Reviews & awards

The F01 Noctua Edition comes with Pulsar's latest XS-2 sensor, which is a customized PixArt PAW3955, along with two MCUs: a Nordic nRF54L15 for wireless communication and a CompX CX346T which provides a USB high-speed PHY, enabling 8000 Hz polling in both wired and wireless operation. Among the most useful new features of the PAW3955 is the fact that CPI can be adjusted in increments of 1. Accordingly, the rather high base deviation of +6.3% can be considered negligible in that correcting it is trivial. Another notable new feature of the PAW3955 is more fine-grained control over lift-off distance levels. The XS-1 offers no less than 11 distinct levels, each differing by 0.1 mm. In testing, however, I've found that the height figures aren't entirely accurate in that the nominal 1.0 mm setting was still tracking fine at a height of 1.2 mm, so the lowest setting of 0.7 mm is closer to 0.9 mm in practice. Lastly, the PAW3955 also introduces new sensor run mode variants, more specifically ones for the HP (high performance) run mode that are designed to be used in conjunction with 2000 and 4000 Hz in particular. On the PAW3950, the recommendation was to use 2000 and 4000 Hz only in conjunction with the corded sensor run mode, which is why the PAW3955 is able to draw less current at 2000 and 4000 Hz than the PAW3950, all other things being equal. At 1000 Hz and below, the F01 Noctua Edition defaults to the HP sensor run mode in wireless operation. Much like on previous Pulsar releases, Turbo Mode can be enabled to set sensor run mode to corded, overriding anything else, and sensor framerate to the applicable maximum.