ASUS ROG Gladius II Gaming Mouse Review

Conclusion

Sequels to anything are always something which makes us a little cautious. The Godfather II and Empire Strikes Back are pretty much the flag bearers, and everything else tends to lose what made the original so great in the first place. Fortunately the Gladius II improves upon the original Gladius in every respect.

The original Gladius was a 6400 DPI mouse, with red lighting only, two side buttons and the 20 million click Omron switches installed. It was by now means a bad mouse and amongst the best when it was released a couple of years ago. Technology is relentless in its march towards the future though and by now there are many mice which better it in almost every regard. Which is where the Gladius II comes in.

So we have improved lighting by virtue of a triple-zone system with full RGB AURA lighting, including AURA Sync for those of you who want all your ASUS hardware to match up easily. The sensor, always integral to any gaming mouse worth its salt, has been been beefed up to the current market leading 12000 DPI, with all the benefits to accuracy that an optical sensor with such a high resolution can bring. Ramp the sensitivity up on the mouse, tune it down in your game, and you have pixel perfect accuracy at all times. Finally the switches retain the Omron type that are found in nearly every gaming mouse you can think of, but with the Gladius II they have been improved to the more rugged 50 million click options. These have a slightly firmer tactile response, but it is still as crisp and precise as you would expect from the market leader.

The ability to swap those Omron switches is the unique selling point of the Gladius II, and whereas the original Gladius required you to pull off the Teflon feet to access the screws necessary to remove the top cover, with the Gladius II a careful PCB redesign has enabled ASUS to provide screws which aren’t hidden beneath the feet, so you can change out the Omron switches without having to also replace your feet all the time. A boon to those who enjoy tinkering about. It isn’t only the switches that you can swap either, as the Gladius II is provided with two cables so you can decide whether you prefer a braided cable or the plainer plastic-coated one. We use mouse bungees here at OC3D so the microscopically larger friction between desk and braided cable when compared to the plain one isn’t an issue, so we’d go with the looks and ruggedness the braided cable affords.

In short the ASUS ROG Gladius II takes all that was great about the original Gladius and improves upon it to bring it bang up to date. Given that even mid-range mice are pushing the £50 mark these days the £80 asking price is in keeping with all high end mice. With a raft of features and the few rough edges that were on the Gladius smoothed off, the ROG Gladius II is an excellent premium gaming mouse and wins our OC3D Enthusiast Award.

  

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