Although there are plenty of wireless options with an integrated battery in the $70 and above price bracket, most of the wireless mice for $70 and under are driven by AA oder AAA-batteries. One of the few options is last year's Dream Machines DM6 Holey Duo for $50, but it suffered from several issues. At $36.99, the Redragon M808 Storm Pro goes for even less, yet too has some drawbacks.

Much like the DM6 Holey Duo, the Storm Pro is equipped with PixArt's PAW3335 sensor, a capable yet difficult sensor to implement. Thankfully, the implementation on the Storm Pro is quite good. General tracking is just fine both in wired and wireless mode, and motion delay appreciably low even in wireless mode, with an isolated wireless delay of around 1–1.5 ms—in short, responsiveness is good. And whereas many 3335 implementations suffer from increased motion delay at the onset of motion, this isn't present on the Storm Pro, which is great. CPI deviation, on the other hand, is a bit spotty: Some steps are on point, but others are way off. The biggest performance issue is related to polling stability: While fine in wired mode, every single polling rate is unstable in wireless mode. Performance is further hampered by the click latency, which is pretty high at around 13 ms. Still, a mostly well-implemented 3335 is a novelty at this price point and elevates the M808 Storm Pro above many budget wireless options, which typically come with completely outdated sensors, such as the 3325 that cannot compete at all.

In fact, I have little complaint about wireless usability in general. The pleasantly lightweight software includes a basic battery level indicator, the mouse lights up in a color indicating the current charge status when plugged in, and the USB Type-C connector makes charging easy in general. With RGB fully enabled and a polling rate of 1000 Hz, a battery life of roughly 20 hours can be expected, which is decent but hardly outstanding. Without RGB, I'd expect the battery to last around 50 hours. In any case, it is recommended to regularly charge the M808 Storm Pro as the charging cable is of the unusably stiff variety and thus not suitable for gaming.

To those familiar with Redragon mice, the shape of the M808 Storm Pro should be very familiar, as both the Cobra M711 FPS and M808 Storm have used this shell. While the M808 had holes on the bottom and top, the M808 Storm Pro only has them on the top. Accordingly, the usefulness of the holes as a weight reduction measure on the Storm Pro is more than dubious. At 96 g, the Storm Pro isn't particularly lightweight, and a solid top instead of the perforated one would have added 3–4 g at most. Aside from that, the build is mostly solid. Actuating the side button by applying lateral pressure merely requires moderate force, but this was never an issue during regular use or play. In addition to that, I've noticed some creaking and rattle, though nothing too major. The buttons themselves are decent across the board: The main buttons utilize Huano switches, which provide a distinct and firm click, and although a bit flimsy, the side buttons have fairly low travel. The scroll wheel is pleasantly low on noise, but severely lacks tactility; i.e., the individual steps are barely separated. Lastly, the mouse feet are perfectly fine.

The biggest issue with the Storm Pro is the sensor position. While it's not uncommon to see mice with a more forward or backward-positioned sensor, an offset to the left or right is highly undesirable and thus encountered very rarely. On the Storm Pro, the sensor is shifted significantly to the right when looking at it at the bottom. This is a baffling design flaw for two reasons. First, from a mechanical design standpoint, there is absolutely no reason for this—with some adjustments to the layout of the PCB, the sensor could have been placed dead center no problem. Second, the sensor position results in a very weird cursor feel in games, which may put off many people right away. Rapid and small adjustments to the left and right in particular will feel incredibly alien at first. Though I did mostly get used to it over time, the off-centered sensor introduces a handicap that exists for no good reason.

Still, as annoying as these issues are, one needs to put things into perspective. The Redragon M808 Storm Pro may not be a top-tier mouse, but value for money is nothing short of amazing. Most wireless mice in this price range are either outfitted with garbage sensors or driven by AA or AAA-batteries, whereas the M808 Storm Pro comes with a sensor also found on $100 mice, such as the SteelSeries Aerox 3 Wireless. The only real competition with a comparable feature set within the same price range comes from Dream Machines with the DM6 Holey Duo, which too is a large right-handed ergonomic mouse equipped with PixArt's PAW3335 sensor. Although the Storm Pro does slightly worse by comparison, it still performs well enough to be worth a look for those on a budget. As such, the Storm Pro gets our Budget award from me.