ROCCAT Savu Optical Gaming Mouse Review

ROCCAT Savu Mouse

The ROCCAT Savu was released earlier this year and was interesting due to the fact that it is considered a mid-size hybrid gaming mouse. When it was introduced in May 2012 it carried a fairly high suggested retail price of $99.99, but now can be found for $51.65 shipped. Not a bad price considering this mouse uses a 4000 dpi optical sensor for precise gaming movements! It’s also the world’s first mouse to feature a stats and trophy system called the ROCCAT Achievements Display, or R.A.D. ROCCAT has brought many interesting features to the table with this mouse and now that the price has dropped by nearly half, we figured that we should check it out!

ROCCAT Savu Mouse Specifications:

• 4000 dpi optical gaming sensor
• Incl. Omron switches
  
• 60 inches per second maximum speed
• 20G acceleration
• 125, 250, 500, 1000Hz polling rate
• 544kB on-board memory
• Zero angle snapping
• 1.8m braided USB cable
• 1 year warranty

The Savu uses the Pro
Optic R3 sensor to get the mouses 4000 dpi rating and it is user adjustable. This means that gamers can pick between 400, 800, 1600 and
4000 dpi settings for precise control at the speed you
need. Let’s take a closer look at the retail box and then the gaming mouse!

The packaging of the ROCCAT Savu is really quite nice. While there was no window to let me see the mouse before opening the box, it wouldnt have mattered anyway. As soon as you put your hand on this mouse you will feel what you wouldnt be able to see.

Everything in the box is black including the mouse. Individually the packaging components are fairly flimsy but when assembled do a fine job of protecting the contents of the box. It also included what looks like a credit card. After some poking around on their website I found the number used on it is for registering your part although the number on the card is not the same as the serial number of the mouse.

Documentation is available in a map-like foldout page and shows you what the default settings are for the extra buttons with and without having installed the driver. No driver is actually included in the package. After the second read through I noticed multi-lingual instructions that send you to their support site to download it.

What you get is a beta driver zip file. If you are interested in this mouse you most likely know how to deal with that but it would be nice touch to have some kind of instructions for the less tech-savvy folks. You can also download a couple previous versions if you have trouble. At the time of writing they did not list a final version.

The Savu is a right-handed mouse that has a small-to-medium shape, so if you are left-handed or have big hands this is not the mouse for you. Mouse construction is deceptively solid for what it weighs. Notice that there is just a scroll wheel on top of the mouse, so there is no button to change the resolution setting.

The Savu has two left side buttons above the thumb rest. The rear button features the same Easy-Shift[+] technology from the Kone[+] that weve already tested here. This technology increases the number of programmable functions without actually putting more physical buttons on the mouse.

There is a small strain relief piece of rubber where the cable enters the mouse which I was able to pull with more force than I should have in any
direction without causing any damage. The right side of the mouse looks like it has a button on it, but it does not.

The feet of the mouse are the little plastic pads that are very
slick. Rather than simply rounding the corners of the feet, they are
actually beveled. This proved valuable when mousing on a less than
optimal surface. Specifically I could slide my mouse across the pad over
a piece of paper without disturbing the paper. It also passed the crumb
test. Still annoying to have crumbs on the mouse pad but the mouse
didnt grind to a halt or get hung on the crumbs. ROCCAT was really
paying attention to detail on the feet.

With the mouse flipped over you can see the illuminated rear light bar that you can change the color of and you have 16.8 million colors to pick from! The colors are controlled by the drivers that we’ll take a look at on the next page.