Gigabyte Aivia Krypton Dual-Chassis Gaming Mouse Review

Now that we’ve seen what the Krypton has to offer in terms of style, it’s time to find out how it performs in both a day to day usage and gaming environment. I spent a bit of time getting used to its before jumping into any gaming and found that I preferred it with all six of the 5.3g weights added. I also found that it was really dragging on our Zowie gaming surface, but swapping to the harder chassis base turned the Krypton into the friction equivalent of a hovercraft, much better. A heavy mouse with low friction might not be to everyone’s liking, but that’s the joy of being able to customise a mouse like this and it shouldn’t take long for you to find which setup works best for you.

First Person Shooters

Getting straight into the action I fired up the ever popular Battlefield 3, immediately putting the DPI switch to good use for those all important sniper shots. Unfortunately I found it a little fiddly to access the DPI switch quickly, since it requires flicking forwards or back I found I had to move my hand back to change it, breaking the pace of the game for a few seconds. It’s not the end of the world of course but it’s a very minor inconvenience at best.

The high DPI settings were fantastic for fast turns, both while on foot or in a vehicle and making the jump from pin point accuracy to lightening fast 180 turns can be the difference between life and death in a game like Battlefield 3. Good thing then that the Krypton performed superbly throughout and definitely gave me an edge in battle.

RTS & MMO

The Krypton doesn’t have a dozen buttons at its disposal, but does make a fair bit of headway thanks to its macro engine. Combine this with the high precision sensor, well balanced control and the changeable DPI and it makes sense why this Krypton performed so flawlessly through out a quick game of Starcraft II and even a little World of Warcraft.

General Use

Because most of my work focuses around being sat at the computer, using things like Photoshop, writing articles, playing games (it’s a hard life), I tend to need really accurate and very comfortable input devices and it’s here that the Krypton fell just a little short for me. While gaming I found it to be fantastic and could happily play for hours, but when it came to doing my work I found one side of my hand tended to cramp up due to my more relaxed hand position.

This was due to the ambidextrous design of the mouse and is really a personal preference in terms of mouse design. I prefer a mouse that has a wing on the right hand side that can accommodate my wider hands. I am also comfortable with using the mouse on my left, but of course the issue is then just continued to the other side for me.

That’s not to say performance on the mouse wasn’t great, because it was. I just think it’s better suited to gaming than it is to long hours editing photos and browsing Facebook.