Home » Reviews » Review: Roccat Nyth gaming mouse
Reviews

Review: Roccat Nyth gaming mouse

Gaming mice (mouses?) are big business. Peripheral companies are flooding the market with all kinds of fancy features and shiny lights in the hope of distancing themselves from the pack. It’s an environment where build quality and functionality are of utmost importance. Nestled within this market is the MMO mouse, designed with a heap of buttons and aimed at MMO and MOBA gamers in particular. Razer and Logitech have had a firm hold here for some time but now both Corsair and Roccat have entered the fray, with the Roccat Nyth being the first to tout ridiculous customization. It’s got RGB lighting, tonnes of buttons and supports 3D printed buttons, but is it worth the asking price?

My thought upon first opening the Nyth was “What the heck am I going to do with all these buttons?” It offers the usual 12 thumb buttons found on MMO mice, a fin paddle and an onboard shift key that effectively doubles the amount of bindings you can have. The Nyth’s big selling point is its customization; the whole MMO button face is removable and you can swap out whatever buttons you like from the 33 they offer.

If none of those take your fancy you can make your own buttons, assuming you have access to a 3D printer (of course). The Nyth also boasts an unusually high DPI cap of 12,000 — honestly anything of 3000 is pointless unless you have a multi-monitor setup, you lose too much fine control in games using high DPI –, a 1000 Hz polling rate (which is also adjustable, I used 500 Hz from personal preference), 1ms of response time, adjustable lift-off distance and the ability to tweak nearly everything through Roccat’s Swarm driver software.

nyth1

The hardware Roccat have stuck in this mouse is excellent. It handles perfectly in game (when the driver remembers your settings) and is smooth for general use. I played both League of Legends and Counter Strike: Global Offensive extensively while using this mouse and I really noticed a difference. Coming from a Razer Naga Hex to this was a breath of fresh air. The Hex has nowhere near the build quality of the Nyth and is not even close to being as comfortable. My aim in Counter Strike has almost returned to what it was in my “glory days” when I was running my Razer Deathadder. One thing that did bug me about the build of the mouse itself was the measly 1.8m cable. 3m is the standard in my experience and now I see why, the cable on the Nyth didn’t reach around to the back of my PC. A minor complaint, but still frustrating.

Playing with the customisable buttons was great initially. I took time swapping them around and mapping out what would work best for games in the hope of streamlining as much as possible. I also immediately took advantage of the palm-grip attachment which was incredibly comfortable. It was reminiscent of my old Razer Deathadder for comfort, which is pretty much the highest compliment I could ever give a mouse.

This joy didn’t last however as I soon realised just how much of a pain it is to swap the buttons around. Roccat says you can pull individual buttons out to make customization easier but I could never manage it. You see, there’s a latch on the bottom of the mouse which releases the buttons (all of them) which lets you swap them about. Every time I wanted to move one or two keys about I had to release all of them and start from scratch and that got old real fast. I soon settled on one layout I could make work and stuck with it.

nyth2

Ergonomically the mouse is excellent, usable with both claw and palm grip attachments, with two exceptions. Firstly I can’t work out why the hell any mouse ever needs a fin paddle. The only way it’s usable is if you take your fingers off of the left and right mouse buttons which is a big no-no for a mouse. I couldn’t find a function for it in the full two weeks I spent with the mouse. Secondly, and perhaps most damningly, the back row of buttons (4, 8 and 12 respectively) are actually almost unusable in either grip. The whole set of buttons is just a little too far back rendering them hard to hit reliably. There’s no easy way to tell the buttons apart as it is and there’s no excuse for a mouse with the retail price of this one to lack perfect ergonomics.

All of this would be potentially forgivable if the driver software functioned. If reassigning buttons and playing with macros was an easy process then the problems with swapping things around may be bearable. Unfortunately, Roccat Swarm 1.3.0 for the Nyth is pretty rancid. The usability of the software is OK for the most part, the actual rebinding of keys — generally — works and there is plenty of options. Having the software forget presets? That’s bad. Changing presets halfway through a game? That’s terrible. This happened multiple times during games of League of Legends; the mouse just decided to reset to default rather than stay in the chosen profile. I had some other small issues with Swarm too such as managing profiles and getting the lighting to do what I wanted, but they pale in comparison to the profile changes. Hopefully Roccat releases a patch for Swarm soon and fixes these hiccoughs because it’s a real shame that an otherwise well rounded mouse is let down by its driver.

This may have seemed an overly harsh critique of the mouse but the reality is that Roccat are billing this as a premium product. It’s going into a market dominated by the Razer Naga and the Logitech G600 and it’s aiming to retail at double the price of these at $200 AUD. Honestly, this mouse is pretty much on par with these two mice in terms of build quality and slightly behind in driver support (although, Razers driver software isn’t great either). Without factoring in price I could recommend this mouse. It is comfortable, the hardware is solid and it’s incredibly responsive in game. $200 AUD is far too steep for this mouse though, as solid as it is. To me, the story of the Nyth is one of minor oversights that spoil an otherwise respectable offering.

Roccat also supplied a Taito Mid-size mouse pad for testing the Nyth, which was most excellent. It’s huge, but comfortable. I like it.

The Roccat Nyth and Roccat Taito were reviewed using promotional equipment, as provided by the developer.
 

Review: Roccat Nyth
6 out of 10

The good

  • Comfortable.
  • Highly customizable.
  • Solid hardware.

The bad

  • Roccat Swarm is terrible.
  • Some poor ergonomic choices.
  • Overpriced.

Want to know more about our scoring scale?


This article may contain affiliate links, meaning we could earn a small commission if you click-through and make a purchase. Stevivor is an independent outlet and our journalism is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.

About the author

Hamish Lindsay

Avid reader and general geek, justifying the time I spend playing games by writing about them. I try not to discriminate by genre, but I remember story more than gameplay. I’ve been playing League for longer than Akali and I’m still Silver. Fallout 3 and MGS3 may be the pinnacle of gaming.