Released in late 2020, the Pulsefire Haste turned out to be a very solid contender, especially for its price: low weight, incredibly flexible cable, and great performance. The only issues were the insanely high CPI deviation and polling stability crumbling whenever NGENUITY was running at the same time, which remain unfixed to this day. More than a year later, the Pulsefire Haste Wireless tells a very similar story: While the mechanical design is competent, the mouse once again is plagued by several issues on the firmware level, albeit to a greater degree.

As mentioned, when it comes to its physical aspects, there isn't much to fault the Pulsefire Haste Wireless for. At 60 g, the mouse is seriously light for its size, and the construction is quite solid nonetheless. The CPI button is rather flimsy, but I couldn't notice any creaking or flexing on my copy, and actuating the side buttons by applying lateral pressure is impossible. The buttons are equally solid: The main buttons yet again are utilizing TTC Gold switches to great effect, as actuation is crisp and snappy yet lighter than on the currently ubiquitous Kailh GM 8.0 switches. The side buttons manage to impress with their lack of pre and post-travel, and the scroll wheel provides good tactility, resulting in light yet controlled scrolling. I also have no complaints about the mouse feet, which are the same as on the wired Pulsefire Haste, and a replacement set is included once again, which is always handy.

The wireless experience is quite good on the Pulsefire Haste Wireless. HyperX cites up to 100 hours at a polling rate of 1000 Hz and without illumination. Thankfully, the Pulsefire Haste Wireless has a fuel gauge IC, which is why the battery life percentage reported in the software is actually accurate for once. After 10 hours of continuous use at a polling rate of 1000 Hz and with even illumination enabled, the indicator showed 90%, so HyperX's claim is quite believable. This is impressive, especially given the battery only has a capacity of 370 mAh. While the charging cable is fairly flexible, allowing continued use while charging without feeling overly restricted, charging is dreadfully slow at just 0.183 A. It's not too bad due to the small battery capacity, but considering that specifications allow for 0.5 A, this number certainly leaves room for improvement. While quite common in the $80 price range these days, a wireless extender being included deserves a positive mention, too. No doubt partially owing to the extender, wireless motion delay comes out at around 1 ms, which is highly respectable and on par with the best.

Unfortunately, this is where the good news end. First of all, CPI deviation. This issue already plagued the wired Pulsefire Haste and makes a most unwelcome return on the Wireless. At up to 30% deviation, getting an accurate CPI step on the Pulsefire Haste Wireless is close to impossible more often than not. Since the PAW3335 is restricted to CPI adjustment in increments of 100, some steps are entirely unachievable, and getting them close enough amounts to a guessing game. In fact, I failed to get an accurate 400, 800, or 1600 CPI step altogether; only 3200 CPI was accomplished after much fiddling. In addition to that, CPI adjustment in general appears to be bugged, as when trying to get the maximum 16,000 CPI step, actual CPI ended up at values such as 9000 or 11,000 CPI, and only 12,400 CPI gave me 16,000 CPI eventually. Most curiously, CPI deviation apparently was much lower on the launch firmware. Another trait of NGENUITY carried over from the wired Pulsefire Haste is that it destroys polling when running. Accordingly, it is absolutely vital to terminate NGENUITY when using the mouse, especially since CPU usage is considerable when NGENUITY is open. However, even with NGENUITY out of the picture, polling is far from stable on the Pulsefire Haste Wireless. While wired mode is stable enough, with only 1000 Hz showing the occasional outlier, there is not a single polling rate that is fully stable in wireless mode, even to where tracking is likewise affected. The poor impression on the technical level is rounded off by the click latency. At 7.9 ms in wired mode, click latency isn't terrible, but once we add the wireless delay of 1 ms on top, it soon approaches the lackluster numbers of the Prime series from SteelSeries. The main switches are running at a fairly low voltage, so the higher debounce time is likely meant to reduce the likelihood of inadvertent double-clicking, but there are much more elegant and most importantly latency-neutral ways to achieve that.

Overall, the Pulsefire Haste Wireless simply has too many flaws to be worth a recommendation. At $79.99, pricing is fair, and if HyperX finds a way to address the issues in firmware, I'd be happy to hand out our Recommended award as the physical mouse itself is just fine. But for now, I'd only consider this one if performance is not much of a concern.