There’s a history of coverage of Mad Catz’ R.A.T. gaming mice on this site. The flagship of the original run, The R.A.T. 7, was one of our first peripheral reviews, and over the years this particular brand of gaming mouse has only seemed to drive from strength to strength. Its latest outing, the R.A.T. ProX, is the most ambitious yet, with some ideas so new the developers of the mouse saw fit to patent them.
At this point there’s little point in prefacing this review with a note that Mad Catz is evidently no longer the same company that once was infamous for making slightly-crappy N64 controllers, but I’m going to anyway. The company has re-branded itself as a luxury name, often with the quality and the price tag to match. The R.A.T. ProX is no exception, coming in with a hefty $200 price tag - but it does a fairly decent job justifying that cost.
Looks & Design
Back in the day when I reviewed the original model, I compared the R.A.T. to the Batmobile from Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies. It seemed a fair comparison; the mouse was black, sleek, and with jagged edges that made it look like a deadly weapon. Over the years those edges have perhaps been dulled a touch, and while they’re still present on the ProX, they’re now also accented with brushed metal silvers and a strangely-chosen shade of almost lime green.
The mouse isn’t one obsessed with bright LEDs like many gaming mouse, and so this streak of this potentially garish colour, depending on your tastes, is the only splash of colour on the device. As with the previous mice in the series, at a glance it’s easy to wonder how such a jagged-looking design could possibly be comfortable - but, incredibly, it is - and very much so.
Even at its default configuration, the mouse feels alarmingly well-designed, with its adjustable back-and-forth palm rest allowing it to be made a touch shorter or longer for those with smaller or larger hands.
A palm or claw-based grip works equally well, with all of the seven buttons (L/R click, scroll wheel, DPI switcher, Back/Forward thumb buttons, and a special aiming accuracy button) easily reachable.
The design isn’t for everybody, and one glance at these pictures will tell you right away if you think it’s terribly ugly or rather pretty. That’s a personal opinion, but I happen to quite like the R.A.T. range’s exaggerated angles myself.
The downside of the ProX, as with previous models in the R.A.T. series is that the 10% of the population who are left-handed are again left in the cold - the mouse is not a comfortable one for lefties, even when its customization options are taken into account. As much as I’m about to largely recommend the ProX, if you’re left handed, be warned now: You need to go elsewhere.
Customization Options
As with most of the other R.A.T. mice, the big talking and selling point of the ProX comes in the form of its impressive customization options, made possible by a suite of interchangeable parts. The ProX has more of these than ever.
Previous models featured interchangeable palm rests and side mounts - all of which return here. There’s three different palm rests in varying styles, three pinky rests, and two different thumb rests - the latter featuring electronics to power the three buttons designed for your thumb to reach.
On top of these, the also ProX features two swappable sets of feet for the bottom of the mouse - one for speed, one for maximum friction, and three different scroll wheels - two varying metal designs and one rubber design that most closely matches the scroll wheels on previous models in the series. All these are easily swappable, and the mouse feels more satisfyingly customizable than ever. In an extra nice touch, the mouse wheel can now also be tightened or loosened, allowing you to choose how much resistance you want when you spin the mouse wheel.
The biggest changeable part in the ProX is the heart of the mouse - the sensor. The actual mouse sensor unit can be unclipped from it with ease, allowing you to actually change the core of the mouse and with it its capabilities with ease. As it stands right now there are three different sensors available - the Philips PLN2037 laser sensor, the Pixart ADNS 9800 laser sensor and the Pixart PMW3310 optical sensor - and the ProX ships with your choice of one of these, with the others available separately for a nominal fee.
The concept is a smart one - rather than buy a whole new mouse for something that requires a different level of precision, why not just swap the sensor on your existing mouse? The sensors clip into place snugly and even carry their memory banks on board - meaning once you’ve set your macros and the like, a swapped sensor will remember its settings even once removed and replaced. You can therefore even store different settings on different sensors, if you’re so inclined - it seems like an extreme fringe usage, but it’s a nice thing to have all the same.
In software terms, the ProX coasts on the successes and failures of the previous R.A.T. models. Mad Catz are quick to boast that there’s millions of potential configurations of the ProX, and that makes sense, though its software still feels a little bloated and lacking in user friendliness. Annoyingly, the left click still can’t be reprogrammed and there obviously aren’t enough buttons on the mouse for those looking to do hardcore MMO or MOBA macro work - but what’s there is well executed and the fact the memory bank is stored on the mouse sensor itself rather than locally on the PC is a must-have feature that makes this a much more streamlined experience to use on different PCs after initial set-up.
But is it Good?
The short answer as to if the R.A.T. ProX is worth its hefty price tag is, if you can afford it, yes. It’s a hell of a mouse, built for the most hardcore of PC gamers with a look, feature set and build quality to match. However, its feature set is one that not all players might need or appreciate, and if you fall into that category something cheaper might well serve you just as well for less of a hit to the wallet.
In my hours of testing the ProX hasn’t let me down, smoothly switching between presets and various DPIs from game to game with ease. There’s enough parts to truly make something that’s your own in terms of shape and ergonomic fit - though it remains a shame that left-handed players are left out in the cold.
If something ‘normal’ isn’t your cup of tea and you want something that’ll truly stand out and offer a feature set beyond what you’ll use day to day, the R.A.T. ProX is a great contender for your desktop. It’s a solid continuation of an excellent series of gaming mice, and leaves me curious where this series will go next.
The Mad Catz R.A.T. ProX Mouse is available now from Amazon and eBuyer.
