HyperX Pulsefire FPS Review

Let’s start with the good. The HyperX Pulsefire FPS mouse is lightweight yet is not flimsy feeling. The combination of large rubber grips with a classic ergonomic design simply feels great in your hand. Mix in massive, and truly smooth, mouse feet and this mouse will feel more like an extension of your hand than as an external input device. It may use an older sensor but it is not antiquated in its abilities. 3200 DPI is way, way more than what most will ever need. In fact, 1600 is probably more than what people will ever need. As it uses Omron switches you will also get a nice tactile (and audible) feedback from each button actuation and you can count on them to work not matter how hard to rage click.

This mouse is also ‘plug and play’ with zero software installation required. So no matter how many systems you plug it into you can expect to get the exact same user-experience. This however is also the HyperX Pulsefire FPS’ weakest link. There is no possible way to reconfigure what each mouse button does without resorting to 3rd party software. This in and of itself is a bit disappointing but when the fact that you only will get four DPI scaling settings is added in we feel that the HyperX design team did make a large mistake. 400/800/1.6K/3.2K is simply not precise enough. HyperX would have been much better off including a small programmable chip on the mouse that could communicate with a lightweight application for customization. That would have provided the best of both worlds: plug and play (as the settings would be stored on the mouse) and yet customization for those who need it. Yes they offer it on their more expensive ‘Pro’ version but in this day and age all gaming orientated mouse should come with this feature – regardless of where it is in the lineup.

In between these two extremes is the lack of color optimization. We personally ambivalent over LED enabled mice, but some people will consider ‘you can have it in any color you want as long as it is RED’ to be a major negative. At the very least the ability to turn off the LEDs would have been a nice little bonus.

Overall this mouse is not perfect but for such a novice manufacture their efforts are bloody impressive. We are sure HyperX will tweak things for future models… as they fix most of our complaints with their ‘Pro’ model. In the meantime, with an asking price of only $50 this is still one heck of a bargain. As long as you understand it is not a Razor DeathAdder clone, and can live with its built-in limitations it certainly deserves a long hard look… as its price is almost too good to pass up. This is especially true when you add in a HyperX Alloy FPS Pro keyboard and their Fury S mousepad as this does make a rather good ecosystem with each component helping to make the sum greater than its parts.

Final Score (HyperX Pulsefire FPS): 83 out of 100
Final Score (HyperX ecosystem): 90 out of 100