Saitek Cyborg Gaming Mouse

Manufacturer: Saitek
UK Price (as reviewed): £31.99 (inc. VAT)
US Price (as reviewed): $59.99 (inc. Delivery)

As far as inputs go, it’s hard to get much more fundamental than the mouse and, as far as gaming devices go, it’s hard to get much more important.

They proclaim the fact on the back of the boxes and in all the hype and press releases and we all roll our eyes and pretend not to be so stupid as to fall for these marketing ploys…but it’s true. A good mouse will last you for years and afford you a Zen like level of comfort that allows you to take your gaming to the next level.

And a bad mouse? Well, using a bad mouse is like playing a Counterstrike clan match on a Commodore 64 with a brick for a mouse and a soggy cake for a keyboard. And no hands.

Just what constitutes a good gaming mouse is something that’s pretty hard to define, and there are loads of companies out there which have tried to perfect the formula and create The Ultimate Peripheral.

Some have come close to succeeding. Others have drowned under their own incompetence. Now, as Saitek takes another bash at making what they think the ultimate input should be like, we take a look at the Saitek Cyborg Gaming Mouse to see if it can measure up to the task…

Cyborg

The Saitek Cyborg is, as you can probably tell, a mouse that doesn’t want to mess around. It wants to make a statement. It wants to grab your attention. It wants to grab you by the cojones and slap you in the face with them because it doesn’t care what you think.

Which, to be honest, is just as well because when you cut through all the outer layers of flesh and bore down to the cold robotic truth of it all, the Saitek Cyborg is actually quite ugly. Like, really.

It’s red and it’s black and it’s angular and so painfully pseudo-futuristic that just looking at it makes me think that this is the type of thing we’ll be seeing as a joke in the PC version of Fallout 3.

Even the name, Cyborg, is labouring under the impression that gamers love anything even remotely tech-sounding. True, it isn’t as silly sounding as something like the Boomslang or the Deathadder, but at least Razer has an on-going theme and mice that are actually pretty good despite the name. The Saitek Cyborg on the other hand still has to prove that it can handle itself in that regard.

In fact, when you really examine it, the Saitek Cyborg isn’t just ugly looking – it’s uncomfy looking. The thumb especially, with that jutting out overhang and flat under-pad.

Still, putting all that aside for the moment, the Saitek Cyborg does have some things going for it, especially in the feature orientated department. Literally everything on the Cyborg can be controlled, from the resistance of the scroll wheel to the very size of the mouse itself.

So, this is a mouse with more buttons than style, right? A typical example of a feature list dominating the product design, to the detriment of the aesthetic, yeah? Well, maybe, but that it’s necessarily a bad thing and just because the mouse is a little lacking in the looks department doesn’t mean that it’s a bad mouse in the end.