Endgame Gear OP1 8K Review – Lightweight, smooth, and stunning!

Endgame Gear’s OP1 mouse was already a great choice, but the addition of a faster microcontroller means all the great tech they’ve already developed for the OP1 remains, but a new 8,000 hertz polling rate is added. This mouse really impressed me, so let me show you around it, and then explain why. Endgame gear is no stranger to making great mice – the XM1 being possibly their most famous. The OP1 itself is a pretty versatile mouse. It’s primarily meant for claw grips, thanks to the fairly tall sides allowing your fingers plenty of space to grip to, although I did find it comfortable with a more palm grip style too. Interestingly, Endgame does include some stick-on textured rubber pads for the sides, so if you don’t find the matte coating sufficient, you can stick them on too. Personally I left them off, especially since this thing only weighs 50 grams, making it incredibly light and easy to flick around – and to hold onto as well.

Speaking of extras included in the box, Endgame also provides a second set of PTFE skates with a different design – that being way, way more coverage, including an extra skate to sit around the sensor, and a much wider front and rear skate too – although even the larger one at the back has holes for the two screws that hold the mouse together, which is a really nice touch. Personally I had a great time with the stock, smaller, skates, but it’s nice you have the option straight out the box.

I do want to mention the ease of which they let you get into this thing – the holes in the larger skates are a great indication of that. You only need to remove those two screws, then the top case just hinges off from the front. Pop the three jumper cables out and you’ve got access to everything. The switches themselves – at least the left and right clicks, and the two side buttons, are screwed into the top case, and in an amazing move, Endgame will sell you replacement switch packs – both as a way to customise the feel for what you prefer, and just as a repairability factor, although the Kailh GX switches they are using are rated for 80 million actuations so you should be good there. 

The switches are actually a good thing to talk about too – most, if not all, 8,000 hertz mice I’ve seen use optical switches, as one of the main benefits of using an 8,000 hertz polling rate is the lower latency afforded by polling every 0.125ms, rather than once per millisecond. Using optical switches means no debounce delay, and therefore the fastest input possible. The fact that Endgame are using mechanical switches here rings some alarm bells, but they have a few interesting solutions for that. First, as you can see through the rather nice translucent switch casings, these are SPDT switches – that’s single-pole, double-throw switches. That means when the switch if first pressed, the moving element inside the switch – the pole – breaks the connection to trigger a signal. Breaking the connection has functionally no bouncing involved. Then when the switch is released, it leaves the other contact point to trigger the release event. That means the switch is never bouncing in the first place. The second is Endgame’s patented “analog key sensing technology”, where instead of using a digital pin on the microcontroller, they use an analogue input and read in inputs, potentially every microsecond or so. That means you get a more “full” view of the bouncing behaviour and can even be averaged out to give you a more cohesive input. 

Naturally, I cracked out my open source latency testing tool and tested the three different click modes Endgame offers here. Those are: Off; GX Speed Mode; or GX Safe Mode. Off is on the slower side for a 1,000 hertz mouse at 1.11 milliseconds on average. By comparison, the GX modes are actual lightspeed. Safe mode was technically, slightly, sort of slower, at a SHOCKING… 0.07 milliseconds on average, versus 0.02 milliseconds on the Speed mode. I should explain why these results are faster than the theoretical best performance of an 8,000 hertz mouse. That’s because this is an external test that uses the sound of the mouse click to register the click happening, then timing between that and when the desktop software receives the mouse down event. Because this mouse is so damn fast, it’s actually effectively reading zero for most results, because the click event is reaching the desktop app before the sound of you bottoming out the key has been made. Like, to make that clear, this mouse can tell your PC you’ve clicked it faster than you can bottom out the mouse button. Isn’t that insane?!

When you then put that together with the great shape and feel, you get an incredibly appealing gaming experience. It’s ridiculously smooth and responsive, feeling better than the majority of mice I’ve tested here. From the second I picked it up and started playing, it felt like a cut above the rest. Accuracy was on point, and the insanely light weight made it easy to flick around on a low DPI too. If it isn’t clear, I really enjoyed playing with this. While I’m no FPS pro, for an average joe like me it felt like I was playing with a pro’s gear. 

The one thing I do want to note here though is the software. To be clear, the software offers all the features you’d expect from DPI control to button remapping, but… um.. Endgame… what the hell is this? This Windows 95 app in 2024? Like, the overly simple design does make it incredibly easy to use, but it could do with even a little tarting up. Honestly, if you send me the source code, I will do it for you. Just a lick of paint, so it doesn’t look like it is actually from 1995. 

Regardless of the software, this is an incredible bit of kit, and one I obviously highly recommend. It’s pretty reasonably priced for what you get at £70, so this is a big thumbs up from me. I’ll link to overclockers in the description if you’re interested.