Roccat Savu Gaming Mouse Review

Roccat is fairly new to the gaming mouse market, but they've still managed to make a strong impression. Thanks to their high quality gaming mice and the fact that they're constantly releasing new mice. You've probably already heard of the Kone and Kova, in this review we'll focus on a slightly smaller mouse in the roccat gaming mouse line-up, namely the Roccat Savu.

The first thing you'll notice is that the mouse is quite small and it reminds one of the SteelSeries Kinzu. Unfortunately this mouse isn't neutral, in other words you'll only be able to use it comfortably if your're right-handed. The mouse will work very good whether you use claw or palm grip, especially if your hands are slightly smaller than average like mine. However, if you give the mouse a fair chance to get used to, it'll do just as well for bigger hands.

The second thing you'll notice is that the Roccat Savu features something called "anti-glide" on the sides. Usually this means the sides are rubber coated, but Roccat has taken another route to this solution, they've chosen to rough up the plastic surface that covers the mouse is made of. It kinda feels like a mild yet hard sandpaper (man that was a tough feeling to describe) It may feel a bit strange at first, but once you get used to it it's actually not that bad.

The number of buttons is relatively low, a total of two main buttons, two side buttons and one scroll button. This was a little disappointing to me personally, but then again, not everyone needs a lot of buttons. The scroll is thick and covered in rubber, which makes it highly comfortable to use.

Underneath the mouse we'll find two wide glides, one in the front and one in the back, which both cover the mouse from left to right. I personally like this new trend of huge glides, they've just always seemed to perform better for me. The 'Omron' buttons are quite comfortable even if they're slightly harder than your average mouse and kind of remind one of the SteelSeries Sensei buttons.

Roccat usually likes to pimp their mice with many lamps, but this time you'll only find one lamp which is placed on the very back of the mouse.

Ok now on to the technical stuff, this is where I feel the Roccat Savu truly becomes interesting and far exceeded my expectations. They have decided to go for an optical sensor and therefore opened up the eyes for many enthusiastic gamers. We can find this sensor in various gaming mice such as the CM Spawn, Zowie AM & the Zowie EC Evo. If you've tried any of the mentioned gaming mice you should know that it's an excellent sensor that overall performs very well.

One thing Roccat Savu has done a little bit differently from their competitors is that they've developed drivers that manage to crank the DPI up to 4000. Even though it's not very usual to play at those high DPI levels some of you might appreciate the option.

As i mentioned earlier the optical sensor is excellent, you can configure Hz (125, 250, 500 and 1000Hz), four levels of DPI settings (400, 800, 1600 and 400 DPI). This mouse also comes with the very handy Roccat feature called Easy-Shift[+] which enables you to shift between mouse button profiles in one easy click, enabling you to use more button combinations than physically available. This feature is very easy to enable and manage, but I'm personally not a fan of it, even though a neat feature for those who like to keep their main functions on the mouse while gaming.

One thing that I find disappointing is the fact that there's no button to easy change DPI on the mouse, you'll have to do this using the software. No big deal I guess, but it's an option I feel is mandatory on today's gaming mice.

So far I really like the mouse, one thing that surprised me is the few numbers of lamps on the mouse. This is usually something that attracts younger players, and it makes you wonder, perhaps Roccat is taking a new approach and targeting more mature gamers. Whatever the reason, I'm more for the clean design type of gaming mice, so for me it's a big plus.

The Roccat Savu features something called "Roccat Achievement Display", basically what it does is that it keeps track of all your clicks, how many inches you've moved the mouse and how many times you've scrolled. If you keep doing these things fast you'll get rewarded with an achievement, this kind of made me laugh out loud, why on earth would Roccat pour money and time in developing a feature like this? Oh well, some of you might find this feature amusing, but I personally think it's a waste of developing power.

This mouse is quite expensive, but personally I believe you get what you pay for. It beats many of the other gaming mice in the same category, it’s very comfortable to use and the buttons feel nice as well. One thing to consider though, if you have big hands there are definitely better gaming mice to be found in the same price category.

Pros

+ Excellent quality build

+ Very good anti-glide

+ Good performance

+ Good software

+ Comfortable to hold and comfortable buttons

+ Excellent optical Sensor

+ Scaled down on lamps

Cons

-Won’t fit people with huge hands very well

-Roccat Achievement Display totally unnecessary

-Deceiving looks (looks a bit cheap at first glance)