- Is it okay for a YouTuber to make a product
in a category that they review?
I say yes, but only if it's really, really good.
RandomFrankP then is taking some big risks today.
If his mouse isn't great, it means one of two things.
Either he sold out and agreed to slap his brand
on a product he doesn't truly believe in,
or he never figured out it sucks
and he loses all his credibility as a mouse reviewer.
Meet the Pulsar X2 RandomFrankP Edition.
Due to the obvious conflict of interest,
Frank can't be here to review it himself,
so instead he gets the sphincter tightening experience
of watching us compare it to the biggest names in the game.
The good news is that it is 72 times more precise
than one of these name brand competitors.
But the bad news is that based on his videos
we are not sure that he knew that.
So did he get lucky here?
And if so, how lucky?
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We don't normally spend much time
on the unboxing experience,
but for a YouTuber product,
we consider it absolutely critical to nail it.
And although it's not exceptionally fancy,
removing this top cover is pretty satisfying,
mostly because of the awesome RandomFrankP design
on the mouse.
This looks sweet, and it better
because the paint accounts for over 6% of the weight
of this mouse.
Don't stress though.
It sounds like a lot, but with a total weight
of just 56 grams,
it is still one of the lightest mice on the market.
He cheated a little.
This is the mini version,
but there's a larger one that comes in at just 59 grams
for those of you who prefer a palm grip.
Also inside here we find a wireless adapter.
Are you kidding me, Frankie?
Nowhere to store it.
Boo.
There's a braided USB type C to A cable.
Very nice, lightweight.
And a trading card.
Ooh, did we get a holographic one?
Do you know? - [Crew Member] I don't know.
- You don't know? (gasps)
Does he have holographic ones?
- [Crew Member] Signed holographic.
- Signed holographic one.
Frankie, seriously, it's me.
Well, we know how that's gonna impact the review.
Kidding, kidding, kidding, kidding.
Along with the upgraded paint job,
Mr. FrankP has also selected different switches
for his version of the X2.
He went with Huano Blue Shell Pink Dot switches
and a TTC Gold Encoder for the scroll wheel.
Which... (mouse clicking)
that's delightfully satisfying, isn't it?
At least, I hope you're satisfied
because the ride is over now.
This is where the RandomFrankP-ness of this mouse ends.
But we've gotten ahead of ourselves a little bit here.
Who the heck is Pulsar?
Founded in 2020, Pulsar is a Korean company
with impact-able as the keyword for the brand
and "affordable innovation" as their motto.
And that's about the entirety of the useful information
on their about page.
What I was also able to track down though
was that they've been reviewed extraordinarily well
by multiple publications.
But can they stand up to our lab?
For comparison, we chose three wireless gaming mice
in the same price band,
and we're immediately impressed
by how much lighter the Pulsar was.
The Model O2 wireless comes in second
at a relatively bloated 68 grams.
And this lightness of the X2 makes it feel
nearly effortless to use.
Outside of products that cost two to three times as much,
this is the first flyweight class mouse that I felt
that doesn't make some pretty brutal compromises.
It also feels like Pulsar has unnaturally low friction
on the mouse pad,
but that might just be the inertia kind of screwing with me.
So we're gonna put it to the test.
X2 Mini RandomFrankP,
O2 Wireless, G Pro.
Man, I use the super light day to day,
this one, it's quite a bit heavier.
And then Viper Ultimate. Okay.
Ready?
Ooh, Viper Ultimate with the win.
Ooh, RandomFrankP and Glorious.
And there goes the G Pro.
It's worth noting that regardless of these results,
all of these mice feel great gliding across a pad.
Sure, the Logitech might have a tiny bit more friction
than the rest, but it is still an exceptional gaming tool.
All four use PTFE feet,
and if you aren't satisfied, there are companies,
including Pulsar actually, that sell glass feet,
so your mouse, regardless of which model it is,
will slide better than any of these.
For the sensor, Pulsar went with the Pixart PAW 3395,
Pixart's current flagship
that features 26,000 CPI sensitivity
50G acceleration and motion sync.
Motion sync is a new feature that synchronizes
when the mouse reads the sensor
with the polling rate of the mouse,
in theory making movement feel more consistent.
In practice though, basically every high-end gaming mouse
in the last couple of years has come
with a functionally flawless sensor.
So unless the makers were stupid enough
to try to change the behavior of the sensor
and then botch it, the differences should be negligible.
Speaking of that, the Glorious Model O2.
Glorious calls the sensor in this mouse the BAMF 2.0,
but we couldn't help noticing
that it has identical specs to the PAW 3395,
and also very likely is the PAW 3395
just with some custom tweaks from Glorious
to help them get to their claim
to 110 hours of battery life.
Which would be really impressive
if it didn't come at a terrible cost.
To evaluate sensor performance, our labs team mounted
each of our mice to a robot that's programmed
to move exactly, exactly two inches
while the attached PC registers each count
or dot from the mouse.
In theory, if we move a mouse at 800 DPI two inches,
it should return 1,600 counts.
This test is useful for measuring both
the accuracy and the precision of each mouse,
with the precision being the one that's more important
since accuracy only really matters
if you're switching between mice.
Along with his mouse, Frank also sent along
a glass mousepad, so we ran all of our results
on both the glass Superglide and the LTT mousepad.
Lttstore.com.
The Logitech, Razer, and Frank's Pulsar all performed
at what I would consider to be S-tier,
returning both precision and accuracy that are good enough
we can confidently say, if you're missing your flick shots,
it ain't your gear, bro.
Now, of the three,
the Pulsar did have the highest click latency.
But at 5.9 milliseconds,
we still consider that good enough for A grade.
What wasn't good enough was the Glorious Model O2.
A 16.2-millisecond click latency simply isn't acceptable
on a gaming mouse at this price,
or even a gaming mouse at half this price.
More concerningly, the accuracy and the precision
were both by far the worst in our field.
So bad that we redid all of the results
on three separate mousepads to verify that, yes,
the Glorious Model O2 sucks.
There is a single bright spot for it though.
Strangely, the precision is quite good
on the glass Superglide through some quirk of the sensor.
But the accuracy was still terrible,
and most people don't enjoy a glass mouse pad.
Now, we wanna make it clear that all of our testing
on the Model O2 Wireless was done
on the latest firmware and software.
There was a previous version that had connectivity issues.
That's all been solved, but these test results go to show
that they've taken this mouse from broken to bad.
To confirm that we didn't have some
Glorious-specific problem with our testing,
we even grabbed the original Model O,
a mouse that scored very well on ratings and TechPowerUp,
but we got a new problem with that one.
We couldn't get the original Model O to be recognized
in software on three separate computers.
- Yeah, it sucks. (laughs)
It sucks.
- And as it turns out,
we're not the only ones with the problem.
Since Glorious doesn't have older versions of their software
on their site, we had to risk computer herpes
by using a sketchy link online
in order to get it working, which it fortunately did.
But unfortunately for Glorious,
the original Model O annihilated the O2.
Which is very awkward.
So on the whole, we're just gonna hard not recommend
either the Model O or the O2
until Glorious makes some serious changes.
But why are we talking about Glorious right now?
Ah, because the O2 Wireless happens to be the first mouse
that RandomFrankP reviewed since releasing his own mouse,
and while he and I came to the same conclusions...
- Do I recommend this mouse?
No.
- Don't buy it.
We don't have the same reasons for it.
And this is weird to me because the safest path
he could have taken with this thing,
especially given the proximity to his own product launch,
would've been to criticize it for its piss-poor performance
and then say, "Don't buy it."
But he didn't seem to notice the piss-poor performance.
- [RandomFrankP] And for its overall performance,
I personally had no issues.
I know there have been some reports out there, I guess,
of like the current software
for people who got like reviewed units early and stuff
that was causing some like lag or stutter,
but my unit felt just fine.
- Which kind of makes us wonder is the excellent performance
of his co-branded mouse by design
or is it just a happy accident?
I mean, it's possible he just saw a lot of things
he really liked from Pulsar
and trusted them to do a good job,
which frankly, pun intended,
seems to have worked out for him.
And what's definitely not accidental
is the subjective experience of using the X2 Mini.
Everyone who has touched it here,
which includes Alex,
our peripheral specialist for the lab, and me,
loves the feel of this thing.
I mean, we can't say for sure that your experience
will mirror ours,
but what we can say is that all three of us
come from different mice as our daily drivers.
And, thanks, Alex, have very different hand sizes.
This is a darn nice ergonomic design.
The switches feel great.
The rated 70 hours of battery life had Alex using it
all week without needing to charge it once.
And all of this somehow happens without an influencer tax
on the very competitive $95 price.
So what can I say?
Outstanding job, Mr. FrankP.
But, Linus, you might say,
are you just shilling for your YouTuber bro?
What about that extra latency
and the worst performance in your movement benchmarks?
My response to that is, A, I don't know him basically at all
for one thing, no offense.
And B, I just wanna reiterate
that three of our four mice here, were S-tier.
And the deciding factor should be how it feels
in your hand or how it looks on your desk
as opposed to the 0.03% precision difference.
Now, sadly, I can't yet pass these through the screen to you
for you to experience for yourself.
We don't have the technology yet.
But what we do have is a link
to where to buy them down below
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- If you guys enjoyed this video,
why don't you check out the video on the 8,000 Hertz mouse?
Spoiler alert: there's a point of diminishing returns.