Build Quality

Overall build quality is solid. When shaking the mouse, a rattle comes from the side buttons. When applying lateral pressure, minor creaking but no flexing of the shell can be observed. Activating the side buttons by squeezing the sides is impossible. Lastly, accidental clicks when slamming down the mouse do not occur unless a debounce time on press of 2 ms or less is set.

Buttons

Main buttons on the Alpha Wireless are good. Pre-travel on the right button is higher than on the wired Alpha, but post-travel is still moderate on both. Unlike on the wired Alpha, the buttons feel stable and no longer move under one's fingers during use. Click feel itself is pleasing. Button stiffness is light. A pair of Omron D2FC-F-K (60 M) (China) switches is used.


Side buttons are subpar. The forward button in particular has massive pre-travel, whereas pre-travel is fairly low on the back button, and post-travel somewhat low. The back button sometimes also gives off a spring sound upon release. The pressure point is mostly even across the entirety of these. Button size and placement are good, as actuation is possible rather easily by rolling one's thumb across. A set of Kailh switches (cyan plunger, gray case) is used for these.

At the top of the mouse is a single button for cycling through the set CPI steps, which feels decent. A low-profile switch from Kailh (green plunger) is used for this one.

Scroll Wheel

The scroll wheel is decent. While my first sample emitted a clicking sound when scrolling up, this was no longer the case on a second sample. On both samples, however, scrolling down is noisy, and tactility is merely average. The encoder comes from Kailh (blue) and has a height of 14 mm. The middle (scroll wheel) click requires high (first sample) to low (second sample) force for actuation. A seemingly unbranded tactile switch is used for this one.

Surface

The Alpha Wireless has a smooth matte surface on the top and a dotted pattern on the sides. Grip is fine on either, but the pattern does attract grime and dirt quite easily, and cleaning it may be difficult. The top surface is easy to clean, and there are no signs of wear left after doing so. All in all, good materials.

Button Sound Test

Disassembly

Disassembling the Alpha Wireless is mostly easy. First, all skates and the screws beneath them need to removed. Second, three clips holding top and bottom shell tightly shut need to be dislodged as well. Wedging a credit card in between typically works best for doing that. When separating top and bottom shell, some caution is advised to avoid ripping any cables.

The internal design is needlessly inefficient. While the PCBs are just moderately thick, all PCBs are very large for no apparent reason. The top and side buttons sit on their own PCB screwed into the top shell and connected to the main PCB through a ribbon cable. An auxiliary PCB next to the scroll wheel provides wheel illumination and too is connected with a ribbon cable. Four screws in total are used to affix the main PCB to the bottom shell. Located on the underside of the main PCB, the MCU is a Nordic nRF52833, whose datasheet can be found here. Production date for the main and side-button PCB is the 52nd week of 2021.


Looking at the underside in particular, the PCB does look quite rough.