On Our Desk - 13

NZXT Avatar

Manufacturer: NZXT
UK Price (as reviewed): TBA - coming to the UK soon.
US Price (as reviewed): $59.00 (ex. Tax)

Finally, something a little bit more beefy for us to get our vocabulary around. Not as massively interesting as the latest game or graphics card perhaps, but definitely miles more fun than a SATA cable.

The Avatar mouse then is a pretty snazzy looking mouse and is one of the few mice we’ve looked at lately that doesn’t pack itself full of useless, gimmicky features. There’s no body-extending button, no ejecting batteries that look like bullets and no easy to remove access point that reveals a soft chewy centre.

Instead, there’s just a whole load of buttons and a sleek black finish, with a side window showing the current sensitivity in a style very similar to the Logitech G7. So similar in fact that we’d have to say it was fundamentally identical.

In fact, just like with the G7, there’s even two buttons below the mousewheel that can be used to change the sensitivity of the mouse, which can mercifully be done through the hardware and without any drivers or software tinkering. The downside of this though is that the Avatar can be switched only between 600, 1200, 1800 and 2600 DPI. Not a bad selection, sure – but a weakness compared to some other high-end gaming mice like the Steel Series Ikari.


Unfortunately, that isn’t the only weakness of the Avatar and we have to admit that the overall design of the mouse was a bit narrow for our tastes. Grips differ between gamers though so that shouldn’t be taken as too big a fault, though we would say that the Avatar is more suited to finger-gamers and not those who prefer a high peak and round body on their mouse so that they can have full-palm contact with it.

Still, for every weakness the Avatar has, it also has a strength. The shape of the chassis may be too long and narrow for some, but the flip-side is that it’s also symmetrical, so it can be used equally by the right and left handed – even the placement of the side buttons is the same on each side.

The actual feel and texture is quite positively sensual too; the top of the body and the two main buttons are finished with a velvety soft and super-smooth plastic that means your fingers glide across it easily. The sides and base of the mouse meanwhile have a harder, dotted surface which means you can grip it more easily.


Comfort though doesn’t seem to have been totally paramount when NZXT designed the Avatar though as, some of the buttons aren’t all that easy to efficiently hit – a problem compounded by the extreme narrowness of the body.

While the two main buttons are definitely top-notch, proving sensitive and reliable and with exactly the right level of resistance, the two side buttons are a bit too far back and are easily pressed when you're just moving it about in game. The two extra buttons on top – which bring the total number of buttons to seven – are also very hard to hit comfortably as they sit run beneath your knuckles.

Gaming mice like this always split opinion massively and the Avatar is no exception – in fact, even we are in two minds about it. While the basic design does have a few flaws, something tells us that it’ll actually work quite well for finger-gamers and the type of twitch-shooters who love Counter-Strike; but since we aren’t that type of gamer, it’s hard to say with any certainty.

Verdict: You’ll have to decide for yourselves mostly, but there are other mice out there which we can certainly say offer better performance for the money, and $59 is a lot of money.