MAD CATZ R.A.T DWS Review – Form over Function
This rather funky looking thing is the MAD CATZ RAT DWS, a wireless gaming mouse using a PixArt PAW3335DB sensor, their own ‘DAKOTA’ switches, and a design straight out of 2010. In fact, my ancient RAT 3 looks like it came from the exact same mold – except this one is going to set you back a whopping $120 – or an expected £110-120. Yeah. This is going to be interesting. Of course first, if you haven’t already, consider subscribing for more videos like this one every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
MAD CATZ is a brand that’s been around in one form or another for the better part of two decades, although the company that built my old RAT 3 is no longer, they filed for bankruptcy in 2017. The company that made the DWS is no longer headquartered in the USA, instead Hong Kong. They do (clearly) own all the trademarks and designs of the original company but are technically different.
Anyway, their R.A.T line was fairly popular especially thanks to its unique design, and this DWS hasn’t strayed an inch. It’s the same base design as the rest of the RAT mice, with an adjustable palm rest, a second style included in the box too, plus two swappable pinkie rests, one with a plate to rest on and a glide pad on the bottom and the other being a rubber textured grip. The rubber grip comes in handy as this thing, with the single AA battery required to use this installed weighs around 140g – not the 113g their site claims, that’s with no battery. While playing with it, my wrist felt pretty sore pretty quick with it, something I don’t get with my Razer Naga Trinity which is more like 120g.
On the thumb side, while the plate does have an allen bolt you can remove, thanks to the side buttons that plate isn’t actually removable or swappable which is a touch strange. Either way, you’ve got a “Sniper Button”, forward and back, and inboard you’ve got a horizontal scroll wheel. Ergonomics of these aren’t fantastic. The sniper button is in a good place, but the back button, the one you’d hit the most, is so far back my thumb has to contort to reach it. Then there is the wheel – that’s almost impossible to reach without lifting most of my hand up. Of course that all depends on your hand size, but for me this isn’t great.
The ergonomics of the whole mouse is a little uncomfortable for me in general. Even with the palm rest adjusted to as close as I can get to comfortable it’s still so unnaturally high and angled making for a generally, well, uncomfortable experience for me personally. A small note, if you do extend the back out to it’s maximum setting, you’ll find the front of the mouse lifting up if you rest on the back. Great design.
On the bottom you’ll find the metal base plate, absolutely tiny glide pads, seriously look how small they are. You’ll also find the USB dongle nicely stored in the base, and the power switch that lets you use it with either the 2.4GHz USB dongle or bluetooth. Quoted battery life is up to 200 hours for 2.4GHz and up to 300 hours for bluetooth.
So, what’s it like to game on? Well, beyond the comfort, it’s not the best. The sensor tracks fine, although I had a strange jitter or twitch I think when I was lifting off but it wasn’t a reproducible issue. I actually checked the 2.4GHz latency comparing to a logitech G703, the wired RAT 3 and the Razer Viper 8KHz and while it’s nowhere near as fast as the Viper – rather obviously – it was only a couple milliseconds slower than the G703, nowhere near as bad as it could be.
While playing, in slower motion shots it felt decent, and the ability to use the sniper button to slow movement was handy although I tend to get used to the feel of a sensitivity and having a change in that sense didn’t feel overly natural. The main problem for me is the comfort and weight. I’ve got arthritis in every joint in my body so I’m perhaps a little more sensitive to uncomfortable peripherals.
Then there is their software. The DWS gets a ‘bespoke’ app, which is utterly confusing. The MAD CATZ logo stays on screen in the background for as long as the app is open, the first page lets you drag and drop a predefined list of actions to buttons that are laid out in an order you need to stop for 30 seconds just to understand which box is for which button. The boxes don’t show any pre-linked actions, that’s in the next tab over under ‘Settings’ where you can pick each of the buttons or features to enable or disable them, like the sniper button. That shows up as a button you can map on the first page, but it’s blank. If you go to settings though, you can see it’s enabled as a sniper button and you can set the DPI. Like, what? You can’t manually set any mouse functions like DPI changing from the ‘Programming’ tab, it’s only stuff like the alphabet and media keys. And again, anything that comes pre-bound like back and forward doesn’t show up in the software.
To say this mouse isn’t for me is putting it lightly. I haven’t even mentioned the quality which for a mouse this expensive really isn’t great. It feels like a prime example of form over function, and I can’t see much of a reason to buy this over a Logitech G604 – a wireless, AA battery powered mouse with much better ergonomics and a great gaming experience, oh and much cheaper.
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TechteamGB Score
