Rog series from Asus has been dedicated to provide only the best experience towards the gaming community. Their gaming notebooks are some of the best on the market, so there is a lot on the line for the ROG peripherals to complement your gaming environment. Now, they have grabbed everyone’s attention, with the addition of the new gaming mouse that brings totally new way of customization that we have not seen before, so this is a ROG Gladius from Asus priced at $79. This mouse is placed in the higher to category, that can be a little risky given the abundance of excellent and less expensive offerings on the market. The Gladius comes with outstanding build quality and top surface is made out of premium plastic material for comfortable use. The designers have ensured best ergonomics on this mouse, which means that Gladius is a perfect fit for all grip types. At 116 grams Gladius does feel heavy, but still it’s a well-balanced, there is no customizable weight system to suit users need but I would not complain as it suited my style quite well.
The rubber grips on both right and left side of the mouse ensured a perfect grip, the curvature on the right side of the mouse provided enough support for both ring and pinky fingers and the slight curve on the left side suited palm type grip extremely well. Asus has designed Gladius with mobility mind you got two cables one braided (2 meter cable) and other shorter plain rubber cable (1meter long). It is removable that allows you to leave one at your desk and take the other with you for a laptop for example. Both of them have proper logo at the USB tip to help differentiate between other cables. Attaching it is pretty straight forward, by just plugging it in, but the mouse also comes along with lock that essentially prevents the cable from getting unplugged. The mouse also comes with carrying pouch which is a good addition and overall I really like the flexibility of having to use one mouse at different working or gaming environments.
There are 6 programmable buttons on the Gladius. The Omron switches on the left and right primary buttons are not heavy with pleasing tactile response. The scroll wheel is definitely one of the best on the market, scroll steps are so define and accurate and pressing it did not require a lot of force with good bounce back. The DPI shift button behind the scroll wheel is easy to reach and it enables instant switching between two sensitivity levels. The two side buttons on the left side where nicely placed for quick use by your thumb, they did provide excellent feedback, overall nothing to complain about.
The Gladius is equipped with 6400DPI optical sensor and it’s so important for Asus to choose the optical sensor, as many gamers are not even starting to consider in mice that are not optical. I had no issues with tracking as it was perfect just like my Mad Catz R.A.T. Pro X. I enjoy my usual 1600 to 1800 DPI setting which gave me the best tracking experience with precise aim in game and satisfying accuracy for editing as well. Tracking on white surfaces was really inaccurate so we recommend using dark mouse mat. While there is an option in the driver software for glass surface, we also encountered inaccurate center tracking with jittery movements regardless of lift off distance adjustments in the software itself.
Moving on to the lighting of the mouse, Gladius comes with two LED zones one is located at the back of the mouse and another is located in the scroll wheel. Unfortunately you can’t customize the color so by default there is only red color, but you can play around with lighting effects like breathing or steady-state. There are also some hidden features in the software, which enables gamers to change logo lighting effects and turn off the elimination on the rest of the zones.
Asus also included an extra pair of Omron switches allowing users to swap them for different click resistance, this is the next level of customization we have not seen before on a consumer mice. To replace the switches you first have to peel off the four Teflon feet at the bottom this means effectively destroying the Teflon feet, because they are not designed for multiple use. But Asus also provides extra set of Teflon feet for this purpose, but you are limited to that one replacement procedure. Once you remove the fore screws on the bottom you can simply remove the top cover of the frame, once that removed you can take a moment to admire the engineering that went into crafting this gaming product and replacing the switches in not so difficult, all you have to do is to pull on one of the Omron stiches gently it will pop out and insert the replacement. The replacement switches provide lighter actuations so if you prefer really fast switch this is possible with Gladius also you can experiment with mixing switches for example: a slightly heavier right click, while a lighter left click. I also wanted to mention that there is no way to visually differentiate between, default versus the additional Omron switches, but if you look at serial numbers it will help you to determine the correct pairs.
The software just looks gorgeous with the user, gridded for four different tabs and option to add profiles on your PC. The buttons tab essentially displays the physical overview of the mouse, with 8 different button mappings. The performance tab helps you change two different sensitivity options plus adjustment to acceleration and deceleration and angle snapping that we would recommend you leave untouched and finally the option to change the polling rate which is appreciated. The calibration tool helps you to either manually calibrate the surface or choose to different preset surfaces that are pre-loaded on the software. It’s always important to do such a thing for your mouse pad or surface. Finally a macro manager is built-in, that is easy to use and thanks to the built-in memory all the settings are saved on the mouse.
The Gladius is well-built, ergonomically smart design gaming mouse. The optical sensor is excellent and I didn’t have any issues with tracking, the option to change the DPI setting on the fly and inclusion of dual cables for mobility is a nice add-on. Plus interchangeable Omron switches are huge bonus that allows extra resistances control per switch and finally the excellent driver software that rounds it up nicely. The few negatives we can mention in this price bracket, is the lack of customizable weight system which may or may not be in issue depending on your preference. While an extra set of Teflon is included, the process of replacing the Omron switches effectively makes one set of the useless and more user-friendly process of deconstruction would be great. Unfortunately tracking on glass surfaces may be inconsistent despite having a glass preset inside the driver software, but at the end of the day the Gladius is not disappoint and we would recommend this to anyone looking to experiment with different Omron switches.
Pros:
Excellent ergonomics
Outstanding optical tracking
On-The-Fly DPI change
Inclusion on dual cables
Excellent interchangeable Omron switches
Clean driver Software
Cons:
Lack of weight customization
Process of replacing the switches
Poor glass tracking