R.A.T.9 Review

[Motopsychojdn]

I can't find a mouse specific section so I figured here was as good a place as any to place this,

I just ordered a Rat9 as my first 'Gaming' mouse, previously I've used cheap £10 mouse 'n' board combo's with no issues,
I'm new to Fps gaming, started Crysis about a month ago, just completed C2 and am looking forward to C3 in february so I thought I'd try a 'proper' gaming mouse and my research led me to the 9, which is odd as I don't normally like wireless kit,
I'll do an unboxing video and firstday play review for folks who are in the same boat as I am,
It should be here saturday but I thought I'd get the thread started all ready for arrival.
**Edit, forgot to add link lol, I'm too excited hehe**
http://www.cyborggaming.com/prod/rat9.htm
Am I the only one who thinks the silhouette looks like Serenity?

Can't stop the signal Yay!!!
It will be used for:
WoW
Crysis series (Non-Multi-player, I'm not ready yet )
Mass effect series
Alice 2 Madness returns
And I may get round to re-installing Deadspace seeing as I now play Fps stuff, it was given as a gift a while back but I never played it past 2 minutes, I couldn't 'do' the controls
**Edit,
This is the software/drivers and manuals page, you'll need to install the drivers first then the software, when you have installed it and can't find it anywhere, downloads,temp etc, look in the little taskbar popup (Show hidden icons) theres a little Cyborg logo and thats your door
http://www.cyborggaming.com/download.htm

Once you have downloaded the profiles and unzipped them, save/move them to the Smart Technology profiles folder in Documents, then the Icon in hidden will let you select your profile quickly, gaming, swap to Chrome, back to gaming in seconds, rather than having to open the editor everytime you want to switch it took me a while to brain that one out so I thought I'd pass it on

Have a bit of a play around but its very quick to get used to, pop that up and set the profile for the game you are about to play, activate and you are away, or use the nongaming profile for Chrome, Firefox, I.E.9 or whatever

Moto

 

[mcnumpty23]

arent "proper" gaming mice wired not wireless

thats the first wireless mouse that has a hot swappable battery that i have seen since my old logitech g7 packed up

always put me off getting a new wireless mouse if it didnt have the ability to hot swap the battery for a charged up one

will be interested to see what you think of it

certainly not cheap and definately different looking

 

[Motopsychojdn]

I was always of the opinion that real gamers are wired as well,(But then again I don't consider myself a 'Gamer'),
part of the reason I never entertained wireless kit, but the response time is apparently very good, almost zero latency and I do like the look/idea of the adjustable parts
Expensive yes, but I don't expect to replace it for a few years so £80/4= £20 a year for a mouse (I hope)
which is still more than I paid for my usual cheap ones,
I'm not a total convert yet so hopefully it can be an impartial review, which is better than the manufacturers or retailers 'OMFG!! XXX Extreme hypermegawundaaamouzze' type reviews,
I shortlisted between this, the M.M.O.7 and the regular R.A.T.7 and I think it was the slightly fewer buttons and hotswap that swung me, the 7 has a lot of buttons but my old mind was seeing that as too many,
I'm looking forward to it myself though
**Edit, and yes, I probably will mod it haha**
Moto

 

[HEXiT]

i have the rat 7 contagion . its a slightly updated version of the rat 7 and 9's sensor i gotta agree its 1 of the better mice i have used. especially as far as acceleration is concerned. all hi dpi mouse employ acceleration its a mark of how good the mouse is as to how well they can disable it and still keep the functionality of the mouse intact. cyborg have managed to get it bang on for me... b4 i had the Lachesis and even though i had the acceleration disabled it would still interfere with my tracking. and not in a good way. it was lik driving a car with the handbreak on as the mouse pointer was always dragging behind and had a limited speed. it would still manage to stop in the rite place but always at a limited speed. so if an enemy avatar was running left to right and i tried to track on him the aim point was allways just behind him. and no matter if i increased my speed on the mat the mouse would still not catch up to the fleeing soldier.
anyways the day i plugged in the rat 7 i immediately saw the issue i was having with the Lachesis. up until then i thought it was just me getting pwned. after 45 mins i was back to my own murderous self picking off guys just feet away from em with double and triple taps. and doing spot on headshots something i struggled with unless the target was stationary.
so swapping mouse is the best thing i have done for gaming in a good while...
the rat 7 is reasonably well made. with robust materials used where needed the thumb scroll wheel i dont often use but the rest of the adjustments are really worth there weight in gold.
yes the sensor still has the down and right lift off issue but if you run the mouse at 1600/900 or 1920/1080 (or as close as you can get it) you wont have to lift the mouse off the mat ant to be honest in games i never had an issue as its just not that intrusive on the new sensor...
anyways the rat 7 contagion and infection are upgraded versions of the 7 and 9 and i would have went for them over the 9 even though they are the same price.

i was recently contacted by a company who have asked me to try there new gaming mouse. an 8000 dpi new design. they are sending me (yeah i know me!!) it from there factory on friday and i will hopefully be reviewing it sometime in the next 3 weeks just in time for its release to the public... from what i have seen of it. its looking pretty good. and although the company is new to gaming it looks like they may be off to a flying start... but hey lets not jump the gun i dont have it yet so cant really say what its like... but heres hoping.

anyways the rat 7 has build issues, as does the rat 9 the contagion and infaction have slightly less and after using mine for the last year i can say even with the slight teething problems i had in that i had to get it replace. its still the best mouse i have used in a long long time.

 

[Motopsychojdn]

Cheers for the input Hexit, Cool news about the freebies there,
any Nda aside I look forward to your thoughts on the new mouse
and hope I'll enjoy mine too
Moto

 

[HEXiT]

theres no NDA i thought there might be but nope.. i get to say what i think... like i say it sounds promising so im looking forward to trying it out.

 

[Motopsychojdn]

Pm me when you get the time in case I don't catch the review, I'm normally in Cpu/Overclocking/Homebuild although I do seem to be frequenting the Pc gaming side as well lately
Mine may be here today, was dispatched yesterday first class so fingers crossed I'll have a package for me when I wake up later
Mm, new toy day hehe
Moto

 

[Motopsychojdn]

Ok, mousies here, I've had a quick blast on C2 and as soon as my fingers get used to having the buttons assigned I reckon I'm good,
I'll update this tomorrow or sunday with some pics and my experiences but so far, I am impressed with the ease of use and the speed with which its becoming easy to use, half of it is the mouse, the other half is programming your brain to use it,
**Edit 1: I.E.9 and general use is great so far, really intuitive to get used to using the mouse for tab-swapping, page fwd/back etc, and the sniper button becomes an 'add to favourites' button, instant bookmarking
had about a half hour on Crysis 2 and its fairly ok, some dpi changes were needed to get comfy and one or two buttons aren't programmed into my brain yet, keep looking at the keyboard instead of using my assigned button
WoW is going to take a little longer to set up but I'm watching movies right now, I'll sort that as and when I have time,
I'll also add some links/instructions for fast set up as some parts weren't particularly straightforward for the technologically impaired **

**Edit 2: Had another ten minutes on Crysis2, and I would say that I am 'used to' the functions already, totally comfortable with the setup now and my brains adjusted easily to using the new buttons instead of finding the relevant key on the keyboard, its getting very normal very quickly, and I'm thinking that a smooth transition like this is a good thing for newcomers, not saying that its a particular feature of this mouse, maybe all gaming mice are similar in the pickup but for those wondering about whether they can adapt to a new style of mouse or not, its a reassuring sign
Moto

 

[Motopsychojdn]

Right, I've managed to tear myself away from Crysis 2 long enough to upload some pictures,
New mouse,

Same as anybody else on the net, its a nice pic but doesn't tell you how big/small it is,
given that the flat of my palm is a little over four inches, heres a shot of the mouse and how it sits in my hand with the rest extended fully back and the thumbside fully tweaked out using the normal palmrest

which lets your hand sit like this,

Obviously you can adjust further but its a better idea of the mouses size than the usual stock photo's I've found online,
By the way, you've seen the info on the palm rests right? rubberised, normal and heightened? heres some perspective on the height difference

it looks massive but in practice I found although it altered my grip style a bit, but wan't a massively different experience,
I started using the mouse without weights as I though it was heavy, way heavier than my old Saitek unit, but after a while I tried it with all the weights in and wow, solid comfortable weightiness Batman, its not too heavy, its nicely comforting and although I might mod to get some more weight on it, its more than enough to keep you from wanging the mouse around on the desk,
Need to get some RL stuff done today but I'll try and set the WoW profile up later and see how it goes
**Edit,
Wow seems ok apart from a minor glitch, I set a button up for a macro to mount/dismount but everytime you hit it, it also opens up a chat window like /say or if you are in guild chat then /guild, preventing flying mounts from taking off untill you close the pane, quick fix is to set another button up as 'Enter' so you can hit that straight away and take off, with the obvious bonus of having a chatpane button on call as well
Moto