Mad Catz The R.A.T. DWS Dual Mode Wireless Gaming Mouse, Black, Unisex

My last mouse was a Steel Series Rival 500. Steel Series has decided to turn their drivers into a massive marketing portal. You have to create an account on their website and "Log Into" Steel Series in order to use their drivers. Plus they started injecting advertisements onto the desktop.Yeah.Ergo, I am ejecting Steel Series out of my PC. See yah.I found this Mad Catz mouse and it seems to be wide enough (skinny mice give me cramps) and have enough buttons for me, so I ordered it. I'm so sad I didn't upgrade to this mouse long ago. First really really really cool thing about this mouse, is that it doesn't use any special drivers. You read that right. It's automatically seen as a standard HID device by windows. It's hidden super power is that it carries it's configuration and processing on-board the mouse. Not on your PC. Meaning if you moved this to another PC or other device, it will still behave exactly the same.So how it pulls off this trick; It has four profile memory slots. They are:Black, Red, Blue, and purple.There is a dedicated (unmappable) button to toggle through the four profiles. You don't have to use all four profiles if you don't need them. But you can. This is where your configurations live, on the mouse itself.The software that comes with this (download from Mad Catz) is a configuration editor. Now it takes a bit to wrap your head around this, and there are no instructions or help files. *sigh* But here's how it works.The editor has (unlimited?) profiles that you can create or edit. When you get it how you want, you choose which mouse profile you want to "apply" to (Black, Red, Blue, Purple). I find it works best if you manually put the mouse into the profile mode (example "Red"), then create a profile named "Red" in the editor, and apply it to the second slot with the editor.It's sorta janky and it's not explained that the editor itself has profiles, and the mouse has slots, and you can flash any profile to any memory slot on the mouse. It's a little buggy, but once you get it and grasp the concept, the power behind it becomes apparent.The downside of flashing a mouse with a config (or set of configs) is that there is no software running on your PC to auto-select a profile when you boot up a particular game. I have two profiles I use, one for desktop (Black) and one for gaming (Red), my blue and purple profiles aren't used yet. I might find a game someday that need a radically different setup, and I'll use the blue or purple.I won't delve into all the settings and macros you can create and so forth. You can do pretty much any setup that any modern mouse can do. DPI settings, remap buttons, setup a sniping button, assign key combos. It's all there. This is it. The Holy Grail of gaming mice. Better than my old Logitech G700s, better than my Steel Series Rival 500. You can change the weight, the length, the grippiness, it comes with a slew of replaceable grip panels and has a wrench for adjustments built right into the rear.I mean seriously, how has this mouse not set the gaming world on fire? I can only speculate that the lack of documentation means some users can't get a good grasp on it's configuration. The separation of editor with it's profiles and the flashable memory slots on the mouse itself is never explained anywhere.Finally, I've read where someone claimed the mouse had lag, but I've measured it to less than .006 seconds, and since human response time runs around .200 seconds, this isn't factor at all. It's as fast or faster than any mouse I've ever seen.So there you go. That's it. I love this mouse. It's has features no other mouse has, and for less than $100, it's a total steal.

After spending over 100 dollars on two different gaming mice of reputable brands (Razor and Logitech) and having both of them break within months, I had a 'straw that broke the camel's back' type of situation and splurged on this masterpiece. Why keep spending money on new mice every couple of months when you can just get the best of the best?Thus far I have had exactly zero issues with it. The customizability, both physical and software, is mind-blowing. Within a half hour I had tuned this thing exactly to my preferences. The ceramic feet glide effortless across my mousepad, and seem to be scratch resistant - which means the quality of the glide never degrades. The sensor of the mouse is unmatched. The sniper button, which is nicely placed right where the thumb rests, is a fantastic feature for FPS gaming. The mouse has onboard profiles, so you can save settings directly to it and take it with you for use on another computer. Speaking of that, it comes with a really nice carry-case, a tool for adjusting the resistance of the mouse wheel (yeah, you can do that, and it's awesome) and a nice little brush for brushing away dead skin and other debris from the mouse - a very nice touch indicative of a high quality product.I decided to use the extra pinky rest piece it came with, which allows your pinky to rest on a little platform on the right side of the mouse, avoiding that annoying feeling you get from your pinky dragging on the mousepad. Another awesome touch that I didn't know I needed.Overall, I am very impressed with this mouse and have absolutely zero buyers remorse, provided it lasts me a good long time.Update (May 2024) below:My original unit unfortunately broke within a couple of months - the mouse wheel came right off. However, I reached out to customer service with pictures and videos of the mouse explaining what had happened and they replaced it, no questions asked, free of charge. I have now used the new unit for much longer than the original and it has not failed in any way - I am guessing I just got unlucky with the first one.I am still insanely impressed by this mouse. The customization and feature set seriously makes it the only mouse on the market that is 'right' for me and I can never go back.

Have been using this brand for over a decade. It is a HEAVY, precise mouse that does not jitter around the mousepad because of your wrist pulse is moving it.THIS MODEL ALSO INCLUDES ALL THE RIGHT SIDE PINKY RESTS AND CHANGEABLE PALM RESTS AS THE +8ADV!!Unlike FAR too many mice (Cosair) you don't need professional setup experience to use the key mapping or any other software, which does not interfere with my Razer keyboard OR keypad!I like the weight adjust and lead screw left thumbpad adjust as well as the palm rest fore and aft adjust, with replaceable palm rests for more height.Have a person with a large hand and another with a small hand both using their own zeroed in mouse physical and software settings with great performance for both!The only other mouse in the 'Adult' weight class I've ever used was a Razer Ouroboros, But Razer went Flimsey like Logitech, so I've parted with those brands.I'm just glad somone resurrected this brand!!