WLmouse Strider Mouse Review

This mouse has a gold-colored magnesium alloy body with an engraved filigree pattern and black accents. The bottom of the mouse is made of ABS plastic, and there are weight-saving cutouts on the top, sides, and underside.

We bought the Gold color variant of this mouse, but other colorways are available on the WLmouse product page.

There's no RGB lighting on the mouse itself, but there's an LED indicator inside the mouse that you can see by looking through the cutouts in the body. This indicator displays various information, such as battery life, pairing status, CPI, and polling rate settings.

That said, there's an RGB logo on the 8k receiver. You can control the brightness, effects, and color of this logo with the configuration software.

The WLmouse Strider isn't designed specifically for portability. While it isn't very big, it's somewhat bulky and lacks a compartment for storing its USB receiver. Additionally, its cutout body design leaves the interior more open to collecting dust and debris.

The WLmouse Strider has excellent build quality. Its body is made of magnesium alloy and has a smooth but slightly grippy finish. Despite having weight-saving cutouts, it feels extremely sturdy and doesn't flex or creak whatsoever, even if you apply significant pressure.

The underside is made of ABS plastic and also has weight-saving cutouts. The seams between the upper magnesium and plastic underside are smooth and flush without any gaps. The underside panel does flex with pressure to the point where you can actuate the middle click if you press into it hard enough, but this is typical and doesn't present any issues when using the mouse normally.

The WLmouse Strider has a symmetrical shape with a centered hump positioned toward the rear, virtually identical to the shape of the Endgame Gear XM2w 4k (as well as other models in Endgame Gear's XM1/XM2 series) and, to a lesser extent, similar to models like the LAMZU Atlantis and the Ninjutso Sora V2. It tapers slightly through the middle and flares out at the back to better fill the palm. This shape works particularly well for claw grip users across a wide range of hand sizes, though its overall size, especially the wider rear section, might feel a bit bulky for those with very small hands.

Additionally, some of the weight-saving cutouts, particularly those on the sides, may feel uncomfortable depending on your finger placement. That said, adhesive grip tape is included in the box, which can help mitigate this if needed.

You can connect to the WLmouse Strider using the nano receiver (1000Hz maximum polling rate) or the 8000Hz receiver included in the box.

WLmouse doesn't advertise a battery life figure but identifies the battery has a 300 mAh capacity.

Based on Reddit comments from owners of other recent WLmouse models, like the WLmouse Beast X and WLmouse Beast X Max, the battery life appears to be a relative weakness compared to more established flagship brands like Razer or Logitech. Both the Beast X and Beast X Max (which have the same battery size as the Strider) are reported to have 12–17 hours of use at a 4k polling rate, with daily recharging often required for regular 8k polling. At a 1000Hz polling rate, we'd expect roughly 30–40 hours of use.

If you have this mouse and would like to share your battery life experience, we'd love to hear from you in the comments.

The WLmouse Strider comes with a paracord-like cable. It's somewhat stiff and retains some minor kinking from its packaging. It also has a tendency to tangle against itself a bit, potentially increasing friction.

The mouse comes with four virgin-grade dot skates pre-installed, which glide exceptionally well on both hard and soft mousepads. Additional feet options are included in the box, including larger black additive PTFE feet (four medium-sized and two large-sized) as well as a sheet of 20 extra virgin-grade dot skates. These can serve as replacements or give you the flexibility to experiment with different skate layouts, depending on your preference.

• USB-C to USB-A cable
• 8k receiver
• 1k nano receiver
• Set of large-size black colored PTFE skates
• 20x PTFE dot skates
• Grip tape
• Customizable grip tape
• Alcohol pad
• User documentation

We bought the WLmouse Strider with Omron Optical switches, which are very lightweight and spammable, but you may find yourself making unintentional clicks if you're used to heavier switches. These switches show a somewhat unusual profile on the actuation graph above, likely owing to how thin the mouse buttons are and how little force they take to actuate. That said the switches don't feel unusual or unpleasant in any way. The actuation is very crisp and extremely lightweight regardless of where on the button you press. Contrary to what the graph might convey, you can't feel any irregularity during pre-travel before the actuation point.

You can also get the mouse with TTC Nihil Transparent Dot mechanical switches. Choosing between switch types comes down to preference. The TTC Nihil switches require more force to actuate, making them a better fit if you prefer a heavier click feel. They also offer a small power efficiency advantage, as they don't rely on an infrared beam for actuation. However, mechanical switches generally have a shorter lifespan than optical ones and, like all mechanical designs, may eventually develop double-click issues with prolonged use.

Using the software, you can reprogram all buttons on this mouse. The two side buttons use full-size Omron Blue Dot switches and have very crisp, medium-weight actuation. There's also an on/off switch on the underside.

We conducted this test at the maximum wireless polling rate of 8000Hz and the maximum wired polling rate of 1000Hz. Additional settings included debounce set to 0 ms, and High-Speed Mode turned off for polling rates above 1000Hz, as it isn't available at higher polling rates.

We conducted supplementary testing at 1000Hz (with the nano receiver), 1000Hz (with the 8k receiver), and 4000Hz.

This mouse's sensor doesn't exhibit any problematic variation or tracking accuracy issues.

The WLmouse Strider has excellent sensor latency performance. The sensor responds quickly to movement, and input closely matches the timing of on-screen cursor motion.

We performed this test at the maximum polling rate of 8000Hz with Motion Sync disabled.

We also performed supplementary testing with additional polling rates as well as at 8000Hz with Motion Sync enabled.

The available wireless polling rate settings are 125Hz, 250Hz, 500Hz, 1000Hz, 2000Hz, 4000Hz, and 8000Hz. When using this mouse wired, the polling rate settings are 125Hz, 250Hz, 500Hz, and 1000Hz.

Note: This mouse supports lift-off distance settings of 0.7 mm, 1 mm, and 2 mm. We performed our testing for this review at the lowest 0.7 mm setting. However, the Minimum Lift-Off Distance result is recorded as 1.2 mm, as that is the minimum measurable value on our test bench. See our Sensor Specifications test methodology for more details.

The scroll wheel has a rubber coating with bumpy protrusions spaced at regular intervals. This is an unconventional design choice considering that notched grooves are nearly ubiquitous, but it works well in practice. The rubber coating is very soft, comfortable, and quite grippy, and the wheel movement is light but precise.

Scrolling is also very quiet, and the middle click has good tactility with a medium-weight actuation.

The WLmouse Strider uses web-based software available on the WLmouse website. The software is straightforward and allows you to configure a full range of expected settings as well as sleep settings, debounce time, and a Motion Sync toggle.

You can also record macros, and although there's no RGB lighting on the mouse itself, the software does have a section for controlling RGB brightness, effects, and color controls for the 8k receiver.

A downloadable, offline version of the software is also available on the software tab of the product page on WLmouse's website. The offline version offers the same feature set but lacks a firmware updating tool. For reference, see a video tour.

All default button functions work in Windows and macOS, but the software is only available for Windows. That said, you can save custom changes to the onboard memory if you have access to a Windows PC and carry them over to use on a macOS computer.