Roccat Leadr Wireless Mouse Review

Having looked at plenty of Roccat products over the years, today our attention turns to the Leadr - a brand-new wireless mouse from the German peripheral manufacturer. Sporting a very unique 'next-gen' button layout, a dedicated charging dock and, of course, RGB lighting, can the Leadr do enough to impress? Let's find out. With a focus on compromise-free wireless gaming, the Roccat Leadr certainly looks like an intriguing product to assess. It does cost a fair whack, though, coming in at £129.95 here in the UK, and that certainly demonstrates all of the mouse's features don't come cheap. That being said, if you are in the market for a high-end wireless mouse, the Leadr definitely looks like an interesting option - but before coming to any conclusions, let's get onto the review. Specification ROCCAT Owl-Eye Optical Sensor with 12000dpi Wired/Wireless Combo Mouse 1000mAh inbuilt Li-Ion Rechargeable Battery 2.4GHz Wireless Transmission 1000Hz Polling Rate 50G Acceleration 250ips Maximum Speed Mouse Acceleration: No Angle Snapping: No 72MHz ARM Cortex-M0 (Both Mouse & Stand) 512kB on-board Memory (Mouse) Adjustable Lift-off Distance 1.8m Micro USB-to-USB Cable Dimensions (WxHxL): 81 x 46 x 129 mm Weight: 128g The Roccat Leadr ships in a uniquely-shaped box with plenty of text and images visible on the front. Inside, the first accessories to note are the three included stickers, one quick-start guide and one disposal booklet. Getting to the fun stuff, one main feature of the Leadr is its charging dock which you can see above. Essentially, it is a small stand which holds the Leadr when you want to charge it, though I also kept the mouse docked when I wasn't using it. Also worth noting are the four LEDs in the bottom left-hand corner of the dock - these indicate the battery status of the Leadr. The dock itself connects to your PC via a 1.8m USB cable, and that is obviously required to provide power to the dock. However, the Leadr itself can also be connected directly via this USB cable, a handy feature if you have run out of battery but don't have time to charge the mouse. Now, taking a look at the mouse itself, you will immediately notice that the Leadr has plenty of buttons, most of which are in unusual positions. We will get to that in a minute, though, so for now it is just worth pointing out that the Leadr is for right-handers only and weighs 128g (without the cable). Now, those extra buttons. Starting with the left-hand side of the mouse, there are three buttons positioned at the top of the mouse's side, while there is also a single button at the base of the mouse as well - designed to sit just below your thumb. Further up, next to the scroll wheel, are a further two buttons - giving a total of 6 buttons on the left-hand side. Thankfully the right-hand side is less busy, with just two more side-button near the front of the Leadr. At the front of the mouse we get a better look at those four extra buttons that are either side of the scroll wheel, while it is also worth pointing out there is one more button just below the wheel. In short, the Leadr has a lot of buttons. Lastly, at the bottom of the mouse we find the docking pins which lock to the Leadr's stand to provide power to the battery. We also get a look at the Owl-Eye sensor here - technically named the PMW 3361, it is a modified version of the top-end PMW 3360 from PixArt.To test the Roccat Leadr, I used it for around two weeks in both wireless and wired modes. During this time, I played plenty of games, edited some photos and used the mouse for general work as well. Lets start with the software, Roccat Swarm: Swarm presents itself across four main tabs: a 'pinned' favourites page, settings, button assignments, and advanced settings. Overall, the UI is quite clean and easy to use, while I also like that everything is nicely spread out instead of being crammed into a single page. In terms of features, Swarm has everything you would want for tweaking your mouse's settings - button configuration, RGB lighting and polling rate are all taken care of. You can also create different profiles, though I couldn't see any option to save programmes directly to the mouse. In any case, Swarm gets the job done and is not a hindrance at all. Thumbs up from me. Moving on to the RGB lighting, the Roccat logo and the scroll wheel are the two lighting zones, and they are also independently configurable which is a nice touch. The colours themselves are accurate and generally look good - however, the lighting is just too dim to be truly effective. I would imagine this has been done deliberately to prevent the lighting from draining the battery too quickly, but it does reduce the overall aesthetic appeal of the Leadr. However, when using the Leadr day-to-day, I had an excellent time with the mouse. For starters, I actually really like the button layout. It certainly takes some getting used to as there are so many different buttons in very unusual places, but once you have been using the mouse for a few days it quickly becomes second nature. For instance, the two buttons either side of the scroll wheel are brilliant - the placement is very intuitive as you only need to move your two fingers a tiny distance to press them - I used them to adjust DPI and system volume and it worked perfectly. The buttons don't get in the way when you aren't using them, too, and that is something which cannot be said for all mouse side buttons - so that is another victory for the Leadr. The button positioned just below your thumb is also a great inclusion and works as a great modifier for Roccat's EasyShift technology. For those that don't know, EasyShift essentially let's you double the amount of functions that can be programmed to the mouse, as holding down the modifier button activates each of the button's secondary functions. With the amount of buttons the Leadr has, coupled with EasyShift, you can actually assign up to 22 different functions to the mouse - making it great for those who use plenty of macros. Even if you tend to not use more than 6 or 8 buttons (myself included), the Leadr is still very comfortable. Its larger, ergonomic design does lend itself more naturally to a palm grip than anything else, but I was still able to use my preferred claw grip without any discomfort. Those with smaller hands, however, may find the Leadr just a bit big as it does measure just under 13cm long, but my medium-sized hands had no difficultly gripping or anything like that. Moving on to performance, one of the things people typically associate with wireless mice is input latency. However, with the Leadr's 2.4GHz connection (it does not use Bluetooth) I honestly can't say I noticed any latency. As a disclaimer, I am not an overly competitive gamer in the first place - so there is a chance others may notice more latency than I did - but during several rounds of Star Wars Battlefront I couldn't fault the Leadr at all. The Owl Eye sensor, or PMW 3361, is also very effective. It is based on the PMW 3360 so it is not surprising that I had no issues when tracking. Even when editing photos on a pixel-by-pixel level, the Leadr performed flawlessly. Lastly, we do need to talk about battery life, as you will have to re-charge the Leadr eventually. Roccat advertises a 20-hour battery life and I would say that is about accurate. In my experience, I could use the Leadr for around three days (bear in mind I work at a computer so am using a mouse for several hours a day) before it needed charging again, and that was with RGB lighting enabled, too. After that, a full-charge took around 2.5 hours which isn't bad at all. The last feature to note is that the dock also has four LED battery indicators so you do know the rough amount of battery life remaining.Overall, I am thoroughly impressed with the Roccat Leadr wireless mouse. For starters, I love that it comes with a dedicated charging dock that also doubles as a stand when the mouse is not in use. The dock looks good in an understated fashion and I was not ashamed to have it sitting right on my desk. The Leadr also sports a very interesting button layout, which Roccat is calling 'next-gen'. Essentially, there are loads of buttons in some unusual places, but after getting used to the button placement, the layout is actually intuitive and very useful. In practice, I simply found I had a lot more buttons available to me without having to move my whole hand all over the place. Wireless performance is also very good. I had no issues with input latency and the PixArt PMW 3361 sensor is as capable as you would expect. In short, I used the Leadr for days on end without encountering any major issues which is quite impressive for a wireless mouse. The only potential issue with the mouse is the RGB lighting - it is just quite dim and lacks the vibrancy we would expect from a mouse of this price. My guess is that this was done deliberately to improve the battery life, but it is a little disappointing. That being said, the Roccat Leadr is overall a superb wireless mouse. It has plenty of worthwhile features, very solid battery life and performs like a dream. It does cost a fair bit, but for a wireless mouse of this calibre you do have to be prepared to pay. You can buy one from Overclockers UK for £129.95 HERE. Pros Comfortable. Lots of buttons. Excellent wireless performance. Very good battery life. Dedicated dock/stand. Good software. Cons RGB lighting is quite dim. KitGuru says: The Roccat Leadr is an excellent wireless mouse. Aside from the minor issue with the RGB lighting, I find it very hard to fault.

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Roccat Leadr Wireless Mouse Review

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