Stop Using Your Wireless Mouse in the Wired Mode!
An ultra-competitive subset of gamers has developed a trend that has spread towards the more casual gamers, namely using their wireless mice in the wired mode for performance gains. While this makes sense since wired connections are always technically speaking more stable, it is also true that unless you are facing very specific conditions your mouse will perform the same in wireless mode.
Testing Wired vs Wireless Modes on the Same Mouse
The main selling point of current wireless mice is the fact that their performance is solid, even beating out older generations of wired mice. For a quick test, I wanted to see if I could see any differences in polling rate stability using MouseTester on my G-Wolves HSK Pro 4K.
The limiting factor in my testing is that The HSK Pro goes up to 4000 Hz in wireless mode, but only to 1000 Hz in wired mode, meaning that no matter what, the wireless mode will always be faster on this mouse. To even out the playing field I tested both the wireless vs wired performance on 1000 Hz and tried to spot the differences.
I used 6400DPI for both tests and performed identical movements trying to isolate the wired vs wireless factor in the test. I then thought that maybe an older mouse with a 3370 PixArt sensor would show a bigger gap in wireless vs wired performance.
I tested this with an older HSK Plus mouse that is equipped with a 3370 sensor and MouseTester.
The performance however was once again identical meaning that it would make zero difference if you ran the mouse in wired or wireless mode during gaming. This gives the wireless mode an absolute advantage because of the freedom of movement.
It is possible that if we would go further back and use older wireless mice with older sensors I could note a difference in their performance, but that would make no sense since most gamers on wireless mice are using up-to-date hardware.
Outliers
There are however some points I could see where the wired connection would make some sense. These situations are very much outliers though, so for 99% of gamers, the wireless mode would be overall a better choice.
Competitors in eSports tournaments might be interested in running their wireless mice in wired mode because of interference. You can get the dongle as close to your mouse under normal circumstances, but if you are in an arena with a huge amount of wireless devices your stability might still suffer.
Under the same conditions, it might make sense to run your mouse wired if you are afraid of the battery running out during a tournament because you forgot to charge it previously.
As mentioned above, another situation where the wired mode could make a bit more sense is if you are using an older wireless mouse which does have better performance in the wired mode. This situation does not apply to current generations of mice with the 3395 PixArt sensor or even older 3370 sensors which perform identically both in wired and wireless mode.
If you are on older hardware it might be worth investigating how your mouse performs in wired vs wireless mode.
TL;DR
If you have a wireless mouse using somewhat recent hardware and you are playing at your desk in your gaming room, you have no reason to think that your wireless mouse would perform better in the wired mode.