ASUS ROG SICA Gaming Mouse Review

Performance

I’ve never seen a mouse mat that looked or felt anything like this, but it’s certainly very nice to use and the SICA glides on it very well.

With the mouse plugged into our system, the rear ROG logo lights up.

It looks good in a bright environment, but certainly looks a lot cooler in a darker environment.

As I said before, you can swap out the two main switches on this mouse. Now, ASUS say you can do this to customise the feel of the mouse, but I find it highly unlikely that people will do this, however, it could come in handy should you have a switch fail on you in the future and you need to replace it; I doubt any general gamer or consumer would use this feature, but the enthusiasts out there may love it.

The armoury software detected the mouse and update its firmware for me quite quickly, leaving me ready to get on with my testing. The software is quite simple, allowing quick changes to the DPI settings, polling rate and acceleration settings.

One thing that does baffle me is the onboard memory of the SICA. Something you may have noticed in the last page is that the SICA has no side buttons and no DPI adjustment buttons. In fact, it only has three clickable switches and that’s only if you count the scroll wheel. You can configure the buttons with macros, shortcuts and all the usual stuff, but you’ve not exactly got a lot of choice with only three buttons anyway. When you play in a tournament, you can’t use software, so how are you supposed to change DPI, how are you supposed to switch profiles? This seems a little strange to me, but it’s still nice that I can customise what little there is.

Sensor performance on the SICA is exceptionally good. The mouse is fast, agile and accurate across the entire DPI range, even if you can only change the DPI from the desktop software without setting a macro.

General performance

Gaming on this mouse is really good, so long as you’re playing a game that only needs a scroll wheel and two mouse buttons. Trying to play anything more complicated can quickly become frustrating. League of Legends, great, World of Warcraft, not so great. This mouse was designed for MOBA style games and when it comes down to it, it’s the equivalent of a surgical scalpel in these games, with literally only the buttons you’re going to need; nothing more, nothing less.

FPS gaming can be fun for something like Counter Strike, but trying to play Battlefield with no way to adjust my DPI for those vital head shots is a fun killer for me. The lack of side buttons is worse, especially if you have item toggles, push-to-talk and other features which you like set to the side buttons. However, this mouse wasn’t designed for this market, so it’s no surprise that it doesn’t have the versatility to contend here.

Outside of gaming, such as navigating web pages with no side buttons feels archaic and put simply, using this mouse for anything other than certain FPS titles and MOBA games, where you’re happy to keep your settings essentially locked down to one DPI level and button configuration, is frustrating. However, the stunning sensor and simple layout is a joy to work with in Photoshop, so that’s a real pros and cons scenario right there.

The SICA does feel comfortable and agile in a claw grip. If you’re used to, or intend to play palm rest, don’t bother with the SICA, this is a claw/fingertip mouse and should be used as such.