NZXT Avatar S Gaming Mouse Review

PerformanceThe performance and like ability of the Avatar S grew on us throughout testing.

To start with, I was slightly sceptical about how comfortable the mouse would be due to it’s rather small design and this reviewer having rather large hands. I am glad to say that comfort was very pleasing thanks in large to the design of the mouse allowing your palm to sit towards the rear of the mouse meaning that reaching the click buttons isn’t uncomfortable or awkward.

The buttons on the mouse are very solid and feel good to push. They ‘bounce’ back after a push thanks to their open-ended design. As for the scroll wheel, there really isn’t much to say about it, apart from it carries out it’s task well. The side buttons however are not so great. They are completely fine in use, but the location of the right side (forward) button is quite annoying in general use, forcing your hand and fingers to move about and stretch to find it. For left-handed users, it will be the left side button that is problematic. It may have been much easier if both side buttons were located on the thumb side of the mouse, but this is impossible to carry out with an ambidextrous design.

The DPI switching method can either be carried out via the software or more easily by holding the left side button and scrolling up or down with the mouse wheel. This method is perfectly fine when playing a game, allowing us to easily switch between the ‘scanning’ mode of 1600 DPI when sniping and the ‘precision’ mode of 400 DPI when lining up that vital headshot. When using the DPI switching mode in general use though, we ran into an area of concern. Holding the left side (back) button caused us to toggle our browser page backwards. This is annoying especially when spending an extended amount of time writing something only to ‘accidently’ press back and lose everything. A simple DPI button would have sufficed but it may have spoiled the overall attractiveness of the mouse, so we don’t see why NZXT didn’t make a feature where ‘accidents’ such as this are avoided.

NZXT have done a great job implementing the LEDs featured on the mouse and making them useful. The fact that the “NZXT” logo LED switches colour depending on the DPI setting the mouse is currently using is genius. It makes tasks so much easier when gaming or in general use if there is an easy way to check the current DPI setting.