ASUS ROG Chakram
A feature-packed wireless gaming mouse that even has a joystick
ASUS IS WELL-KNOWN for its motherboard and GPU lineup, but its peripheral range is sometimes overlooked. Don’t get us wrong, many other options are cheaper, and the ROG tax can hit the user hard, but if you put the price aside, its products are usually solid. The ASUS ROG Chakram is the latest mouse we’re looking at from the company, and despite appearing very familiar at first glance, Asus has implemented some features that we rarely see at this price point, some of which are done impressively well.
The Chakram is certainly pricey. It retails officially at $150, but it is worth searching for other deals, as we found it for $120 at some retailers. For this price, you get a PixArt PAW 3335 sensor. This has been designed specifically to have better power efficiency for use with wireless mice. The sensor did very well in all of our testing, and tracked over multiple surfaces without skipping a beat. It's accurate and responsive and is what you'd expect from a mouse at this price. It has a maximum CPI of 16,000 and has pre-set, on-the-fly, settings for 400, 800, 1600 and 3,200. The Chakram can be used straight out of the box, but for many features, such as customizing the three RGB zones and setting macros, you will need the ASUS Armoury II software.
The mouse is incredibly comfortable. This is subjective, of course, but it is not very often we can go from using our mouse to a test sample without a few days of getting used to it. The build quality is high, and although there is some slight movement in the shell and the buttons—due to the hot-swappable Omron switches and the screwless magnetic removable back—it is barely noticeable, and the comfort and usability experience is great. The mouse weighs in at 4.4 ounces on our scales, so if you are looking for a light mouse, then this is not the one for you. It has two wireless modes and a USB-C wired mode. We used the 2.4GHz one mainly, and only used the wire while charging. The mouse does have Qi charging if you have a compatible charger. Bluetooth is great for office work or for connecting to other devices, but for gaming we overlooked it—it’s just not worth it when you have two far better options.
JOY(LESS)STICK
The star of the show is meant to be the joystick. This can be swapped from a short stem to a long stem and can also be blanked off entirely. Unfortunately, the short stem joystick arrived broken out of the box. For a $150 mouse this really should not happen. The joystick works well in games and tests. It does everything it advertises, but it just doesn’t feel that intuitive; it feels more like an add-on rather than a seamless incorporation. It’s spongy and has little to no feedback, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Despite the ease of setup and use in games, it is more of a gimmick rather than a feature. We were forcing ourselves to use it rather than using it naturally. Those with small hands may find the joystick just too far out of reach as well. A palm or fingertip grip worked best for us—a claw grip feels rather awkward, especially if you wish to use the joystick.
The ASUS ROG Chakram ticks so many boxes: It’s comfortable, accurate, has great hot-swappable switches, and even has a nice carry case. But the main feature just doesn’t do it for us. If you are someone who feels like the joystick will really change your gaming experience, spend the money and enjoy the Chakram. But if ASUS dropped the joystick and the price, the Chakram could have been a different beast entirely. It could have quite easily contented itself as one of the best wireless mice of 2020.