With the separately available HyperPolling Wireless Dongle, Razer is the first manufacturer to offer a wireless mouse with a native USB polling rate beyond the 1,000 hertz that have been common for years. For the time being, the 4,000 Hertz technology is reserved for the Viper V2 Pro (test), but the packaging provides information about other input devices G Wolves surprisingly before
At the beginning of 2021, Razer presented the Viper 8KHz (test), the first gaming mouse with a USB query rate of 8,000 Hertz, since then several other manufacturers have followed. So far, however, not a single mouse has natively controlled more than 1,000 Hertz wirelessly – not even the Viper V2 Pro, which was only released on the market at the end of May. In contrast to the Viper 8KHz, the E-Sports wireless mouse does not have a high-speed USB controller, but a full-speed MCU designed for 1,000 Hertz. And anyway, at the start of the wired 8,000 Hertz mouse, Razer made it clear that such high polling rates are not possible wirelessly. A year and a half later, things seem to be different: First, G Wolves promised a wireless sensor system with 4,000 Hertz with the Hati S Plus, but could not name a release date. Razer is now surprisingly ahead of the niche manufacturer with the HyperPolling Wireless Dongle.
More than 1,000 hertz is not new – but in this form it is
In the two linked chapters of the Viper 8KHz test, readers will find answers to the questions of how such high USB query rates work in theory with gaming mice and whether that makes sense at all. That's not the point again at this point, but about wireless query rates above 1,000 Hertz. But that has also happened before – albeit not properly implemented.
Illustrating the potential benefits of higher USB polling rates (Image: Razer)In the past, some manufacturers have already experimented with wireless polling rates of 2,000 or 3,000 Hertz – for example Corsair with the Dark Core (test) and Saber Wireless (test) or Mad Catz with the R.A.T. Pro X3 (review). But the conversions were more bad than good. Instead of transmitting data at a native frequency, the higher USB polling rates were achieved by combining multiple parallel data channels. However, since this was done without synchronization, the disadvantages of an inconsistent signal more than outweighed the potential benefits.
Razer provides a native translation
Razer, on the other hand, now offers native wireless USB polling rates of 2,000 or 4,000 Hertz with the $30 (for a limited time save $15 with the discount code “4000HZ” -) available in addition to the HyperPolling Wireless dongle available in the Viper V2 Pro. On Reddit, the manufacturer made it clear that the wireless adapter could not be delivered with the mouse, which according to the RRP was already expensive at 160 euros, because the technology was not ready and tested a few months ago and it was not at all foreseeable whether the implementation would succeed at all.
Now, however, Razer promises an average click latency of 0.511 ms at 4,000 Hertz with the combination, which consequently costs around 175 to 190 euros, whereas an average of 1.039 ms is achieved with 1,000 Hertz. The Viper 8KHz, however, comes to just 0.090 ms wired. Apart from the few available 8,000 Hertz mice, however, the wireless Viper V2 Pro would have a lower latency than all wired gaming mice offer. It should be noted, however, that this is already the case with most 1,000 Hertz mice due to the opto-mechanical buttons and the sensors thanks to Motion Sync. And it should also be noted that a lower click latency does not offer any noticeable added value, but the improvements in the sensors associated with the faster transmission do.
The editorial team asked Razer for an explanation of the technical details and the precise implementation of HyperPolling, but did not receive an answer over the weekend. Presumably the 2.4 GHz wireless adapter has two microcontrollers; one to manage the USB high-speed data stream and one for the 2.4 GHz wireless signal. An MCU that supports both at the same time would be a novelty. In line with this theory, the dongle that can be connected to the USB-C charging cable of the Viper V2 Pro is significantly larger than standard 1,000 Hertz wireless adapters “>A few limitations remain
However, the fast connection remains a double-edged sword – at 4,000 Hertz the battery life of the Viper V2 Pro drops from around 80 to just 24 hours of constant mouse movement; the demands on the CPU are also increasing. However, HyperPolling Wireless is not intended for long-term use in everyday PC life. Instead, Razer recommends using synapse to instruct the mouse to only switch to the higher data rate for selected games.
Apart from this, the manufacturer states that the Viper V2 Pro at wired charging via the PC only works at 1,000 Hertz as usual; the higher data rates are reserved for wireless connectivity – unless the mouse is charged via a separate USB power supply instead of the PC. In addition, the HyperPolling Wireless Dongle does not offer multi-device support, so unlike the adapter included with the Viper V2 Pro, a Razer keyboard cannot be connected in addition to the mouse.