With all the honeycombed, ultra-lightweight mice coming out lately, a certain part of the target demographic for gaming mice seems to have been left behind—namely, those who want a solid and reliable mouse that oozes a feeling of quality. The right-handed ergonomic XPG PRIMER aims to fill that spot. Unfortunately, it struggles along the way.

I reckon most people's notion of "good quality control" is immediately challenged when upon opening the box, one is confronted with a defunct button. This was the case with the XPG PRIMER, where the back side button was barely functional out of the box. Unless pressed right at the front, it wouldn't actuate. Although I was later able to fix the issue, it required opening the mouse, which isn't everyone's cup of tea and frankly unacceptable from a customer point of view. I can excuse minor build quality issues by pointing to sample variation, but a blunder like this makes me question the QC process altogether. For the record, the first sample I received had its own share of build quality issues as well, so it is definitely not something I can write off as a one-off occurrence. And there's more in terms of issues. Click latency is high, the cable can only be described as supremely stiff, and there's a permanent high-pitched noise ("coil whine"), which I found extremely annoying since I'm sensitive to it. A lot of people probably won't hear it, but it can be highly irritating for those who do.

Thankfully, it's not all bad. PixArt's PMW3360 sensor performed near-perfect in my testing, although software customizability is sorely missed at this point in time. Other than the side button mentioned above, buttons are of mostly very high quality, with the two top buttons being the notable exception. I have no complaints about the scroll wheel or the mouse feet, and the grippy coating along with the PBT top shell lend the PRIMER a sensation of quality and heftiness many other mice lack these days. A decent selection of RGB lighting effects rounds things off nicely as well.

Although I did enjoy using the mouse in games, it's impossible to look past the issues noted above, which is why the XPG PRIMER doesn't get our Recommended award from me, at least based on my specific samples.