MAD CATZ R.A.T. 7 MOUSE REVIEW
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As proud as they are of their mouse series, they were kind enough to drop one of these highly customisable buggers in our lap. So after catapulting my stock mouse out the window into a cats face, I sat down to take this little marvel for a spin.
One of the first things to notice about this mouse is quite simply the fact that it looks badass. Seriously. Look at it, it looks like what would happen if a transformer humped a pc, and to top off that imagery, it functions in a similar way to a transformer as well. Glossy colours and a futuristic design show off both build quality of the mouse as well as making it pleasing to the touch.
Everything about this mouse is customisable, to begin with the sensitivity of the mouse can be adjusted on the go. The software that it comes with allows you to have 4 different presents in terms of directional sensitivity that you can change on the fly with a simple press of the index finger. For those of you who love your numbers, this mouse tops out at an impressive 6400 DPI which you can change and adjust to your desire. It’s not out of line to say that every aspect of this mouse can be changed,  it even contains a roll of weights in the bottom of it that can be adjusted and removed in order to change how heavy the mouse is. Interchangeable pinky and palm grips allow you to keep screwing around with this until you find the perfect size and positioning for your hands. the small silver part sticking out below the palm rest is actually an allen key you can use to tweak the dimensions of the R.A.T 7 anytime.
Straight out of the box, we found that if you don’t customise it correctly to your hand however and decided to just go for it, the mouse can occasionally pop a wheelie, which was both hilarious and unhelpful. Saying that though, if you wanted an off the rack mouse you would have bought one, the entire point of this thing is fitting it perfectly to your hand.
One of the most innovative parts of this mouse is hands down the precision aiming button. Right where the thumb rests where you grip the mouse is the precision aim button, holding this down drops the sensitivity of the mouse as long as it is held down, allowing you to go from scoping the area to slowly and perfectly lining up that perfect bullet, right between the eyes, let go of the button and you’re back off again! Did we mention you can also customize the sensitivity of precision aim? You can program just about everything, with multiple profiles you can set to your mouse you have your quick picks for your weapons in Modern Warfare one minute, one press of a button and your World of Warcraft quick picks and skills are ready to roll! The only negative we could find about this mouse is the thumb-wheel, this is the small black cylinder located halfway down the mouse, it allows for quick cycling between weapons, and can even be programmed to do different functions when turned clockwise or anticlockwise. While the thumb-wheel itself is a fantastic idea and should be used in many more modern mice, it is not possible to use both it and the precision aiming button at the same time, that being said, most hardware nowadays does not even have these, so it’s still pretty cool.
From what we’ve explained so far, you can see that this is not a flimsy piece of hardware, with both its high customization and it’s almost endless array of programmable extras, this thing also has a solid steel chassis, meaning that it takes a lickin’ and keeps on clickin’. One of the most important things in any product nowadays is value for money. You can find this beauty for as low as £54, and for a pro mouse, this is a great price. There may be some other mice out there that are easier to get to grips with, standard plug and play ones, but this mouse is a beauty, you use it correctly and it will do the job and rack those kills up. One of the only bad things about it is how crappy a regular mouse will feel afterwards. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go snipe the site admin till he cries again.
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