Released back in 2021, the Pulsefire Haste was a great mouse, with only two notable issues: ridiculously large CPI deviation and NGENUITY ruining USB polling while running. With the Pulsefire Haste 2, HyperX has successfully addressed both of these concerns. CPI deviation is much lower now—and, most importantly, consistent. I'm also happy to report that NGENUITY no longer has any effect on USB polling, and thus can be left running at all times.

Beyond these two important fixes, the Pulsefire Haste 2 improves on its predecessor on multiple levels. Of course, the main novelty is 8000 Hz polling. Being a USB high-speed mouse, the Pulsefire Haste 2 is natively capable of up to 8000 Hz polling, and its HyperX 26K sensor, which essentially is a rebranded PixArt PAW3395, provides a sufficiently high framerate to allow for proper 8000 Hz polling. In my testing, 2000, 4000, and 8000 Hz indeed work as expected, provided the latest firmware is used. Said firmware completely disables MotionSync, however, although motion delay benefits from that, as the Pulsefire Haste 2 is ahead of the G403 (control subject) by roughly 1 ms regardless of polling rate. In addition, CPI deviation is decently low, general tracking great despite MotionSync being disabled, and polling stable at 1000 Hz and below, too. Furthermore, there is no smoothing across the entire CPI range, allowing one to use any CPI step to possibly better saturate polling without a motion delay penalty.

While sensor performance is in a great spot, the same cannot be said about click latency. Regardless of the set polling rate, click latency sits at 3.4 ms, which is far from bad, but easily surpassed by many 1000 Hz wireless mice these days. Much of the appeal of an 8000 Hz mouse lies in the possibility to achieve stunningly low click latency, as previously seen on the Razer Viper 8K/Deathadder V3, Zaunkoenig M2K, or Atompalm Hydrogen, which all muster a click latency of 0.1 ms. While 3.4 ms would be acceptable on a 1000 Hz mouse, standards are higher for an 8000 Hz mouse, and the Pulsefire Haste 2 falls short of them. The lackluster click latency is doubly curious when considering the support for NVIDIA Reflex, which allows one to see first hand that click latency is little more than decent on a compatible monitor.

Unlike the Pulsefire Haste, the Pulsefire Haste 2 no longer has externally visible holes, yet manages to be even lighter at 53 g. More importantly, the build quality is just as good as on the original: There is no rattle when shaking the mouse, no creaking or flexing of the shell when applying pressure, and actuating the side buttons by pressing below them is impossible regardless of how much force is used. For the main buttons, HyperX has opted for their own HyperX switches, which actually are TTC Gold rated for a higher life cycle. Accordingly, these provide a similarly firm and snappy button response as the TTC Gold switches found on the original Pulsefire Haste. Despite a split-button design being used, lateral button movement is kept to a minimum, and pre-travel is decently low, too. The side buttons are outfitted with switches from Kailh and impress with very low pre and post-travel, along with even actuation, though the back button can be pushed in a bit, albeit only when using excessive force. A TTC Silver encoder sees use for the scroll wheel, which provides good tactility and clearly separated steps, but noise levels when scrolling are fairly high. The feet are very similar to the ones used on the Pulsefire Haste and glide just as well. Lastly, the cable too is essentially the same and just as flexible, which is notable. To ensure signal integrity at 8000 Hz, stronger than average shielding is required, yet the cable of the Pulsefire Haste 2 is flexible to where one has to assume that shielding isn't particularly strong. Despite that, as mentioned, I haven't been able to observe any polling instability, which is great.

As with other HyperX products, NGENUITY is the software of choice for the Pulsefire Haste 2. Functionally, I have little to complain about, as even application-specific profiles are available, allowing one to set things up such that when game X is launched, 1000 Hz is applied, yet when launching game Y, 4000 Hz is applied, and so on, which is very handy. RAM usage is well under control too, but CPU usage a bit higher than I'd like it to. Fortunately, NGENUITY doesn't spawn any background processes that run no matter what, and, as previously mentioned, it no longer has any negative impact on mouse performance, either. In short, NGENUITY is among the better peripheral software I've used lately.

Compared to the Pulsefire Haste, HyperX has upped the price by $10 to $59.99. Given the improvements across the board, this isn't unreasonable, especially when considering that sets of grip tape and replacement feet once again are included in the box, along with the fact that other recent 8000 Hz mice such as the Razer DeathAdder V3 or MSI Clutch GM51 Lightweight go for an additional $10 more. Moreover, the Pulsefire Haste 2 doesn't enjoy a lot of competition, as there are only two other ambidextrous 8000 Hz wired mice worth mentioning: The $79.99 Razer Viper 8K, which has better performance, but weighs substantially more and has a very stiff cable, and the $49.99 EVGA X12, which has worse performance, weighs more, and suffers from issues related to build quality and ergonomics. As such, the Pulsefire Haste 2 earns our Recommended award.