ASUS ROG Pugio Mouse Review

Conclusion

Whenever we’re looking at a mouse, particularly given how pretty much every high end gaming mouse is a worthy purchase, you have to dig a little deeper to get a feel for what the designers intended.

The Pugio feels – and we hasten to add not in use – a little confused. It’s named after a Roman dagger, but the design on the side panels and the underside of the mouse replicate the Mayan school of design. So why wasn’t the mouse called a Hubi (destruction) or similar? Because there are no hints towards the Roman besides the name. Hmm.

Fortunately this minor crisis of identity is the only weak point of the hardware. The Pugio is a modern looking design with angles and creases, yet is very comfortable in the hand. The button placement falls neatly beneath your thumb whether you have tiny hands or hands befitting Brother Lee Love. Should you prefer a single button either side it’s easy to swap the pair out for a single option using the ones included in the package. Speaking of swapping things out ASUS also provide an alternative pair of switches for the main two buttons with the installed ones being robust 50 million click options and the extra pair giving a slightly lighter click response. Think of them as one pair which are robust but slightly firmer, and another pair that are like a race car where they are faster but slightly more fragile. Of course when you’re dealing with millions of clicks fragile is a very relative term. Most of us will buy a new mouse long before we wear the old one out.

The sensor is a 7200 DPI optical one – it’s nice to see so many high end mice are eschewing the laser sensors lately – and combines high 30G acceleration with great tracking to ensure your pointer goes exactly where you want it. You can adjust the angle snapping in the ROG Armoury software should you require it to be a bit more aggressive.

Indeed the software is probably the only real fly in the ointment. When you see as many mice as we do we have to put up with every manufacturers take upon how a peripherals software should behave. With Steelseries Engine we get graduated angle snapping and a plethora of colour options. Corsair’s CUE software also has all the colour choices under the sun. Gigabyte’s software has about the most fully-featured macro editor you could imagine. The ROG Armoury has good, but unspectacular lighting, binary angle snapping and a macro editor that doesn’t record keyboard commands. We don’t doubt for a moment that the mouse would be able to handle all these elements, just that the software is a little behind the competition.

But, as far as a plug and go mouse is concerned where you just want to set it to your favourite colour, tune the DPI to your preference and get on with the business of playing, the ROG Pugio is a good buy and so wins our OC3D Gamers Choice Award.

  

Discuss your thoughts about the ASUS ROG Pugio Mouse Review on the OC3D Forums.