INTRODUCTION

   It's no secret that most of you reading these lines right now are either casual/hardcore gamers, enthusiasts or professionals so naturally because of that our main focus have always been performance gaming mice which thanks to their lightning fast laser/optical sensors, number of buttons and special shapes for improved grip can increase your effectiveness in both games and work. However there are also those who are mostly interested in getting an easy to use mouse without all the bells and whistles offered by the gaming variants and of course at a fraction of the price. ROCCAT is well aware of that and so aside their impressive KONE line of gaming mice they have just released the rather entry-level LUA Tri-Button gaming mouse which we've been testing for the past week.

   ROCCAT is the snow storm to the gaming industry. Everything called gaming before needs to be redefined. You will enter a world in which three attributes will keep you on the right path: alliance, independence and truth. DO IT YOUR OWN WAY AND DON'T TALK SHIT – this is the statement ROCCAT follows. The ROCCATEERS can be found all over the world. And it was a revelation which led them together to energize the crucial benefit. The lake Inari long kept the secret our ROCCAT scientists call "Aimo". With every ROCCAT tool you will more and more internalize its Energy. Become part of our alliance.

   The ROCCAT LUA wears an 2000DPI Pro Optic (R2) Optical Sensor under the hood which can reach a maximum speed of 60ips with 20Gs of acceleration so if you're an avid gamer and are looking to purchase a very good gaming mouse to play fast passed FPS titles then you will most likely be disappointed by the specifications of the LUA. Of course that's really fine and expected since ROCCAT didn't actually design it with serious gamers in mind, for those they have the KONE line which surpasses the LUA with ease in most aspects. What the KONE line doesn't have however is an equally small size and an ambidextrous design and those two are perhaps the strong points of the LUA Tri-Button gaming mouse. So follow us to see exactly what the new LUA is all about and whether or not it stands a chance against the competition.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

The LUA arrived inside a box with a product image at the front, the main product features and the ROCCAT logo.

Three product pictures, the contents of the bundle, the specifications list and a word by one of ROCCATs leading scientists are present on the left side.

As usual we see a large ROCCAT logo on the right side.

The back features a large picture of the LUA with all its features highlighted on it and a list of features and specifications written in 9 languages.

Inside the box you will find the LUA Tri-Button gaming mouse, a quick installation guide and several stickers.

THE LUA

Much like most gaming mice by ROCCAT the LUA features the same soft-rubber coating to optimize its grip. Size wise the LUA is very small measuring 115mm in length and 64mm in width while weighing just 70g.

When we say small we mean quite a bit smaller than the new KONE XTD and pretty much all of the gaming mice we've tested lately.

A very large ROCCAT logo takes up most of the rear.

The DPI selection button is placed on the top right next to the engraved company name.

The clickable mouse wheel features a soft-rubber coating.

Flipping the mouse over we see two large low friction mouse feet.

The 2000DPI Pro Optic R2 optical sensor features can reach speeds of up to 60ips with an acceleration of 20Gs.

The 1.8m cable is plain (not braided) and ends to a plain USB connector (not gold plated).

DRIVER SOFTWARE

Since ROCCAT doesn’t bundle a software CD with the LUA you will need to download the driver/firmware package from their official website.

The software is nowhere near what we've gotten used to with the one shipped with the KONE gaming mice however you can still configure the DPI increments, set the mouse wheel speed, set the mouse pointer speed, adjust the polling rate, assign button functions, adjust the lightning effect and finally you can use it to check for new driver updates and ask help from support.

Unfortunately the LUA only comes with a single LED color illumination for the rear logo.

CONCLUSION

   We've been testing the LUA for almost a week now and we did so by using it with games like my favorite Planetside 2, the new Tomb Raider, Aliens Colonial Marines, MechWarrior Online Beta, Hawken and Battlefield 3 with not so much satisfactory results at least not on our 30/26" screens (the small size didn’t help either in our case since we’ve been using larger gaming mice). It's pretty clear just by looking at the specifications of the Pro Optic (R2) optical sensor that the LUA is not really ment for serious gamers (hardly for casual ones as well) but to be completely fair thanks to its very small size, weight, ambidextrous design and low price tag the LUA can easily become the ideal mouse for casual users to carry around with their laptop even for slight gaming (smaller screen/less DPI needed). For such use yes we could bring ourselves to use the LUA however that's just about it so in a way it seems that ROCCAT turned back to the basics when designing it (kind of reminds me the old days of Wolfenstein, HEXEN and Doom when we just had a simple mouse with just 2 buttons and the scroll wheel).

   One of the strong points of the ROCCAT LUA Tri-Button Gaming Mouse is it's current price tag which currently is set at USD29.99 inside the USA (Purchase Directly from Amazon.com) and 34Euros inside the EU (Purchase Directly From Amazon.co.uk). Granted you can get something better if you spend slightly more but the same can be said for pretty much everything in the market. I do believe that ROCCAT should make certain that the price of the LUA should never go over USD30/30Euros to make it appealing to people on a very tight budget but in the end i don't think that it's something they can control (it's a free market after all). At the end of the day although we weren't satisfied when using the LUA with the latest game titles we do think that it would make the perfect companion for laptops and that's why we recommend taking a look if you're looking for a low-cost gaming mouse to carry around or even for your casual gaming needs (providing that you are not using a large screen).

PROS

- Quality
- Ambidextrous Design
- Size (For Some)
- Weight
- Soft-Rubber Coating
- Price (For Some)

CONS

- Performance
- Features