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The Gladius is a pretty refined looking rodent. It has but two colours, a black for the sides, with a slightly contrasting bullet grey shell covering the main body. It is an interestingly shaped mouse, with mild ergonomics and is designed to be right handed only.
It has a strong feel to it and clearly has great build quality, with a hard, but smooth plastic used for the main body. The only real styling to break up the grey and black is the slightly red, clear section at the back in the shape of the Republic of Gamers logo.
On the left hand side are the usual pair of buttons, that are stock mapped to forward and back in your browser respectively. The thumb grip is rubberised, with an interesting groove pattern that ASUS calls “Mayan.”
The front of the Gladius features the usual left/right click buttons, separated slightly from the main body of the mouse, along with a central scroll wheel and DPI selector, with two options.
The very front has a small hole where the main input cable goes. The fact that it can be detached makes travel safer and easier as you can bag it up. However it also means that ASUS is able to offer options for its cabling and it in-fact comes with two: braided and rubber (see later).
As you would expect with a right handed mouse, the Gladius' right hand side is shaped a little different than the left hand side, with a more supportive ridge for your ring and pinky fingers, as well as lacking any sort of side buttons. It does however feature the same “Mayan,” rubber pattern for grip.
The underside of this mouse features a centralised optical sensor (Avago ADNS-S3988) and four separate teflon pads, one located in each corner. There is also a small slider that unlocks the main cable should you wish to change or remove it.
Here are the two cable options as we discussed earlier. There is a braided one and another with a standard rubber coating. Both feature gold plated connectors, though that won't do much beyond improving durability.
Being able to replace the switches seems like it will greatly extend the life of this mouse.
Not a single word is said about the play on left and right mouse buttons caused by switches upgradability 🙂
Bought it. Driver does not work for Mac OS X 10.10 nor 10.11. No driver update available. No reply from ASUS. Without driver it is useless for any Yosemite or El Capitan users.
Indeed for most who cant bother with de-soldering the switches to replace them this is such an important and handy thing, great move by ASUS. However I hear some concerning things about right and left click wobble after several weeks of usage. The problem seems to be that the right and left click plates tend to lose rigidity over time since the whole thing is not one monolithic construction out of the base poly-carbonate shell of the mouse. Maybe the Deathadder style design + replaceable switch feature would have been better for long term usage. All that said some users have no issues with several months of usage while others have wobbles just weeks into their purchase. Not enough opinion out there to gauge if this is truly an issue to be concerned about.
Are you suffering from any left and/or right click mouse button wobbling now that you have used your months for over 2 months?
@Kitguru: Lack of RGB lighting can’t possibly be a con as far as design is concerned, it has nothing to do with functionality, sensor precision or anything that improves mouse usage. It is just an aesthetic subjective factor and should therefore not be a criterion for pros/cons. -_-
If u use Mac Os, i think there is no reason use this mouse.
I have owned this mouse for almost a year and got no wobble on the buttons.
I do play alot of FPS games i mean alot !
I have a Mac and i use the Gladius with no problem. Rog Armoury software works for OS X 10.10 and above.
That’s good info, thank you! It’s going to be my next mouse since am quite heavy with my clicks too.