Mad Catz R.A.T.5 Laser Gaming Mouse - White

First of all let's talk about the packaging and the contents of the box. The outer box of the product is really nice, it outlines the main features which I will describe later. After taking the cover off, you see the main box with the mouse in it. It's protected by a styrofoam to prevent any damage to the mouse. After taking the mouse out, and lifting the foam you see a reader's manual, some advertisements from Mad Catz, warranty information and stickers which are a great bonus in my opinion. I stuck the smaller sticker onto my case. The manual explains each button on the mouse, and advises you to go and download a software for the mouse in order to customise some of the buttons.The mouse has a number of features which appealed to me when looking for a gaming mouse in this budget. The mouse contains 6 programmable buttons such as: Scroll-wheel, precision aim button, a 2-way thumb switch and back and forward buttons. You can customize each one of them separately. The mode switch button on the mouse allows you to switch between 3 different profiles that you have set, thus allowing you to have 18 custom commands, at a blink of an eye. If you play a lot of FPS games then the precision aim button is for you! The button itself allows you to slow down the cursor immediately after you press it allowing you to aim better. The sensitivity can be modified in the Profile Editor, to allow you to set your own personal aim sensitivity. Another feature that this mouse has are the weights included with the mouse, each 6g ring adds up to 30g of additional weight, to help some play better. The option to remove them is great since, most people want to have the best control of the cursor possible. Mad Catz also though about the people with big hands by adding a length adjustment to the mouse for perfect comfort. The material that the mouse is made from is aluminium, which makes the mouse lightweight but sturdy.The Profile Editor software from Mad Catz is a great thing for people using the mouse. It features many ways to configure the programmable keys on the mouse from pressing Alt+F4 for you to typing a custom message with only one click. You can create custom profiles for the mouse with your favourite combinations, so if you start playing Skyrim, you can immediately switch to a Skyrim profile on the mouse. You can get many profiles at http://www.madcatz.com/downloads/ for a lot of games and programmes such as Skyrim, Photoshop or After Effects. In my opinion it's a great thing to have as it saves you time and makes everything accessible by pressing a button. I found the software very helpful for games and programmes.As everyone knows everything will get dirty eventually, just as this mouse. The white colour makes this mouse especially vulnerable to dirt and dust. Every now and again you will have to clean your mouse as I don't think anyone likes a mouse that's dirty. This mouse is difficult to clean as it contains a lot of tight spaces that dirt can enter and get lodged, for example under the back and forward buttons at the side. It's a very hard to reach area because it's very narrow and only a bit of dirt enters the place so you can't really catch the dirt with the cotton bud and get it out of there. The R.A.T. 5 has a number of hard to reach spots, but if you try hard enough you will eventually get to them. Also note that sometimes some dirt get under the sensor making it run crazy, so I advise you to use a mouse pad for better sensitivity and to stop dust from blocking the sensor.Overall I am very satisfied with the mouse, and after using it from May I had no problems with it.Pros:+ 6 programmable buttons+ 3 profiles easily switched with a button ( Profiles for games, programmes etc avalible at http://www.madcatz.com/downloads/+ 5 6g removable weights+ Lightweight and sturdy aluminium+ Precision aim mode button+ Long cable+ Stickers!Cons:- Gets dirty quickly- Some hard to clean areas- Cable gets dirty

To this day, rat mice are the best feeling you can get for a mouse. though,rat 7 is much better than rat 5 for a quite small additional price considering the upgrade.Very good mouse, there is much less configuration options than what I was used to with the rat 7, the mouse is thinner, and wings cannot be deployed the 7 can. Too bad, I wish realised this sooner. I would recommend you to buy the 7 instead of this one, it is really worth it.MAC USERS: It took me 4 re installations of the same latest 10.9 driver for the mac to accept it on Yosemite, don't ask me why, I have no idea, but it finally worked. Just keep at it. ( i used TrashMe app after each install to make sure my install was clean )Final word: if you want the best mouse possible, this is good, rat 7 is way better.

I wanted a good, ergonomic mouse and this one is great. It looks fantastic, feels great in my hands, and what appeared to be some sort of adjustment screw in the picture is actually a thumbwheel. That's great because the ability to scroll horizontally is a feature that's been missing from most mice. This mouse isn't officially supported on Linux. However, buttons can be remapped. Execute the command:xinput set-button-map 9 1 2 3 4 5 0 0 11 10 7 6 8 0 0 0 0automatically on login and you're golden.If I do have a problem with it it'd be that dust tends to get into the hole for the sensor and makes it behave wrong. Usually what happens is it'll only work horizontally or vertically. That probably isn't unique to this mouse but it's something to keep in mind: Just give the bottom a nice clean, and you'll be back up and running.

Little overpriced for what you get, considering the advantages this mouse offers come via software, not hardware, and the software is a free download from Katz. But a bit of a bargain in Amazon's Cyber Monday deals. Only as good as its poorest element, which has to be the plastic feet-pads that allow it to slide over a mouse mat. The plastic used is just incredibly cheap and nasty, and you can feel resistance to movement.Has a nice weight, derived from a slab of metal screwed to the base. It's only function appears to add weight to the mouse. On that score, they could have used better quality components instead to get the weight required, which i think is a tad too high. Very good button sensitivity, and has an actual middle button as well as scroll wheel -- the wheel simply doesn't work responsively in games requiring a button.The best "plus" I can see is that the software (yes, the software, not the hardware) can adjust mouse sensitivity at specific pre-planned moments during gameplay, such as when taking aim with a weapon that requires a steady shot-- sniper rifles, bows, crossbows. No more shaking targets and poor control! Otherwise, very little here that creates an advantage over the worst gaming mice on the market -- WiFi mice, they'd have you believe, due to fractional latency in signal transmissions. These are so brief as to be unnoticeable by the "average" human (tests have been run). But for super-humans with reflex times about a fifth better than us average people (again, tests have been run), a hundredth of a second might just come in handy. That would equate to a distance advantage of 10cm in a 100 m race....Oddly, the absolute top of the range gaming mice are WiFi. Who are they kidding?