Hacker News Reader

Comment by riceart | Hacker News Reader

There’s essentially no lag in a dedicated wireless receiver mouse - the additional latency is dwarfed by the baseline latency of the hardware and software. https://www.rtings.com/mouse/tests/control/latency

Yes connectivity issues can be a problem in certain environments but luckily this has usually not been a problem with receivers not in close proximity to interference, including USB3. Battery wise I have had cheapie mouses that last months on a pair of batteries and expensive mice like the Mx master that are pretty no fuss recharging.

But you do you with the mouse bungee cord :).

View on HN

The latency graph in the article you post actually shows sporadic but substantial lag of around 100% (12ms to 25+ ms) with the wireless dongle. The average of all the lag might be low, but the lag when it does occur seems quite high.

But in the real world, there can be even more lag.

I've tested a bunch of different high-end wireless mice that purport to have super-low wireless lag, and they all exhibit lag in my apartment.

Not constant lag, but sporadic occasional lag of like 600ms or more, every once in a while. For both clicking the mouse, or just moving the cursor.

Because I've seen it on Mac, Windows, and Linux, and with fairly pricey mice from Logitech, Corsair, Razer, and others, I think the reason is probably radio interference. I live in a dense apartment block in Tokyo, and also have kids with a bunch of wireless crap of their own.

Whatever it is, the only way I can have a mouse that doesn't ever lag is to connect it with a cable. I don't even play games, but the every-once-in-a-while lag is annoying enough when coding and web browsing that I now only buy mice that support wireless USB, Bluetooth, and USB-C wired connection.

I've never had a problem in my entire life with wired keyboards, mice, or headphones. I've had probably aggregate thousands of separate instances of problems with wireless devices across the last 20 years.

Wireless is awesome for when you're on the go, but if you're going to be sitting at a desk for hours anyway, wired is life.

I have zero tolerance for crappy wireless stuff in general but my wireless Logitech mouse has worked flawlessly. I can't think of a reason to prefer a wired mouse over it.

The problem I have with wireless mice is they always die when I'm in the middle of something important or an fps game. Switched back to wired because of that.

For what it’s worth mice like the Mxmaster have a usb-c charging port in the sensible location and can be used while being charged. They also give you pretty fair warning before they die.

Battery adds significant weight. The mxMaster weights almost 50% more (141g vs 97g) than the wired mouse I use (Zowie EC1, NOT a small mouse, it's like the glorious old MS Intellimouse)... and the 97g is counting the cable.

Also, from my experience USB-C likes to giggle itself loose under really energetic movement.

I just use a wireless mouse that accepts AA batteries.

Just buy 2 sets of rechargeable batteries then I won't have to worry about battery life ever again.

Yeah, on the work laptop I've got...some sort of logitech thing. 2 AA batteries last over a year.

The USB-c cable connector in the mx-matter 3 is annoyingly tight. I could probably swing it around my head by the cable and it wouldn't come out.

It is heavy though.

The wireless version of the EC1 is a whole two grams heavier, excluding the cable.

https://zowie.benq.com/en-us/mouse/ec1.html https://zowie.benq.com/en-us/mouse/ec1-cw.html

The Logitech G Pro X Superlight is 63g and some of the newer wireless mice are coming in at under 50g.

It's now very unusual to see a professional FPS player using a wired mouse. The performance is indistinguishable and for most people, charging is less of a nuisance than cable management.

https://prosettings.net/lists/cs-go/

Sensible. I love that we need to mention this after the Magic Mouse debacle.

My wireless mouse has a dock that glows a color depending on the battery state of the mouse. When it's getting orange, I know to drop it on the dock for a bit.

The apparent battery life might be distorted a bit by my work and gaming machines being separate, but the mouse in my gaming setup (Logitech G604 Lightspeed) gets months of life out of a single Eneloop Pro rechargeable AA when using its USB RF dongle. It was a bit of a surprise with my last wireless mouse having been the mid-2000s Logitech MX1000 which had an integrated battery and needed to be docked a lot more frequently… it's fuzzy but I think I might've gotten a week out of it on average.

lol I had wired mice die on me mid game as well. While buying items in csgo one of my clicks was 3x more loud than the ones before. The white bit that you push on was no longer sticking out of the switch.

You can get some now that have wireless charging (with a compatible mousemat).

e.g. Logitech PowerPlay

I had some extra cash after buying a new PC and decided to splurge on the PowerPlay, thinking it would just be an expensive trinket. I was wrong. It charges the mouse while you're using it, keeping it at an appropriate level (80%?) so that it doesn't ruin the battery by being at 100%. You literally do not have to remember to plug it in or swap out a battery. It's a gamechanger.

To make it really nice, I paired it with one of those XXL mousepads. Cut some corflute or other material that's the same thickness as the PowerPlay, and you can have your own nice large mousepad while having the wireless mouse charger hidden beneath it.

No question about it, wireless is the GOAT.

Buddy, I posted a link - the actual difference in latency in time to click and movements with wireless mice with dedicated receivers. Some do better than wired models - in any event the latency of the RF link is on the order or hundreds of microseconds and the wired part of the peripheral bus (ie USB) and the software is at least a couple milliseconds.

It's very well possible my wireless mouse setup has lower latency than most wired setups.

That’s why I said essentially no lag. A good gaming wireless mouse will do better than many wired mice. In those cases it’s better but it’s still not enough difference to matter to anyone.

The advantage of wired is not just aesthetics. This thread started because of any accessory to deal with the wire. I don't need to bother at all with a damn wire in the way.

> This might as be considered a law of physics - electromagnetic energy will always travel faster, more accurately, with less interference, with less required current through a conductive medium than through air.

I mean you might want to go back and read a high school physics textbook - because you’ve got the speed of light exactly backwards.

The reason digital wireless signals may have additional latency has nothing to do with the propagation which is faster in air.

Also I’ve never seen a networking over powerline system that worked better than Wi-Fi. Not all conductive paths are effective for signals.

> Wired is ALWAYS the objectively superior option in all metrics except for superficial & subjective "aesthetics", all else equal.

Which is why professional musicians and broadcasters would never use wireless microphones and pickups. (sarcasm)

A good number of these mouse show a difference of 0.2 ms betwen wired & wireless. That's one frame at 500fps. As you say, there are so many other factors that radically dwarf this transport concern. It's hard to take this as a discussion when people protest so vehemently against such a tiny figure, when it's such a small factor.

Also griefing about battery seem like horseshit too. I have a travel mouse with a single rechargeable AA battery in it. I have a variety of gaming mice, including a Razer Naga Epic from ~2010 that I've literally worn the buttons through to unreliability on. These mice all have li-ion batteries and they all work fine. Maybe in aggregate I've worn through like a single rechargable AA cells worth of use over a decade. The rate of attrition on rechargeable batteries is tiny.

It's just incredible what the cables-or-die undead-alliance goes through to justify their fanatical anti-cause.

I agree, the real world difference is negligible.

Oh I absolutely have a long-held aversion to the sight of cables. Because I have had to live among them, among many many many many of them, because I have had to manage them, growing up amidst so very many of them. They have never been fun to manage. I have long toiled to not be so enwrapped by cables.

Slower? Not really, not according to the links already shared. Less bandwidth? My headphones, my mouse, my keyboard are nowhere near their practical limits over wireless. Higher latency? I just cited 0.2ms, which seems absurd to grumble over. Higher error rate? This is not a problem I've ever experienced. More prone to interference? Literally never seen an issue. There's just no real solid reports on this being an issue. It's not seen with any statistical significance in real reviews.

Higher power requirements? Yes, having some awareness of batteries is required, but if you set things up (slash most devices are set up) to not be caught unprepared it's a remarkable low-toil system. Most devices can charge themselves. Most will operate for a week without charge. The only problem is being a total newb who doesn't have any handle at all, who gets caught out unprepared in the cold, by having absolutely no indicators & no warning. Once you actually start trying to use these devices, once you actually start looking at the battery level, the power concern is remarkably low issue.

Many great points made.

ok editing my reply here too thanks

Couldn't agree more. Upvoting for visibility.

Why do stage musicians use wireless microphones? Is it because they have a hatred strictly for aesthetic reasons?

Nobody said you can’t use your damn wired mouse if it makes you happy - but latency is not an actual reason to prefer a wired mouse.

> Again, wireless can be superior, but only when you are deliberately cherry-picking the least efficient wired setup to compare to the most efficient wireless setup, just like your argument for mice.

But earlier I thought you said it was a law of physics that conductive mediums were always superior to air. Also that the speed of light in air is slower than a “conductive” medium.

You don’t seem well.

No argument here! Great points.

> Just to be clear, your wireless mouse, keyboard, headset, and network connection are not making use of light through air

Yes they are. “The terms light, electromagnetic waves, and radiation all refer to the same physical phenomenon: electromagnetic energy.”

https://science.nasa.gov/ems/02_anatomy

Light and radio are both electromagnetic energy. Radio waves and light both propagate at the speed of light. The speed of light in a vacuum is a universal constant. The speed of light in various mediums is always slower. Among copper, air and glass, light/EM waves will propagate the slowest in glass and the fastest in air.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light

> cannot make use of light through air even a fraction as efficiently as light through fiber optic cable, due to a guaranteed minimum amount of light interference in air that a fiber optic cable will never have, right?

No, not right. As someone else pointed out a point to point link through the air will have lower latency than fiber (glass or plastic).

Whether or not a signal can be carried accurately and error free through any medium involves concepts beyond a basic understanding of the speed of light. But in the real world one will encounter reliable well designed wireless links and poorly performing wired links.

> ...are not making use of light through air, and your wireless network connection cannot make use of light through air even a fraction as efficiently as light through fiber optic cable...

There's a clear misunderstanding here.

Light and wireless signals used by mice etc are the same thing though, just at a different frequency. They propagate at the same speed, the speed of light, which ironically is slower in glass.

Wireless signals in air travel faster than light in a fiber optic cable (and faster than electricity in copper).

>Also I’ve never seen a networking over powerline system that worked better than Wi-Fi. Not all conductive paths are effective for signals.

although I agree that powerline networking is garbage, I have encountered older construction houses that create an environment that is just about impossible to conquer without specialist wireless equipment.

passive blocking via exotic wall materials, older drywall and fairing compounds that contained metallic particulate, various metallic accoutrements -- and accidental active jamming from poor wiring.

>Which is why professional musicians and broadcasters would never use wireless microphones and pickups. (sarcasm)

eh -- this is just an effective and allowed compromise. A performer will usually prefer not to drag wires around a stage just from the sheer physical discomfort from the additional weight and the worry of a trip hazard on an already hazardous stage.

That said , many performers opt to avoid such conveniences due to a perceived difference in quality. [0]

[0]: https://www.quora.com/Why-are-wireless-rigs-not-the-standard...

> A performer will usually prefer not to drag wires around a stage just from the sheer physical discomfort from the additional weight and the worry of a trip hazard on an already hazardous stage.

eh — this is not a “purely” aesthetic or superficial difference, which was the foolishness I was replying to: “Wired is ALWAYS the objectively superior option in all metrics except for superficial & subjective "aesthetics", all else equal.”

Ah, I better understand. Thanks, my mistake; I had forgotten the superficial element. I'm not sure if the mocking elements that you edited in after the initial reply added much, I wasn't trying to come across as derogatory, I just speak/type like that.

Sorry. I was not appreciative of the uncalled for personal attacks (not from you) - that have now been mostly edited away.

I only semi-recently started deploying multiple AP's, which would have helped (but there was no open source software to do so, before the recent DAWN software on OpenWRT). But my heavens, powerline networking has been a massive salvation for me.

I've never seen it go beyond 200mbps for any real run I've had. Often the link in these shitty big row-houses I've lived in has resulted in more like ~40mbps. Those numbers sound awful. But I'll take it any day, in these wifi noisey spaces. Having reliable <2ms latency with absolutely no drop outs has been an absolutely killer advantage. The powerline networking has so much less variability, so much less jitter & chaos than wifi, even very complex multi-drop wifi. I might get more throughput over wifi, but it comes with far far higher base latency, and will fall to shit multiple times a day. Powerline's reliability has been one of the best upgrades I've ever made.

I don't agree with your either/or. My wireless mouse on the rtings table has a 6.3ms latency, is sub $40, and accepts a standard AA which I use a rechargable for. Battery life lasts 4-5 months on a single battery, and I'm reusing batteries I've had for 5 years.

I do personally agree that unstandardized batteries are a problem in wireless mice as eventually you'll be unlikely to find an exact replacement, but I think there can be plenty of wins from wireless. No cable drag (annoying!), no cable running across the desk (I can stow my mouse in a drawer in less than a second to clear my desktop), and I don't have to worry about the cable fraying over time (legitimately something that happened with my razer years ago!)

> Let's be honest here, you're either prejudiced against cables or you don't really care about performance.

Let's be honest here, you clearly have never used a decent or good wireless mouse, and have little or no knowledge of the marketplace (and oddly have a lot of opinions about them...)

> Having to change batteries several times a year is objectively more expensive, wasteful, worse for the environment, and burdensome than never having to change batteries.

Rechargeable batteries (either built-in li-ion or nimh AAA/AA) exist. Before you start going on about the inconvenience of charging: when I see my mouse dock's LED ring glowing orange as opposed to a more greenish color, I know I've got a couple of hours before I should go through the incredibly arduous process of...placing it on the dock for a bit.

> Wired is ALWAYS the objectively superior option in all metrics except for superficial & subjective "aesthetics", all else equal.

Not having a cord is substantially nicer from a usability and feel standpoint, and not just for gaming.

> "Essentially no lag" is objectively not the same as "no lag".

Go look at rtings or any other site that reviews mice, and you'll see that just like wired mice, wireless mice can vary in latency, but there are plenty of mice (even non-gaming ones) with latency matching or so close to wired mice it's within the realm of measurement error and the difference could not possibly matter even in competitive gaming.

You have a lot of opinions about wireless mice for someone who clearly has never used one.

> This might as be considered a law of physics - electromagnetic energy will always travel faster, more... through a conductive medium than through air.

it actually travels faster through air (no vacuum necessary) than through fiber or copper as those transmit information at 2/3rd of the speed of light while air transmits it at 99% [1].

which is why starlink could in theory achieve better latency than a straight run of fiber optic across the world [2].

this of course doesn't mean that it's better in a mouse because of the overhead of processing such a short distance.

[1] https://archive.is/c859M [2] https://youtu.be/QEIUdMiColU?t=238

Agreed and upvoted.

In practice, microwave networks are used over long distances precisely because they are lower latency than fibre.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/priva...

> Right up until you account for interference.

could you provide more info? the source I gave you has a real-world example of a wireless link used over fiber to achieve better latency.

What's the etiquette here or are we just being trolled?

Parent has edited all their comments now making the rest of the comment tree less useful. Essentially they were arguing that wireless signals themselves couldn't be faster than a wired/optical signal despite physics disagreeing.

I'd like a wireless mouse but I'm worried about security.

I use wired mice because I like the feeling more. Difficult to explain.

I prefer wired because no batteries, no lost mouse, no lost usb receiver.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com