Software

The Burst II Air is fully compatible with Swarm II, which is Turtle Beach's latest peripheral software. Compared to the original ROCCAT Swarm, improvements are immediately noticeable. Both software and firmware updates are processed much faster, settings changes are applied and saved immediately, button remapping actually works, and several (typically broken or otherwise dysfunctional) settings have been done away with. Some idiosyncrasies remain, such as the lift-off distance setting being named "DCU," short for "Distance Control Unit." Most importantly, the UI no longer looks like it is from 2005, which is certainly welcome.

All settings are distributed across a single page. Button remapping is possible to mouse, keyboard, or media functions, and EasyShift allows one to designate a shift button that can be pressed to access a second set of bindings. CPI can be adjusted for up to five color-coded steps at a range of 50 to 26,000 CPI, and any non-native values are truncated to native ones. Polling rate may be set to 125, 250, 500, or 1000 Hz. Further, debounce time may be specified, though this will only affect button-up (release), not button-down (press). Further settings include angle snapping (on/off), lift-off distance (very low/low), and MotionSync (on/off), the latter of which synchronizes SPI reads with USB polls at the cost of up to an entire interval of additional motion delay. "Standby mode" defines the idle time required to pass until the mouse enters sleep mode.

All setting changes are applied immediately and saved to the on-board memory, so the software does not need to be running (or be installed) all the time. On my system, the software had a RAM footprint of 105 MB on average when running in the foreground, and 94 MB when minimized to the system tray. Upon exiting the application, all processes are terminated, as they should be.

Battery Life

Turtle Beach cites a battery life of up to 120 hours using Bluetooth and up to 40 hours at 1000 Hz using 2.4 GHz wireless. The software includes a percentage-based battery life indicator with single-digit accuracy, though a fuel gauge IC is not present, which is why the readings aren't consistent. To give an example, after three hours of usage, it showed 90% charge, yet after six hours of usage, it showed 85% charge. Hence, the calculation would amount to either 30 hours or 40 hours of expected battery life. Conceivably, the truth will be somewhere between these two values.

After not moving the mouse for 30 seconds, a rest mode will be entered. After a period of time set in Swarm II, the mouse will enter sleep mode, which also disables the main buttons. Thus, the mouse will only wake up after being moved.

Using the included USB Type-A to Type-C charging cable, I measured the charging speed during the constant current stage, which sits at 0.146 A when lifted and 0.128 A when not lifted. The battery has a capacity of 250 mAh (3.7 V) and utilizes a 3-pin JST connector.