Turtle Beach Burst II Pro gaming mouse review

The Turtle Beach Burst II Pro’s raison d’être is to bung a Valorant esportist’s Christmas list of premium features into an ultra-lightweight gaming mouse; a class of peripheral that’s more accustomed to jettisoning luxuries than hoarding them. Thus we have a desk rat that weighs 57g, less than half of the apparently immortal Logitech G502 Hero, while packing pleasantly clicky optical switches and an 8K polling sensor – meaning it sends its latest positional info to the PC eight thousand times a second. That’s Windows 11 levels of notification spam.

While the Burst II Pro’s weight loss measures deny it the solidity of a conventional mouse, it’s very comfortable to swish around indeed, and the springiness of those button switches helps it keep a higher-end feel. No performance problems to report, either: its cursor control is precise enough for sweaty FPSing, and the wireless connection is as reliable as a Swiss egg timer.

I wouldn’t buy one, though. Which isn’t exactly the Burst II Pro’s fault – it’s more that of the Burst II Air (£88 / $100), which has a similar overall design, the exact same optical switches, a matching 40-hour battery life, and a further 10g shaved off the weight, all for a much lower price. The Air does lack the Pro’s 8K polling rate, maxing out at 1K instead, but then I’ve tried both these rates on the Burst II Pro (as well as past 8K mice) and frankly, the responsiveness difference is barely there. You wouldn’t be glum with this mouse, by any means, but the smarter money is spent on the Burst II Air.

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