NZXT Helps You Frag Your Friends with the AVATAR Gaming Mouse

It’s been a LONG time since I’ve used a gaming mouse.

Often these days I do most of my gaming on consoles, so it was refreshing to return to my PC to see what NZXT’s AVATAR mouse had to offer.

Boasting an ambidextrous design, high definition image sensor, and programmable macro features, let’s see if this beauty ups my game!

What you notice immediately is how attractive this mouse is, in its simple, symmetrical, stealth fighter kind of way. Clean lines, nice taper, pretty blue LEDs, the AVATAR makes a great first impression. Important to us sweaty palmed gamers, NZXT covers the mouse in a great feeling, grippy, soft touch matte finish.

The USB cable attached to the front is really long, which I appreciate because of where I keep my tower, but might bug others if they have to gather it, or bunch up the slack.

Simply plugging the mouse in, gives you a standard pointer experience, but once you load the driver (either supplied on CD, or downloaded from NZXT’s website), you open up a full world of control over different features.

Every button is programmable (a total of seven), and the mouse does support macros. For those who don’t game, macros are a set series of commands that you pre-program and can be activated with a single button press. For example, you could select a number of units in a Real Time Strategy game, and with one button group them and tell them to defend an area, or perform a complicated series of actions in your fave shooter. Macros can be controversial in game play (especially online gaming),  but they’re pretty much here to stay…

So did the AVATAR improve my game?

At first no.

The mouse is REALLY light (and does not have the option to add weight like more expensive gaming mice), and that in conjunction with the 2600 dpi image sensor had me flinging my characters all over the place. Once I got used to the feel however, it’s really satisfying pulling off complicated strafing moves in a shooter while only barely moving your wrist, or being able to select a whole screen full of units in an RTS with only one quick mouse move. You never feel like you have to move the mouse out of the center of your mouse pad…

Now here’s where I know I’m getting older though, as much as I like using this mouse for gaming, I liked it even more for doing work. Being able to quickly flick over my dual screen editing computer was pretty great, and radically reduced the number of times I would have to pick up my mouse and re-center my cursor with the old Microsoft Wireless mouse I was using. The AVATAR is massive overkill for a work only setup, but if you game from the same rig you work on, then it’s a nice benefit.

Lastly, the symmetrical design was very welcome. Thanks to the minor RSI I suffer from, I spend every other week using my mouse left handed to help recover. I had to retire my last gaming mouse because it was for righties only…

So if you couldn’t tell by now, I really like this mouse. It definitely takes some getting used to, and I wish I could make it a bit heavier. It’s $50 price tag is a bit steep for a non-wireless utility mouse, but if you’re really into gaming, then even the nearly imperceptible lag of a bluetooth mouse is unwelcome.

Now if you’ll excuse, I’m getting my rear handed to me in Team Fortress 2, and I need to go rectify that…

Tags: AVATAR gaming mouse mouse nzxt