Released only a year ago, the Pulsefire Haste Wireless was a solid mouse, but suffered from various performance issues which took it down several notches. The Pulsefire Haste 2 Wireless improves on its predecessor in many ways, but unfortunately, performances issues persist all the same.

Remarkably, the Pulsefire Haste 2 Wireless weighs the same as its predecessor, despite no longer having holes all over the shell. In addition, build quality is flawless on my copy: No rattle when shaking, no creaking or flexing when applying lateral force, and actuating the side buttons by pressing below them is impossible. On paper, the switches too have received an upgrade, as HyperX-branded switches are used for the main buttons now, though in actuality, these are the same TTC Gold already familiar from the original Pulsefire Haste Wireless, just rated higher at 100 million clicks. That is not a bad thing, however, as these switches provide a pleasantly firm and snappy button response, while striking a good balance in terms of stiffness. The button design likewise leaves little to be desired, as lateral movement is kept to a minimum, though pre-travel is a bit higher than I'd want it to be. For the side buttons, HyperX has opted for switches from Kailh, and both pre and post-travel are impressively low, although the back button can be pushed into the shell quite a bit if sufficient force is used, which is due to the side-button PCB being rather thin. A TTC white (or "silver") encoder is used for the scroll wheel, resulting in somewhat elevated noise levels, but tactility is good, with decent separation between the individual steps allowing for controlled scrolling. The feet are unchanged from the original Pulsefire Haste Wireless and still made out of pure PTFE, gliding as well as ever, and a set of replacement feet is still included in the box, which is always very welcome.

HyperX cites a battery life of 100 hours, but gives no indication whether this applies to 2.4 GHz wireless or Bluetooth, and with or without illumination. Since the software includes a battery charge indicator with single-digit accuracy that is largely accurate and reliable, I'm able to gauge expected battery life, however. When using the Pulsefire Haste 2 Wireless with illumination enabled and at 1000 Hz in 2.4 GHz wireless operation, the indicator went down by 1% for every hour of continuous use, so we can assume that HyperX's number is indeed accurate. Considering this impressive level of battery life, charging not being particularly fast is not a big deal in my book, especially since the charging cable is plenty flexible, allowing one to play while charging no problem.

Among the biggest issues of the Pulsefire Haste Wireless was its ridiculously high and highly inconsistent CPI deviation, which made it unnecessarily hard to get one's desired actual CPI step. On the Pulsefire Haste 2 Wireless, HyperX has been able to mostly solve this by switching to a different sensor called HyperX 26K, which essentially is PixArt's PAW3395. While the deviation is consistent now, it still continues to be larger than it should be, requiring users to lower nominal values quite a bit to arrive at the desired actual value. Another issue was related to NGENUITY, as leaving the software running would wreck polling stability on the original Pulsefire Haste Wireless. While this has been fixed for the Pulsefire Haste 2, it still continues to be an issue on the Wireless, albeit only in wireless (2.4 GHz) operation. Of course, the most straightforward solution would be to simply never leave NGENUITY running, but in that case, you'd have to save any settings changes to the mouse beforehand, which is surprisingly sluggish and will take a decent while, and some functions such as Gamelink will require NGENUITY running regardless. Furthermore, even without NGENUITY interfering, occasional off-period polls show up all the same, so fully stable polling is but a wish on the Pulsefire Haste 2 Wireless. Polling issues aside, I didn't have much trouble with NGENUITY, as resource usage is under control, and I didn't encounter any major bugs.

Motion delay is subpar on the Pulsefire Haste 2 Wireless. Even in wired mode, motion delay will already be in the range of 1.5-2 ms, which is more than what many mice are able to muster in wireless operation these days. In wireless (2.4 GHz) mode, motion delay is even greater at 1600 CPI, increasing to a whopping 7.5 ms, and no less than 15 ms at 26,000 CPI. Most curiously, smoothing is only enabled in wireless mode on the Pulsefire Haste 2 Wireless, but not in wired mode, which is why 26,000 CPI is significantly delayed in wireless mode, but not in wired mode. I can only imagine that this must be an oversight, since there is no technical reason to do this, not to mention that all consistency between wired and wireless is lost when using CPI steps at and above 9000, where smoothing is first applied. The poor showing in terms of motion delay is matched by an equally lackluster showing in regards to click latency, which sits at 7.3 ms in wireless operation. The fact that NVIDIA Reflex is supported hence is hardly any consolation, as it merely enables one to see just how far behind the competition the Pulsefire Haste 2 Wireless actually is.

The Pulsefire Haste 2 Wireless is priced at $89.99, which is $10 more than its predecessor and not unreasonable, though given the poor performance, I'd consider even $70 too much. Frankly, there are so many ambidextrous wireless mice with good performance to choose from these days that it is difficult to make a case for the Pulsefire Haste 2 Wireless. Accordingly, I'd only consider this one if discounted heavily, or if performance is no concern whatsoever. For what it's worth, HyperX is aware of and working on the issues, so with any luck, we might see improvements to performance in the future.