NZXT Avatar Gaming Mouse Review

Playing with the Avatar

Once we’ve set the Avatar to our liking, it was time to put it through test. As we previously said, the mouse is smaller, leaner and lighter than others in the same category. It may not appeal to everybody being that way. It also doesn’t feature a weight custom system. We invited a fellow gamer, a big handed individual, and he dislike the Avatar; but for us it’s one the most ergonomically comfortable mice we’ve tested so far. It’s all very subjective, but we think the Avatar is both good at playing and working.

The lateral buttons deserve some praise. Since they stick out a bit, they’re easily reachable even by the pinkie, which has less strength and precision than the thumb to press a button. Unfortunately the DPI buttons are not that great – they are a bit far from the scroll wheel, and the back one requires you to contort the middle finger all the way to reach it. It would be better if they were smaller and a bit closer to the scroll wheel.

To try the Avatar’s precision and ease of use, we did our usual procedure: we always test our mice with the same game (Team Fortress 2) running the same map at the same server. We switched surfaces, from our Razer Destructor mouse pad (which we tested already) to the bare wood work table and also a regular mouse pad, like one of those you get for free. Obviously the Avatar + Destructor combo turned out to be the best, but the mouse gave the performance we expected from its 2,600 dpi on the other surfaces. We actually had some of our best matches lately with the Avatar. It excelled in quick action maneuvers and also during the quiet moments of just aiming and taking headshots at the virtual enemies. When it felt a bit light to perform the actions we required, we just decreased the DPI setting to compensate for the mouse’s natural agility.

We were truly impressed with the overall feel of the Avatar. It’s our gaming mouse of choice for now, even though we’ve tested some pretty good products recently, like the excellent OCZ Dominatrix.