ASUS ROG Pugio Ambidextrous Mouse Review

1. Introduction2. Unboxing and First Look3. Testing4. Closing Thoughts5. View All Pages

To test the Pugio, I used it as my daily driver for one week. During this time, I used it while playing games, editing photos and just doing regular browsing and other office tasks.

First, let's take a look at ROG Armoury, the accompanying software suite:

As we have mentioned across our last few ASUS ROG mice reviews, Armoury is now a very polished and easy to use piece of software. My main gripe is that there still isn't support for more than two DPI stages per profile, but that is relatively minor in the scheme of things. Armoury covers all of the main bases, though, and does so in a neat and tidy package.

The Pugio's RGB lighting is also very well done. The three lighting zones (ROG logo, scroll wheel and rear LED strip) can be independently controlled or you can sync them all together (as shown above). There are also plenty of effects to play with, including rainbow wave, breathing and spectrum cycling to name just three.

The actual colours look great, too, and the coverage is nice and even across both the ROG logo and the LED strip. It may not be as bombastic as the Gladius II and its awesome underglow, but the overall effect strikes a lovely balance between subtle and in-your-face lighting.

Now, moving on to daily use and physical performance. I'll start with overall comfort and then talk about the Pugio's stand-out features after that.

So, day-to-day, I did not actually get on with the shape of the Pugio. This is obviously just my personal view, but the Pugio is just a bit too flat for my liking – I was never really able to wrap my palm around like I wanted to, and because of that I found I often lost my grip. If you prefer a palm grip, like me, you may want to look at the Gladius II instead. That being said, claw or fingertip users will likely have better luck as those grip styles don't require as much contact between your palm and the mouse, something I found tricky.

Aside from the shape of the Pugio – which is highly subjective – there are some undeniably good features baked-in. For one, having removable side buttons is very handy as I initially found myself unwittingly pressing the two buttons with my fourth-finger. However, simply pulling off those buttons and replacing it with the blanking plate completely solved the issue. Ingenious.

I do like the option to change-out the mouse's switches as well. This is easy to do and the two included pairs do feel noticeably different, to me at least. In my opinion, the pre-installed D2FC-F-K(50M) switches are quite fast and light, while the secondary D2F-01Fs switches are definitely heavier and more tactile. Depending on what games you play, you can choose accordingly – something I love.

Elsewhere, the PixArt PMW 3330 sensor gave me no issues. It may not be as high-end as the PMW 3360, but its max DPI of 7200 is surely more than enough headroom for 99% of people, plus I found its tracking to be pixel-perfect whether I was gaming or editing photos.

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