The Roccat Burst Pro Air wireless gaming mouse is yet another quality product made by the German manufacturer, packing RGB lighting, dual connectivity with 2.4GHz or Bluetooth, and a hefty battery life into a relatively lightweight and stylish 81 gram shell.
Available in Black and White, the Roccat Burst Pro Air not only looks great, but feels great in hand too. The honeycomb shell design that the majority of lightweight mice use in order to trim the fat is present on the Burst Pro Air, but they’re housed within a water and dust-resistant shell, protecting the internals from exposure.
The mouse also houses four RGB lighting zones, which can each be customised to your liking, or toggled off completely via the Roccat Swarm software. The lighting is far more visually vibrant on the white model of the mouse as it can more easily shine through the lighter shell, but the black model still displays a welcome splash of RGB lighting.
One of the most impressive aspects of the Burst Pro Air is how comfortable it is to use, making it a suitable candidate for long gaming sessions or everyday use. The symmetrical shape of its shell feels fantastic in hand, and it moves brilliantly across a mousepad thanks to its sizable teflon feet, which provide a truly smooth and satisfying glide. The sides of the mice also feature a textured pattern that assists in better gripping the mouse, in a similar fashion to the optional grip tape that comes with the Logitech G Pro X Superlight.
Despite being on the heftier end of the “lightweight” wireless mice that I’ve tinkered with over the last few years at 81 grams, it still feels comfortable and not at all heavy. In fact, I found it pretty impressive that it managed to only weigh what it does with its RGB lighting and pretty much full shell. Overall though, the Burst Pro Air impresses with its strong sense of style, and the level of comfort it affords to the user.
When it comes to buttons on the Burst Pro Air, the offering is rather basic. Other than the default left and right buttons and the scroll wheel, the mouse only has two side buttons present on its left hip, and an additional button below the scroll wheel that can be used to manually shift through different DPI settings. The Roccat Swarm software isn’t required to set the DPI button up, however if you’re seeking the ability to gain finer control of the Burst Pro Air’s 19K DPI optical sensor, then you’ll need to set it up.
Speaking of control, the Burst Pro Air provides you with the freedom to connect the mouse to devices wirelessly through Bluetooth, or with its included 2.4GHz wireless dongle. You can also use the mouse in wired mode with the included braided USB-C charging cable.
Roccat touts on the box that the Burst Pro Air has a 100+ hour battery life, which sounds fantastic, but is ultimately not what I experienced while using the device. The mouse lasted roughly 3 days for myself personally before needing a charge, which I found to be enough time, especially considering the mouse was at maximum brightness and was utilising the more power hungry 2.4GHz connection. I’m sure even more time could be squeezed out of the device if used in Bluetooth mode with the lighting dimmed or turned off completely, but I found the battery life to be adequate enough.
When the battery does get low, the USB-C charging can provide fast charging to the device, giving you around five hours of usage from just a 10 minute charge.
If tinkering with the settings of the mouse is something you’re seeking to do, the Roccat Swarm software is what you’ll require.
It’s unfortunately only available on the PC, and isn’t the most reliable companion software given the fact that it’s a bit buggy and sometimes becomes unresponsive, but it’s actually a pretty great tool in the moments where it works as intended.
Expected settings such as the ability to adjust the lighting and assign macros to the buttons on the mouse are present, however there are other settings that can also be customised. The speeds for things such as the mouse pointer and scroll wheel can be adjusted within the software, as can the DPI values present in the DPI switcher, which provides the ability to set five different DPI settings which can then be cycled through with the aforementioned DPI button.
The Swarm software also allows you to have up to five different mouse profiles, meaning that you can experiment with other settings while retaining your regular settings on another profile.
The software even provides handy information text that explains what exactly it is that you’re adjusting, which I’m sure will be a welcome tool to those unaware of things such as Angle Snapping and Polling Rate.
When Roccat Swarm isn’t struggling to respond to inputs or failing to update your mouse software, it’s actually a pretty solid tool, however its lack of stability does make the adjustment of settings occasionally frustrating.
Ultimately, the Roccat Burst Pro Air is a great gaming mouse that is sometimes let down by its buggy companion software. Despite the occasional frustrations brought on by Roccat Swarm, the mouse is still awesome to use for gaming and/or regular use, with its lightweight and comfortable nature making it a joy to use.
At its usual price of roughly AUD$169.95 AUD, the Roccat Burst Pro Air is a tad pricey, but is still more affordable than most of the other wireless lightweight gaming mice from competitors such as SteelSeries, Razer, and Logitech.
Given the fact that I’ve seen the mouse on sale for as low as AUD$99 and the fact the most retailers seem to sell it for roughly AUD$139 otherwise, I believe the Roccat Burst Pro Air to be a seriously good deal at this price range, given the fact that its wireless, lightweight, and has other welcome features such as vibrant customisable RGB lighting and dual connectivity via a dongle or Bluetooth.
#gameonAUS
Written by: @GrumpyGoron
