Gigabyte Aivia M8600 Wireless Macro Gaming Mouse Review

[wpcol_1half id=”” class=”” style=””]Back towards the start of the year, we took a look at Gigabytes Aivia Gaming Keyboard which took us by surprise as to how well it performed in comparison to its other rivals on the market. Gigabyte have now paired up this keyboard with the Aivia M6800 macro gaming mouse to penetrate into both sides of the gamers needs – a high performance keyboard and mouse.

When it comes to mice, I’ve always been a Logitech man through and through, however I was the same with keyboards and the Aivia keyboard won a spot in my eyes so much so that I still use it today on my workstation so I’m wondering if this mouse can do the same.

From the go we do have to say that the packaging choice for this mouse is a little different from the norm to say the least. Rather than using a bog standard box, Gigabyte have gone against the grain and packed everything into a tube.

As with any product of this type, we do find the usual instruction leaflet and installation CD, but also included we find two USB cables, a spare set of teflon feet, a wireless receiver & battery charger, and also a spare battery. All this is packed inside a tube like bag for when you’re on the move keeping everything together.

Looking at the mouse we can certainly say that its clearly aimed at the gamer market and would certainly fit in well when paired with the Aivia gaming keyboard. Even though the design has its striking lines its very comfortable in the hand and glides well across the desktop.

I would have said that for those with smaller hands that being able to comfortably grasp the mouse yet still be able to use the left and right click would have been a problem, but you can still easily use the buttons from back towards the middle of the mouse next to the sensitivity adjustment buttons.

The base of the mouse holds no surprises from what we would expect to find, but we do see three different switches for either turning the wireless on/off, unlocking the battery & unlocking the USB cable when connected. Next to the on/off switch is also a wireless association button to pair it up with the receiver.

Like nearly all other mice this mouse uses laser technology, and the sensitivity can be adjusted from a mere 100 dpi right up to 6600 dpi and using the GHOST software that is included, you can set 4 sensitivity presets that you can change on the fly with the buttons on the mouse.

The other key feature that sets this mouse apart from the rest of the market is its ability to operate as pure wired mouse for those extreme gaming sessions rather than wireless. Switching over to the wired mode is a simple as plugging one of the USB cables into the front of the body and turning the wireless off on the underside – that’s it! As soon as you’re ready to switch back to wireless operation, the internal battery will be charged and ready to go.

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[wpcol_1half_end id=”” class=”” style=””]Going back to the wireless receiver, this packs in many features like the mouse itself. The rear houses your spare battery keeping it charged and ready to go for when you need to swap over, and then on the top is a dock where you can sit the mouse itself when not in use – also keeping its installed battery charged!

Also included in the tube is a mini-CD containing the GHOST macro software. From here you can completely customise everything on the mouse from the sensitivity of the laser, to custom macros that you can assign to the thumb buttons on the side of the mouse.

The software is a very similar layout to that of the Ghost engine on the Aivia keyboard, everything is clear and easy to navigate through and on the fly adjustments with sensitivity and scroll rate make fine tuning a breeze.

As we would expect from the Aivia line of peripherals, all macros and profiles are stored directly to the mouse on its 32Kb of onboard memory. This saves loads of time and makes switching between pcs much easier rather than having to reinstall the ghost software and reconfigure everything from scratch.

Going back to the saved profiles, you can set upto 5 profiles much like you can with the Aivia keyboard and these can be switched between using the forward thumb button on the right of the mouse body.

The active profile is indicated by a glowing LED on the top, which pulses a different colour depending on the selected profile.

Now that I’ve used the mouse for a while, I can certainly say that its made the same good impression upon me as the Aivia Keyboard did earlier in the year. Its solid and robust feel made it very comfortable to use and the number of features that is packed into it is outstanding.

This is reflected in its price of around £75, which isnt the cheapest on the market, but when you look at it, how many mice are there that pack this number of features and have the same feel of quality to them?

So if you’re after a high performance mouse that gives you the edge  and comfort during an intense gaming session, the Aivia M6800 is one to take a good look at.

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