NZXT Avatar Gaming Mouse Review

Mice specifically designed for gaming have been on the scene since Razer first released the Boomslang back in 1998 and, during the interim 10 years, many other manufacturers have followed suit. While Razer remains one of the big names of gaming peripherals, a few other companies have tried their hand at PC devices designed specifically for gamers. Logitech’s G15 keyboard came to the market 2 years ago, while Microsoft recently released the SideWinder mouse with its own adjustable weight system. Now it looks like NZXT has stepped into the ring with their entry, the Avatar. Designed specifically to take on the big boys in the world of gaming mice, how does the Avatar stack up against the more established brands?


The Avatar is a 7-button optical mouse featuring an on-the-fly adjustable resolution between 650 and 2600 DPI. Ambidextrous in design, the Avatar sports subtle blue lighting and sleek lines that give it a nice finish and feel. To the left of the Avatar is the LED readout which denotes what DPI setting is currently active. The skin of the Avatar has a nice rubbery texture to it that helps keep your hand from slipping, even over long gaming sessions. The bottom sports 3 Teflon pads to ensure smooth motion across any mousing surface. The Avatar is a pretty light mouse, but has a good weight to it which helps you from overshooting your targets. As it was designed for use by both right and left-handed persons, two buttons are split among the right and left sides. Mouse buttons themselves are easy to push and the mouse wheel provides a satisfying click with each turn.


The Avatar features a low profile middle button/wheel, so pressing the button takes little effort. However, the wheel itself is set to a fairly high tension, preventing accidental scrolling while pressing down. This is especially important if you use the mouse wheel button frequently in games, like for movement or to zoom in. This high tension makes it difficult to accidently scroll the wheel, which generally will switch weapons at the wrong time. The drawback to a high tensioned wheel is that scrolling takes a hit, as it’s not as easy to flick through long web pages or documents. Situated behind the mouse wheel are the two extra buttons that are set by default to change the DPI on-the-fly. Overall, the Avatar has a good feel to it, but as we used it more, we realized that it must’ve been designed for gamers with hands of a tad bit smaller dimension. The ambidextrous design had us accidently pushing the right-side button with our ring finger, which forced us to be more aware of our hand placement than we normally would have been.