Cyborg R.A.T. 9 Wireless Gaming Mouse Review

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Cyborg R.A.T. 9 Wireless Gaming Mouse Review - Introduction



Based in San Diego Mad Catz are a company who develop and produce various innovative items for consoles and PC. Under the main brand they offer casual gaming products with various sub brands focusing on other consumer groups. With the Cyborg brand Mad Catz market pro-gamer gear, high end items which are designed for consumers who need maximum performance and features from their peripherals.

In Cyborg's mouse range the top end model is the R.A.T. 9 which is a product which takes their unique mouse design and turns it wireless. Today we have the ultra-customisable R.A.T. 9 connected to our test system to find out if this product is style over substance or if Cyborg has created the ultimate rodent.

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Cyborg R.A.T. 9 Wireless Gaming Mouse - Packaging and Bundle



The R.A.T 9 is packaged in a box which has a unique shape and on the front we get a clear view of the mouse itself. A front panel opens up to reveal the mouse, suspended in plastic along with some details on the key features.



The R.A.T. 9 arrives with a large selection of bundled extras. The first is a dock which acts as the wireless receiver and charger for the two batteries which are included in the package. A manual and driver CD is included, though it is always best to check the product website for the latest version. In a separate tin within the box we find further items which are two additional palm rests, two pinkie rests and a weight chamber.



Shown above is the wireless transmitter with braided cable for the R.A.T. 9 which has a slot to charge the battery that is not currently in use and a hole where we can store our weight cartridge.

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Cyborg R.A.T. 9 Wireless Gaming Mouse



We often say that products have a unique design but the R.A.T. takes that statement to the extreme, in its stock form it really does stand out from every other mouse and that is before we start to customise it to our tastes... more on that later, first the basics.





As well as the standard left and right buttons the R.A.T. 9 has a clickable scroll wheel, only the fly DPI rocker and mode switch button within reach of our first two fingers. To aid the user in knowing which mode is active the logo on the selector button lights up (3 Colours), as does the DPI icon.



On the left of the button we find two reasonably standard thumb buttons. Beside these is a precision aim selector which drops the mouse speed to a pre-defined level which is designed to assist us in aiming during gameplay. These are not the only items in this area though, we also have a thumb scroll wheel which sits behind the thumb buttons.

Considering how busy the left side of the mouse is it is quite a surprise to see that the right side is reasonably plain.



On the base of the mouse we find a large metal plate on which the rest of the mouse is built. Placed around this are PTFE "Slick" feet which ensure the R.A.T. 9 glides optimally. In the centre of the mouse we find a twin-eye 5600DPI sensor which has an acceleration rating of 50G with 1000MHz polling and 6m/sec tracking speed. Also located on the base of the mouse is an on/off button.

So, that's normally where we would end the description of a mouse however the R.A.T. 9 offers so much more than this, so let's look at some of the other features...

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Cyborg R.A.T. 9 Wireless Gaming Mouse - Customising



Let's start this section by stripping the mouse down; this involves removing the right side grip and palm rest. These can then be replaced by the alternative shaped versions that are located in the bundled metal tin. On the right side we get two additional pinkie grips, one with a textured surface and the other which has a section for us to rest our two rightmost fingers on. For the palm area we get a textured surface which is otherwise identical to the stock version. In addition to this we get a rest which sits higher, changing the angle of our hand on the mouse.



As well as being able to switch between the various palm grips we can vary the distance the section is from the main body of the mouse, lengthening the mouse in the process. The thumb area is also customisable in two ways. Firstly we can move the thumb section forwards or backwards to a position where the buttons are most comfortable. Secondly we can change the angle that the rest has, for example as standard it runs very close to the body, we can change this so that the front of the rest has a larger gap than the back, angling the buttons outwards.



Flipping the mouse over we can see the location where the interchangeable batteries are inserted and running alongside this is our weight location. By unscrewing the end we can add or remove 6g weights to find the correct balance for our hand. This is also the location where our adjustment tool is located. The silver tool sits on the end of the weight chamber for quick access and is used to replace the pinkie grip and adjust the thumb rest.



Shown above is the R.A.T. 9 with the configuration we chose to use for the start of our testing. Our main changes were to move to the larger pinkie grip, push the thumb rest forward, drop the palm rest back, move to the textured version and remove all weights from the base.

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Software



A driver for the R.A.T. 9 is available on Windows Update and upon plugging in the device this is downloaded and installed automatically on Windows 7. After a reboot we can install the latest version of the driver and control panel which are available on the Cyborg website.



After installing the latest updates we are presented with a nice, functional control panel for our mouse. On the first screen we get a summary of information such as the software and driver version and we noted that each setting has a useful help icon which explains the feature.



Moving to the second screen called "Settings" we start to find more detailed options for the mouse. In here we can adjust the DPI from 100 up to 5600 and set four levels which can be switched on the fly using our DPI mouse button. Also available on this screen is the Precision Aim level which can be adjusted to our preference, letting us choose how fast the mouse moves in this mode.


Standard


Bad Company 2



In the "Programming" tab we can configure the mouse buttons which are available for customising (Scroll Wheels 1 and 2, back, forward). Each can be assigned a single key or macro and settings can be exported or imported through this screen. Within each profile there are three modes available which gives us 15 button actions and these, like the DPI can be switched to on the fly using the appropriate mouse button.

In addition to adding/editing our profiles manually Cyborg also release profile updates on their website with their recommended settings for various popular titles such as Bad Company 2 and StarCraft 2. These are added to the software by dropping them into a folder on our PC. We can activate these profiles in the control software or switch faster by right clicking the tray icon and selecting the game name.



In the final control panel screen we find useful links to perform tasks such as download drivers, profiles and contact support.

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User Experience and Conclusion




When first unboxing the R.A.T. 9 the user will most likely be a little overwhelmed by the device and the number of bundled items. It really is a case of "where do I even start" but in a good way. For the overall aesthetic of the unit we have a device which really does draw attention to itself, not through the flashy lights that other manufacturers rely on but due to its unique design. With a body that is split into various sections, black soft touch surface and some silver components it looks both eye catching and cool. The R.A.T. 9 also feels very solid in the hand, mainly due to the metal plate on which the device is built. This gives it a good weight even before the additional weights are added in. In fact we found that no weights was the ideal configuration for the device.

In terms of additional configuration the user will find themselves tweaking the R.A.T. 9 for a few days to find the best setup. Some initial decisions will turn out to be wrong and changes will be required. For example our initial thought is that we would prefer the larger pinkie grip but in the end we settled for the textured, compact model. It is therefore ideal that any changes to the mouse can be completed very quickly. The removal and replacement of the right grip is probably the longest at around 2 minutes whereas changes to the thumb side happen in 10-20 seconds. For that side we found that the furthest forward location was the best for our thumb and we are sure that the ability to move this will please many consumers who often find that thumb buttons are just not placed quite right.

For performance there is little to complain about with the R.A.T. 9 which we used in a mixture of palm and claw grips. The optical sensor tracks well, the mouse glides smoothly and there are plenty of configuration options (including multiple profiles/modes and macros) available in Cyborgs easy to use software. The Precision Aim feature also works well and will be particularly useful for those who like to game online in fast paced shooters. We were also pleased to see that two batteries and a quick charge dock were included, this is the second time we have seen a mouse with this feature and essentially ensures constant uninterrupted wireless use, apart from the 30 seconds to switch over. Charge time is approximately 1 hour 10 mins with the battery lasting through a 9 hour gaming session or several days of normal use.

All good so far then... but could Cyborg have improved the mouse further? The answer to that question is yes, though we are going to get super picky here. Firstly the mode switch button could be a little easier to press; it requires a firm click and is not in a location where that is easy. On the other hand the right mouse button, for us, was a little too sensitive to pressure and so could have done with a slightly firmer action. One possible solution to the latter would be to include variable sensitivity on the right mouse button, something we saw recently on a competitor product. For the former, placing the mode button beside the DPI would work well. There will also be some users who would have appreciated the option to go wired with a USB port at the front of the mouse but as we said above these are just minor issues on a very impressive product.

So that brings us to value. At £99/$149 the R.A.T. 9 is priced well to compete with the likes of Razer's Mamba and Gigabytes Aivia M8600. It offers comparable performance with plenty of extras in a design which is far more flexible, allowing the user to tailor the device to their own hand shape and gaming style.

Summary

The Cyborg R.A.T. offers wireless functionality with no noticeable impact to gaming or general use when compared to a wired model, it performs exceptionally well. Additionally a high level of build quality is backed up by a hugely flexible design and easy to use software suite.

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Exclusive: Mad Catz Cyborg Rat 9 review -- Engadget

Exclusive: Mad Catz Cyborg Rat 9 review



In a world full of the shapely blobs we call computer mice, the Cyborg Rat stands out. It's skeletal, metallic, and almost completely asymmetrical. Though most mice are one-size-fit-few, the Rat lets you transform the hardware itself to fit the shape of your hand. It's got two scroll wheels and a special button that lowers DPI while it's held -- and this new Rat 9, due out November, is completely wireless as well. Whereas Razer, Microsoft and Logitech all built their premium wireless gaming mice from scratch -- and with cord-based charging in mind -- the Rat 9 instead integrates a hot-swappable battery pack and a 2.4GHz radio into the same modular design. Is it a half-baked attempt at wireless bliss, or do we have a new king of mice?

Design

In case we hadn't already established that it's a looker, let's say it once and for all right now: the Rat 9 is one sexy mouse. Dressed completely in deathly black with sharp angles and rakish curves throughout, it evokes a Skunk Works stealth plane but with metallic components jutting out -- he better to show you precisely where you can tinker with the mouse. Out of the box, it's a modest, narrow peripheral suited for small hands or a fingertip grip style, but you can transform it into a wide, elongated device in under a minute flat -- just unscrew the integrated hex key at the back of the unit and you can adjust the thumb rest's angle and length; replace the pinky rest or palm rest with two alternatives (each); and / or extend the palm wrist with the push of a button to support larger hands. Since the thumb and palm grips do interlock to some degree, not all combinations work as you might expect, but we quickly found a style we liked and only our curiosity and some rough edges (more on that later) kept us fiddling with the settings. Though the Rat 9's metal frame and newly-added lithium-ion battery packs make the mouse fairly hefty to begin with, there's also an weight cartridge on the underside of the mouse, and while it's not as accessible as some of its contemporaries (you have to unscrew the hex key and a retaining nut) you can easily add 42 grams to the device in 6-gram increments.



Mice live and die by the placement of their buttons and the comfort of their grip, and adjusted properly the Rat 9 is fairly superb on both fronts. While both the left and right mouse buttons do require a solid press, they're large and responsive all the way up to the apex of the mouse, and there's actually only a single spot (on the extreme upper-right-hand corner of the right mouse button) where it won't actuate if pressed down. The main control surface is wide enough, in fact, that we could comfortably put three fingers on the top of the mouse, using the middle to control the mouse wheel and DPI sensitivity adjustment rocker (a nice touch in and of itself) without ever moving our index and ring finger from the all-important trigger buttons. The thumb grip's pair of programmable rockers similarly won our favor because of their ridges up top -- like the thumb keys on Logitech's G700, we could press these just by slightly shifting the base of our thumb, leaving our thumbtip free to hold the red sniper button -- a feature we'll talk about later. We never really found ourselves using the thumb wheel in our first-person shooters, but you can think of it as a two-way rotating programmable button if you will, and it spins in small enough increments to find use as a weapon or ability switcher.

As far as comfort is concerned, chew on this -- out of the box, the Rat 9's completely coated in soft-touch plastic, and if you don't like that, you can swap for a pair of textured rubber palm and pinky grips instead. There's also a taller soft-touch palm grip for claw-style gamers to better align their wrists. All of this makes for some fairly comfortable mousing options, but as with most one-size-fit-all products (also see: baseball caps) you may not find an exact match. We tend to grip mice between the base of our thumb and pinky, but the Rat 9 isn't well designed for that -- we ended up pinching our skin in one of the mouse's seams where no amount of soft-touch plastic could save us from chafing on those delightfully rakish edges, something that could perhaps have been avoided with a little rubber instead.

We alluded to it somewhat at the beginning of this review, but the Rat 9's not like any other wireless mouse we've seen. It doesn't use a USB dongle and standard batteries, nor a removable play-and-charge cord. Instead, you socket one of two hot-swappable lithium-ion battery cartridges into the back of the mouse, and put the second in a charging station that doubles as the 2.4GHz wireless transmitter and holds additional weights for the Rat as well. This means you're always relying on wireless connectivity (more on that in a sec) but also that you've always got a battery ready to go, and it's admittedly pretty neat to rip out that battery (like a clip from a gun) and slide a fresh one in. Sadly, there's no gun-like eject lever for the lithium-ion cell, as it's fairly hard to grip; we often found ourselves having to remove the palm rest in order to get a better purchase on the little cartridge when it was time to switch.

Performance



The Rat 9 uses the same 5600dpi sensor as the Rat 7, and it's as accurate as we could hope to test without being pro gamers ourselves. We certainly found we pulled off more crazy headshots, navigated to desktop items more easily and made more precise 'shops than with our standard Logitech MX518 mouse. The sensor's not without its quirks, as Rat 7 owners can attest, as the Z-tracking (how little the mouse moves when you lift it off a surface and set it back down) is a bit off, but there's a new filter now that reduces the jitter considerably, and it didn't disturb us in games. By the way, Mad Catz says this fix will be included on new Rat 7s as well. Five teflon feet keep the mouse gliding across most any surface, and we had no trouble using it on a veneered wooden desk, though the hard surface showed us the mouse has a slight forward-backward wobble, another carryover from the Rat 7 -- this can be reduced if not fixed by carefully tightening the thumb rest's main screw while the mouse is firmly held down.

Of course, what you really want to know is if the Rat 9 has what it takes to be a wireless gaming mouse, and if Mad Catz's claims of a 0.01ms latency really hold up. We don't have the answer to the latter question, but we did have a wired Rat 7 on hand for a side-by-side test, and on the same surface with the same DPI settings we honestly couldn't tell the difference. The Rat 9 does turn itself off after several minutes, but it just takes a click to wake up, and it's instantly ready to start taking potshots without you ever needing to press the physical on/off switch on the bottom. Speaking of that switch, we haven't turned the mouse off more than once in our entire week of testing, but had impressive battery life nonetheless -- we found we were usually able to get through a full day of work, leave the mouse on and not have to swap cartridges until partway through the next day, though it did die once after a solid eight-hour session. Even then, our freshly charged battery pack was only a fifteen-second swap away, and flashing indicators on the side of the mouse always told us well before an existing cell ran out.



As customizable as its hardware is, the Rat 9 isn't quite leading the pack on the software front. Though it's got a handy light-up toggle next to the left mouse button that swaps between three preset modes, there are only five customizable buttons, and there's no onboard memory to store your profiles (nor even factory-preset variations) on the mouse itself. There are four well-spaced DPI adjustments in the mouse by default, however, and you can certainly game without the software if you find yourself in a pinch.

Last but most assuredly not least, there's the sniper button, our favorite feature by far, which simply cuts the mouse's sensitivity to a level you customize while you hold the button down, and then instantly raises it back up when you let go. We don't know where this has been all our lives, and we don't know how we'll do without it from now on, as it's equally useful for lining up headshots and getting detailed work done. Now, rather than change our overall DPI to sweep across our wide desktop to a tiny button in our web browser and then have to adjust our wrist's velocity considerably to actually click on a link, we just squeeze that button before we need to make a selection and the mouse speed appropriately slows down.

Wrap-up



Despite its customizable hardware, the Rat 9 won't fit everyone. It wouldn't fit our hand perfectly, though it was fairly comfortable. It won't fit pro gamers who scoff at wireless-only mice for fear of interference at LAN events, even when confronted with its superb responsiveness. And at $130, it may not fit the budgets of those who don't play games for a living. Still, aside from the occasional nitpick, we couldn't find a thing wrong with this sleek transforming mouse. That's not something we get to say often. At least one Engadget editor is putting this on his Christmas wishlist right now.

[siopao1984]

Exclusive: Mad Catz Cyborg Rat 9 review -- Engadget

Exclusive: Mad Catz Cyborg Rat 9 review



In a world full of the shapely blobs we call computer mice, the Cyborg Rat stands out. It's skeletal, metallic, and almost completely asymmetrical. Though most mice are one-size-fit-few, the Rat lets you transform the hardware itself to fit the shape of your hand. It's got two scroll wheels and a special button that lowers DPI while it's held -- and this new Rat 9, due out November, is completely wireless as well. Whereas Razer, Microsoft and Logitech all built their premium wireless gaming mice from scratch -- and with cord-based charging in mind -- the Rat 9 instead integrates a hot-swappable battery pack and a 2.4GHz radio into the same modular design. Is it a half-baked attempt at wireless bliss, or do we have a new king of mice?

Design

In case we hadn't already established that it's a looker, let's say it once and for all right now: the Rat 9 is one sexy mouse. Dressed completely in deathly black with sharp angles and rakish curves throughout, it evokes a Skunk Works stealth plane but with metallic components jutting out -- he better to show you precisely where you can tinker with the mouse. Out of the box, it's a modest, narrow peripheral suited for small hands or a fingertip grip style, but you can transform it into a wide, elongated device in under a minute flat -- just unscrew the integrated hex key at the back of the unit and you can adjust the thumb rest's angle and length; replace the pinky rest or palm rest with two alternatives (each); and / or extend the palm wrist with the push of a button to support larger hands. Since the thumb and palm grips do interlock to some degree, not all combinations work as you might expect, but we quickly found a style we liked and only our curiosity and some rough edges (more on that later) kept us fiddling with the settings. Though the Rat 9's metal frame and newly-added lithium-ion battery packs make the mouse fairly hefty to begin with, there's also an weight cartridge on the underside of the mouse, and while it's not as accessible as some of its contemporaries (you have to unscrew the hex key and a retaining nut) you can easily add 42 grams to the device in 6-gram increments.



Mice live and die by the placement of their buttons and the comfort of their grip, and adjusted properly the Rat 9 is fairly superb on both fronts. While both the left and right mouse buttons do require a solid press, they're large and responsive all the way up to the apex of the mouse, and there's actually only a single spot (on the extreme upper-right-hand corner of the right mouse button) where it won't actuate if pressed down. The main control surface is wide enough, in fact, that we could comfortably put three fingers on the top of the mouse, using the middle to control the mouse wheel and DPI sensitivity adjustment rocker (a nice touch in and of itself) without ever moving our index and ring finger from the all-important trigger buttons. The thumb grip's pair of programmable rockers similarly won our favor because of their ridges up top -- like the thumb keys on Logitech's G700, we could press these just by slightly shifting the base of our thumb, leaving our thumbtip free to hold the red sniper button -- a feature we'll talk about later. We never really found ourselves using the thumb wheel in our first-person shooters, but you can think of it as a two-way rotating programmable button if you will, and it spins in small enough increments to find use as a weapon or ability switcher.

As far as comfort is concerned, chew on this -- out of the box, the Rat 9's completely coated in soft-touch plastic, and if you don't like that, you can swap for a pair of textured rubber palm and pinky grips instead. There's also a taller soft-touch palm grip for claw-style gamers to better align their wrists. All of this makes for some fairly comfortable mousing options, but as with most one-size-fit-all products (also see: baseball caps) you may not find an exact match. We tend to grip mice between the base of our thumb and pinky, but the Rat 9 isn't well designed for that -- we ended up pinching our skin in one of the mouse's seams where no amount of soft-touch plastic could save us from chafing on those delightfully rakish edges, something that could perhaps have been avoided with a little rubber instead.

We alluded to it somewhat at the beginning of this review, but the Rat 9's not like any other wireless mouse we've seen. It doesn't use a USB dongle and standard batteries, nor a removable play-and-charge cord. Instead, you socket one of two hot-swappable lithium-ion battery cartridges into the back of the mouse, and put the second in a charging station that doubles as the 2.4GHz wireless transmitter and holds additional weights for the Rat as well. This means you're always relying on wireless connectivity (more on that in a sec) but also that you've always got a battery ready to go, and it's admittedly pretty neat to rip out that battery (like a clip from a gun) and slide a fresh one in. Sadly, there's no gun-like eject lever for the lithium-ion cell, as it's fairly hard to grip; we often found ourselves having to remove the palm rest in order to get a better purchase on the little cartridge when it was time to switch.

Performance



The Rat 9 uses the same 5600dpi sensor as the Rat 7, and it's as accurate as we could hope to test without being pro gamers ourselves. We certainly found we pulled off more crazy headshots, navigated to desktop items more easily and made more precise 'shops than with our standard Logitech MX518 mouse. The sensor's not without its quirks, as Rat 7 owners can attest, as the Z-tracking (how little the mouse moves when you lift it off a surface and set it back down) is a bit off, but there's a new filter now that reduces the jitter considerably, and it didn't disturb us in games. By the way, Mad Catz says this fix will be included on new Rat 7s as well. Five teflon feet keep the mouse gliding across most any surface, and we had no trouble using it on a veneered wooden desk, though the hard surface showed us the mouse has a slight forward-backward wobble, another carryover from the Rat 7 -- this can be reduced if not fixed by carefully tightening the thumb rest's main screw while the mouse is firmly held down.

Of course, what you really want to know is if the Rat 9 has what it takes to be a wireless gaming mouse, and if Mad Catz's claims of a 0.01ms latency really hold up. We don't have the answer to the latter question, but we did have a wired Rat 7 on hand for a side-by-side test, and on the same surface with the same DPI settings we honestly couldn't tell the difference. The Rat 9 does turn itself off after several minutes, but it just takes a click to wake up, and it's instantly ready to start taking potshots without you ever needing to press the physical on/off switch on the bottom. Speaking of that switch, we haven't turned the mouse off more than once in our entire week of testing, but had impressive battery life nonetheless -- we found we were usually able to get through a full day of work, leave the mouse on and not have to swap cartridges until partway through the next day, though it did die once after a solid eight-hour session. Even then, our freshly charged battery pack was only a fifteen-second swap away, and flashing indicators on the side of the mouse always told us well before an existing cell ran out.



As customizable as its hardware is, the Rat 9 isn't quite leading the pack on the software front. Though it's got a handy light-up toggle next to the left mouse button that swaps between three preset modes, there are only five customizable buttons, and there's no onboard memory to store your profiles (nor even factory-preset variations) on the mouse itself. There are four well-spaced DPI adjustments in the mouse by default, however, and you can certainly game without the software if you find yourself in a pinch.

Last but most assuredly not least, there's the sniper button, our favorite feature by far, which simply cuts the mouse's sensitivity to a level you customize while you hold the button down, and then instantly raises it back up when you let go. We don't know where this has been all our lives, and we don't know how we'll do without it from now on, as it's equally useful for lining up headshots and getting detailed work done. Now, rather than change our overall DPI to sweep across our wide desktop to a tiny button in our web browser and then have to adjust our wrist's velocity considerably to actually click on a link, we just squeeze that button before we need to make a selection and the mouse speed appropriately slows down.

Wrap-up



Despite its customizable hardware, the Rat 9 won't fit everyone. It wouldn't fit our hand perfectly, though it was fairly comfortable. It won't fit pro gamers who scoff at wireless-only mice for fear of interference at LAN events, even when confronted with its superb responsiveness. And at $130, it may not fit the budgets of those who don't play games for a living. Still, aside from the occasional nitpick, we couldn't find a thing wrong with this sleek transforming mouse. That's not something we get to say often. At least one Engadget editor is putting this on his Christmas wishlist right now.

[siopao1984]

Mad Catz Cyborg Rat 9 unboxing and hands-on

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