So yet again Attack Shark has taken precedent on the Tech Nuovo channel, but we’re definitely not complaining at all. Every time we check out one of their products, well, gaming mice I get more and more keen on the brand, and this time I’ve got the brand new R2 gaming mouse from them on the desk and I’ve been using it pretty consistently for the past few weeks, and I must say I’ve got some very good things t osay about it, and one thing I do have to mention, which may be isolated to my model here as Attack Shark did say they were supplying a pre-release model to me for review, but I think it’s worth mentioning. Okay, on with the review.
The Attack Shark R2 is their newest gaming mouse in the lineup, and I think (but don’t quote me on this) it’s their lightest weight gaming mouse to date coming in at 4 5 grams. Their X3 that we took a look at not long ago came in at 49 grams so not a huge difference in that Superlight mouse to this new R2. To be honest with you though the shape is nigh on the same, so Attack Shark I think have probably lost the excess weight thanks to the cage design which I do think looks quite quirky but it’s also made from magnesium alloy. Is that a lightweight material? I assume so. It makes the mouse feel nice and tough in my hand and a couple of light rage slams down in anger shouldn’t do any damage. The almost shiny two-tone colour scheme I have on my R2 here looks odd I admit, but I personally chose it because it would look much better on camera when filming my broll, and to be honest, white and black peripherals get a bit boring right? There’s no RGB here, it’s a plain kind of design and it does come in grey, white and black too to cover all types of setups and personalities.

The mouse has an almost ergonomic style feel though there are two thumb buttons on the left making this a right-handed mouse only use which was of course fine for me but you lefties unfortunately may need to look elsewhere. The R2 uses Omron Optical microswitches for its left and right click and thumb buttons and an F-Sensor for incremental stepping on the scroll wheel making it nice and accurate for switching weapons or zooming in and out a map in games. Clicks feel nice and satisfying and travel distance is kept to a minimum and there’s minimal effort to actually click the mouse. The return rate is good and follows your finger right through the click. They’re pinned for a million cycles and overall the mouse feels really nice when flicking it around in games.

But that’s also down to its skates where you can find a big patch at the front and back and a smaller skate around the sensor, of which is a Pixart PAW-3950, which now that from what I’ve read that Razer doesn’t have exclusive access to this sensor with their Viper series, it’s free to be used by other manufacturers. So, it’s super brand new in terms of sensor, and also the ability to hit an 8,000Hz polling rate with a reduced response time to 0.125ms from 1ms at a 1000Hz polling rate, as well as a maximum of 42,000dpi which let’s face it no one is going to be using because no one on this earth can slow down time or has that precise control when using a mouse. But I suppose it looks good on the spec sheets and can be used as a bit of a bragging right for Attack Shark. To be honest with you, I never really went above 1,200dpi because I’m not hugely accurate when playing FPS games and well, I don’t need it to go faster. Your DPI can be switched using buttons on the base of the mouse, and you can get them colour-coded within the R2 driver software, but again like I said in my recent AJ159 review, I like to switch my DPI on the fly, and flipping the mouse over to do that isn’t great. It’s also got the ability to use Motion Sync with an 8,000Hz polling rate without really resulting in dropped polls. But of course, there will be people out there with more gear than me to really test this.

The software now is following suit with the last AJ159 driver I saw, with settings to change things like the actions of the buttons, the DPI settings, your parameter settings for things like the polling rate and click time intervals and also your silent height and finally your macro settings. CLicking share this time reveals from profiles that are being used by others and are being stored, but none are for the R2 and they all seem to be for the X3 Pro. So I didn’t touch them. It’s again a nice bit of software that works and doesn’t particularly do anything special or out of the box compared to any other gaming mouse out there, but it’s nice and clear and readable and easy to install and not intrusive.

Okay, so this is where we start talking about gaming, because I want to get something out of the way, and as I said in the intro, I don’t know if this is a isolated issue on my pre-release model here. At certain points in games, it feels like the mouse really slows down. For example, in my game of First Decendent, there were times when panning between enemies that the mouse almost slowed down as if the dpi had changed by itself to something really low, and it was like the mouse was trying to catch up to the movement being issued. Does that make sense? I’ve got it on the screen now as I recorded when it happened, and it was just a little odd. It only happened a few times though, and only happened when lots was going on and I was making several large movements between targets. But it didn’t happen often.
But other than that, I very much enjoyed my time with the R2 gaming mouse, and I have also sent a message back to the rep I’ve been talking to asking about this slowdown issue and if I hear back or get another model sent through to test I will create a YouTube Short about it to let you know. But I did play a number of titles with the R2 including some Once Human, some Overwatch and some Prodeus and for the most part except the incidental slow-downs, it was good.

But, let’s talk about price because it costs currently $123 dollars on the UK version of the Attack Shark website, so closer to the £100 mark if we’re converting the price, which isn’t really cheap when last time I screamed about how their AJ159 was such a great price. But I do think they’re being a little opportunistic and trying to go up against the big boys, and why not. If you look at say the Razer Viper V2 PRO which is using the same sensor, the cost isn’t really different between that and the R2. But, Are Attack Shark looking at say the Razer Viper V3 which although isn’t using the 3950, it’s using their proprietary sensor, it still has the 8k polling rate and motion sync capabilities and is almost nigh-on a similar mouse okay, not in shape or design but certainly by sensor. So I get it here, that the Viper V3 is sitting at around £160 online, £159 something like that, so in this instance the R2 from Attack Shark at say closer to the £100 mark makes it a cheaper option. But who knows? All I can say though that this mouse was pretty decent, albeit a little frustrating with the dropped sensitivity that I experienced.