What the heck is the polling rate, and why does it even matter for a mouse?

Question

Could anyone shed some light on the meaning of polling rate and its significance to a mouse’s operation?

Answer 1

The polling rate refers to how many times in a second the mouse sends its current position to the computer. If this value is increased, the mouse will send information regarding its position even more often. In real life, many gaming mice will have their polling rate set to 1000 Hz, so that the mouse will send its active position over 1000 times in one second. Cursor movement can become smoother when the frequency is high along with an increase in the responsiveness of the cursor of the computer which is quite required for the high refreshing screen.

Comments

You are able to disable mouse pointer acceleration directly from macOS, this was added in macOS Sonoma. Should be under System Settings > Mouse > Advanced

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At last. Finally, first blogger that complains about poor polling rate sensor on the top and not about charging port on the bottom, that is used once a month ❤

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I had an MX Master 3S on Mac at a high refresh rate - with same issues you mention. Now been using a Logitech G603 - got a great sensor (with adjustable polling rate) has lightspeed/bluetooth connections and 18 month battery life. Shame it's discontinued.

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Logitech sells a USB dongle for the MX Master mouse that has a much better polling rate. I use a MX Master 3 with the dongle every day and it’s amazing.

Only problem is it’s USB-A, so that might not work for your criteria.

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My mouse has a 60 hz polling rate and it is smooth on my MacBook with pro motion!

Do this:

In Mac settings decrease the mouse speed to 1 or 2.

In the mouse software increase the dpi or use the decent button for the dpi on the mouse.

Much less lagging with bluetooth connection!