The ASUS ROG Chakram gaming mouse is one of the most innovative devices that ASUS has announced in 2019. It's a mouse that not only promises top-notch performance and excellent quality, but also has a built-in joystick! Did you ever use anything like that? Well, ASUS made it a reality, and the ROG Chakram tries to blend two different gaming devices - the mouse and the joystick - into one. For this review, we also received the ASUS ROG Strix Slice mouse pad, which offers a no-friction surface that should make your mouse very fast when it glides. We tested and used both the ASUS ROG Chakram and the ASUS ROG Strix Slice, and here's our impression of them:
ASUS ROG Chakram gaming mouse & ASUS ROG Strix Slice mouse pad: Who are they good for?
The ASUS ROG Chakram is an excellent mouse for those who:
- Want a high-end gaming mouse and can afford to buy one
- Want RGB lighting on their gaming accessories
- Want to own one of the most innovative mice available on the market right now
- Are fans of the Republic of Gamers brand
The ASUS ROG Strix Slice mouse pad is a good choice if what you want is a sleek pad on which your mouse can run free, because of its low friction.
Pros and cons
There are many positives about the ASUS ROG Chakram gaming mouse:
- It offers tri-mode connectivity: wired, Bluetooth, and 2.4 GHz wireless
- It looks well built, with a beautiful design
- Its ergonomic shape means that it's comfortable to use even for long periods of time
- The mouse has a built-in joystick, which is probably a first in the world of computer mice
- It uses durable, swappable Omron switches
- You can change its switches and its joystick with ease
- It has three RGB lighting zones, and the ROG logo area can be customized with your own design
There are also a few downsides:
- Its price is quite high
- The RoG Armoury software is not as good as the apps offered by the competition
Regarding the ASUS ROG Strix Slice, we can only say that it's an excellent mouse pad: very low friction means that you can move your mouse fast and with ease. It has a cool design and a reasonable price.
Verdict
We have nothing but good thoughts about the ASUS ROG Chakram and about the ASUS ROG Strix Slice. We liked the mouse a lot and, if it had a more affordable price, we would probably buy it for our gaming rigs: it offers top-tier performance, it's beautiful, highly customizable, and it has a joystick on it! What's there not to like? The ASUS ROG Strix Slice gaming mouse pad is a good companion for the ROG Chakram mouse and for any other gaming mouse on the market, including from other brands. We recommend both to gamers who want the best and latest in terms of gaming peripherals.
Unboxing the ASUS ROG Chakram gaming mouse & ASUS ROG Strix Slice mousepad
The ASUS ROG Chakram gaming mouse is a premium device, and its packaging testifies to that. The box in which it comes is made of high-quality black cardboard, featuring a large picture of the mouse on top. On its back, you can see details about the device's main features and specs.
Opening the box reveals the mouse standing inside a transparent protective case made of plastic. Underneath it, there's everything else you get with the mouse: a USB dongle, one USB extender, a USB Type-A to Type-C cable with a length of 1.8 meters (70.86 inches), a travel pouch made from textile materials, the user manual, and an accessory box which contains two Omron switches, one joystick (longer than the one already mounted on the mouse), a joystick cover, a switch tweezer, a ROG sticker, and one customizable badge.
The package of the ASUS ROG Strix Slice mouse pad looks good also. It's nothing more than a fairly large sleeve, but it's made of premium cardboard, and its design is attractive.
Inside the sleeve, there's just the ASUS ROG Strix Slice, but hey, what accessories could you expect from a mouse pad?
Unboxing the ASUS ROG Chakram was a satisfying experience. Not only does the mouse look gorgeous, but it also comes with a lot of accessories. As for the ASUS ROG Strix Slice, the package looks good and the unboxing is straightforward.
ASUS ROG Chakram: Design and hardware specifications
There is more than one reason why the ASUS ROG Chakram is not just an ordinary gaming mouse. For starters, it offers three different connection options: wired, wireless using Bluetooth (BLE), and wireless on the 2.4 GHz radio frequency, using the included 1 ms USB dongle.
For tracking, the ROG Chakram mouse uses an optical sensor with a maximum resolution of 16,000 DPI. It can reach speeds of 400 inches per second (IPS) and can accelerate at up to 40 g. That's incredibly fast! Furthermore, to overcome any possible lags, the mouse also comes with a polling rate of 1,000 Hz both on wire and when in wireless mode on 2.4 GHz.
Besides its impressive technical specs, the ASUS ROG Chakram has another ace up its sleeve: a generous bundle of buttons, and a built-in joystick. Yes, you heard right! This mouse has a joystick on its left side, next to the thumb rest. You can use it to control movement or assign any other actions you want to it, depending on the games you play. You can even hold the mouse like a console controller to have the joystick vertical if you want to. 🙂 Although it's much smaller than a regular joystick, it supports both digital and analog modes and can be easier to use than a keyboard in certain types of games, such as car racing games, plane simulators or even arcade fighting games.
Speaking of buttons, besides its joystick, the ASUS ROG Chakram has two left and right-click buttons, a scroll wheel, and two additional side buttons on its left side. It's plenty for most people, but on the downside, there is no left-handed version of this mouse. It's only built for right-handed users.
On the belly of the beast, sorry, mouse 🙂 you get another two buttons and a switch. The switch is used for enabling the 2.4 GHz wireless and Bluetooth modes and for turning the mouse off completely. The other buttons are used for pairing the mouse and for adjusting the DPI resolution.
If you like lights on your devices, you are going to be happy to hear that the ASUS ROG Chakram has RGB lights: three zones (logo, scroll wheel, base) that you can customize independently or sync together. Furthermore, it also supports ASUS' AURA Sync tech, which means that you can sync the lights on the mouse with your other AURA-compatible devices or hardware components.
ASUS doesn't say how large the battery inside the ASUS ROG Chakram is. However, the company does tell us that the mouse can offer up to 79 hours of gameplay. The requirements for that are to connect the mouse via the 2.4 GHz dongle and disable the RGB lighting effects. The mouse also supports fast charging, and, theoretically, just 15 minutes of charging is enough to give you power for up to 12 hours of gaming. Even more, the ROG Chakram also supports wireless charging, so if you have a Qi mouse pad, such as the ROG Balteus Qi, or any other charging pad, you can forget about the wires completely. By the way, the charging area of the mouse is the logo area on its bottom, where you can find the Republic of Gamers inscription.
The ASUS ROG Chakram weighs 121.6 grams (4,29 oz) and is 132.7 mm (5.22 in) long, 76.6 mm (3.01 in) wide, and 42.8 mm (1.68 in) high. It supports only Windows 10 officially, although you can use it on any other operating system if you connect it via Bluetooth. The advanced settings and customization options though, are only available if you install the Armoury II software and drivers, which are available for Windows 10 and Windows 7. That's why it's best to use Windows 10.
If you want to read all its hardware specifications, visit the official web page: ASUS ROG Chakram Specifications.
ASUS ROG Strix Slice: Design and hardware specifications
The ASUS ROG Strix Slice is a medium-sized mouse pad: 13.8 x 9.8 x 0.02 inches in length x width x thickness or 350 x 250 x 0.6 mm. Being so thin means that it's very light and portable (weighing just 74 grams), fitting seamlessly on any desk.
The surface of the mouse pad is made of polycarbonate that provides extremely low friction and is designed to work both with laser and optical mouse sensors. Because of the low-friction surface, the mouse pad is great for those who play fast-action games such as first-person shooters, battle royale games or MOBA games.
Another thing that makes the ASUS ROG Strix Slice stand out from the crowd is that the large Republic of Gamers logo on its surface glows in the dark. Whether you like that or not is a matter of personal preference, but either way, it's going to turn heads.
The base of the mouse pad is made of silicone, which, according to ASUS, makes it hard for the mouse pad to slip on your desk or table.
Using the ASUS ROG Chakram gaming mouse with the ASUS ROG Strix Slice mouse pad
For this review of the ASUS ROG Chakram mouse and the ASUS ROG Strix Slice mouse pad, I used them together, so my experience with them is closely linked. The mouse glides on this mouse pad like there's nothing beneath it. Just like ASUS promised, the mouse pad offers an almost no-friction experience, and that's excellent in fast action games such as League of Legends, which is also one of my favorites. 🙂
The mouse is larger than the average, although it's not as huge as others. Its profile and size fit well in medium or large hands. If your hand is small or if you have short fingers, you might struggle a bit to adapt to this mouse.
The ASUS ROG Chakram has an ergonomic shape with a generous thumb rest that makes it comfortable to hold even for extended periods of time. Also, the side buttons are easy to reach and push, and their shapes make them easy to identify from one another.
The joystick is probably the most interesting thing about this mouse. Its position is well thought-out, right beneath the thumb rest, so reaching it with your thumb is easy.
Although I'm not a big fan of flight simulators or car racing games, I wanted to see what playing such games using the mouse joystick feels like. So, I tried playing a few games of Dirt 3. Of course, that meant crashing into every tree I saw on the road, but I got to see how the joystick works: it's fast and accurate, so if you have a bit of experience with this type of game, I bet you're going to like it better than using the WASD or arrow keys on your keyboard.
Another thing that I like a lot about the ASUS ROG Chakram is how it's built and how easy it is to customize it. And by that, I'm not referring only to the RGB lighting effects, but also to how you take apart the mouse and how easy you can change its switches and even the Republic of Gamers logo on its back. Unlike most other mice, the ASUS ROG Chakram uses magnets to hold its back cover and left and right-click buttons. You can twist and raise the buttons to get to the switches. Then, you use the tweezer from the accessory box to take the switches out and put the new ones that you prefer in their places.
Both the ASUS ROG Chakram mouse and the ASUS ROG Strix Slice mouse pad are excellent devices for gaming. The mouse is a high-end peripheral that not only offers excellent performance but is also highly customizable and features a first in the world of mice: a built-in joystick. We loved it, and we are sure you will do too if you get your hands on it. 🙂
Drivers and software
The ASUS ROG Chakram gaming mouse can be customized, and its settings can be adjusted using ASUS' Armoury II software. However, for Windows 10 and Armoury II to detect and give you access to the settings, you must connect the mouse using the USB wire or wireless via the 2.4 GHz USB dongle. When you use Bluetooth, Armoury II doesn't detect the mouse.
Armoury II lets you create and save three profiles for how the ASUS ROG Chakram works. For each of the profiles, you can choose different settings for what the buttons do, create and use macro actions, decide what DPI resolutions are used by the mouse, adjust lighting effects, calibrate the mouse, and record usage statistics.
Armoury II offers all the settings and customization options you probably want, and that's a good thing. However, ASUS still doesn't automatically record statistics, which you have to trigger manually, and that's not very useful.
What's your opinion about the ASUS ROG Chakram & ASUS ROG Strix Slice?
Now you know that we like both the ASUS ROG Chakram mouse and the ROG Strix Slice mouse pad. In our opinion, they're both excellent and worth every penny. Before closing this review, tell us whether you like this mouse and/or mouse pad and if you intend to buy them. Don't forget that you can always share your opinions and insights in the comments section.
