Point and click adventures

Once again, I'm spending money on computer equipment. This time, it's a replacement for my mouse.

While my A4Tech XL-760H has served me well, I've recently started feeling a bit uncomfortable middle clicking with it. Honestly, I kinda thought that this might happen, as the mouse wheel was quite stubborn in both pushing and scrolling. The only programmable button next to it (which I used for middle click instead), as it turns out, is a little small, which puts force on a small portion of your finger. Not much, but enough that it adds up over time.

So, looking at my options, I decided to get the Roccat Kova[+]. It's not too expensive and does come with programmable buttons. In addition, it's got a bit of lighting on it (and you can configure the color), though as of now it doesn't seem like it's enough to be intrusive if you're watching a movie with the lights off or something. If it is though, you can apparently shut it off.

The Kova is an ambidextrous mouse and comes with seven buttons, though four of those buttons are thumb buttons so you'll only have easy access to five - left, middle, and right click, then two thumb buttons. The thumb buttons I find a little more stubborn than I'd like (not that they're that bad), but left and right click feel really good. As for the mouse wheel, middle clicking feels slightly awkward for my smaller hands. It's not too stubborn to press, but the mouse wheel is slightly higher than I want it to be. I might be able to get used to it, though.

Mouse scrolling, on the other hand, is pretty smooth, and the amount of resistance between each scroll tick is good. You can feel each distinct tick as you scroll by it, and there's just enough there so that you can blow on by for faster scrolling, or just stop dead for precision. As for the thumb buttons on the opposite side of the mouse... you can use your ring finger to kinda press in the top button, though you must apply pressure directly inward when your ring finger wants to press down and inward. It's a little awkward honestly, and from here you can figure out that it's best to just forget the opposite bottom thumb button exists.

I'd say the mouse is more on the compact side too, as it's got a fairly low and slim profile. With its comfy smooth exterior, it feels great when fingertipping the mouse, or just having your fingers rest on it. As I said though, with my hands I feel it may be a little long, so keep that in mind if you've got small hands.

The drivers to configure the mouse you'll have to go online to Roccat's site to get though. A little lazy that they aren't supplied with the mouse itself, but eh. It's one of those where you can configure one of the buttons to be a mouse Shift key (they call it the EasyShift[+] key), so you can have two bindings to any button on the mouse. Thing is, it can only be assigned to one of the bottom thumb buttons and nothing else. This means that there's really only one practical place to put the key if you decide to use it, and you'll either like it or you won't.

First impressions, what could they have done better? Personally, I think they could have fit in one more button below the mouse wheel, maybe even two. It's something that I wish they had so I'd have an easy DPI button as I do actually use that button. As well, it would have been great if they found some way that you could press the side buttons with a bit of diagonal force. That way, you could actually press the side buttons with something other than the thumb if you had to. I don't know how adding a third side button would have fared, though if they could fit one in, I'd imagine it'd be a great place for the EasyShift button.

So, there you go: first impressions on the Roccat Kova+. We'll see how this mouse goes as I use it, I guess.