. Each profile can be bound to programs, so the mouse automatically switches between these once the set program launches.

The NGenuity software consumes about 150 MB of memory in the background and takes up 1.15 GB of disk space on my configuration. This means it's extremely heavyweight, which is absurd given how few customization settings are available. The mouse has on-board memory that's capable of storing a single profile, so if you'd like, you can uninstall the software as the Pulsefire Core will remember all its settings.

Lighting

As for RGB lighting, the Pulsefire Core has a few good-looking options to choose from. The HyperX logo at the back of the mouse lights up according to your settings, and the lighting really does look good. Transitions are smooth, and the brightness is great. Four effects are available: solid lighting, breathing, color cycle, and a trigger effect that reacts to button presses. The fifth option is to turn it all off.

Here's a demonstration video of the lighting (I had to use very dark settings in order to capture the colors as it's so bright, it just burns out with normal settings):