I find it very hard to see tech getting stale until someone comes along and innovates something new into a type of product. The gaming mouse market has been pretty much the same for the past several years, with slight improvements to the optical sensors, but you rarely see bold moves to gaming mouse design. That is until LEXIP dropped their crowd-funded PU94. And lucky for us, we’ve got one right here in the studio, to show you what you can expect from the device. Of course, there are similarities to standard gaming mice. but LEXIP has created something that feels hugely unique. And that’s the joystick on the side, and the fact the whole mouse can act as a joystick itself, thanks to its articulating base plate.
There’s no hiding the fact that the LEXIP has made a great looking gaming mouse. The fact that the RGB effects are nice and subtle with the logo on the rear hump and a strip around the bottom border really proves that LEXIP isn’t just creating an in your face bright RGB gaming mouse. It looks smart and very refined.
On top, the mouse is coated in a soft to touch plastic material, while the sides are a lot more grippy thanks to its rubberised panels. It feels quite chunky to hold, and there’s a reason for that which I will get into in a moment. I also never had to scrunch my fingers to get them to hit each button, though the hump at the back of the PU94 felt comfortable to rest my entire hand. If I was being picky, I would have liked the joystick on the left to be a little closer to the rear of the mouse, and it was quite hard to put the centre of the stick under the centre of my thumb. I had to resort to using my thumb tip to move it. It’s a small thing though and did not ruin my experience of these mice at all.
Minus the joystick on the left-hand side, all your usual mouse buttons remain. There are your usual left and right clicks, two physical buttons above the thumbstick on the left and a scroll wheel that clicks and scrolls in increments. There’s a DPI switcher just under the scroll when that switches between three sensitivities, all of which can be set yourself and saved to different profiles inside the Control software. The joystick also clicks, which in total equates to six programmable buttons if you exclude the DPI switch and 12 programmable macros which will be more than enough to keep gamers happy I’m sure.
The thumbstick itself has a two-axis design and tilts up to 30-degrees in all directions, and when not inside of games, works very well for scrolling websites and social media feeds. It’s a little sensitive by default, but you can definitely turn that down inside of the LEXIP Control app. The really unique feature however with the PU94 is the fact that the entire mouse can tilt too. The base of the PU94 is its own joystick, so not only do you have the thumbstick, the entire mouse can be turned into its very own joystick. It’s definitely an extremely unique feature and one that took some time getting used to. For me though, there’s a time and place for this feature, and one thing I would have liked to have seen is the ability to lock it off so it kept the base plate in place. It got a little off-putting when playing traditional first-person shooters, but for something like Battlefield V, where one minute you’re running and gunning as a solder on the ground, and the next minute you’re in a plane zipping through the skies, it meant that I didn’t have to get my gamepad out. LEXIP’s website highlight space simulators like Star Citizen or Elite Dangerous or similar, where you can control the pitch, yaw and roll of your spacecraft. LEXIP call it 3D Motion, and their tilting shell design which is a pretty fitting name, as you’re literally tilting the mouse, and yes although it’s a strange sensation, it’s definitely a gamechanger in certain scenarios.
The LEXIP PU94 states it uses an ADNS-9300 optical sensor on the bottom which is capable of up to 12,000 DPI. However, I couldn’t find any more information or comparisons for this sensor though elsewhere online. So, unfortunately, I can’t deliver more information to you here yet, but keep your eyes on the description and comments. I’m sure someone will come along with more information. I can say however that using the mouse in and out of games, it tracked really well, and I noticed no real lag. I turned off all mouse acceleration inside of Windows though but if you’re a gamer with a gaming mouse, you’ve probably done this anyway. The six ceramic feet on the base of the LEXIP mice are also a great feature, and with their B5 RGB mousepad that we also got the chance to test, I was very impressed and happy with the setups. The mousepad requires USB power for the effects to light up, so make sure you got a port free on your PC.
The cable for the LEXIP PU94 is braided and can be detached from the mouse. Not sure why, as I couldn’t see if the PU94 was wireless, as it certainly wasn’t advertising the fact. It uses MicroUSB (boo) which is a shame. A modern innovative mouse surely should be using USB Type-C right? I know I have hangups about this as mentioned in previous reviews, but I feel modern tech needs modern connections.
LEXIP Control Software Breakdown
The LEXIP Control software is a relatively simple software to manage on the surface, but offers some real customisation options, especially when it comes to the joysticks. Most options are pretty common, like the RGB effects, the DPI sensitivities, but where it became a little daunting, was when I dove into the joystick options. On this screen, you’re greeted with different functionalities for each movement. So you can keep it on the traditional joystick option, that’s fine. But you can also state that you want each direction of the joystick to act as a button press, or a keystroke, or even a macro. I tried a Minecraft profile, as it’s an easy first-person game to play, and I could assign the jump key to the tilting back function on the mouse, or to open my crafting menu when tilting to the left. And this works for all games, which can be quite beneficial. This works for the side joystick too. You could assign it to movement functions, or action functions like throwing a grenade or reloading your weapon in an FPS.
As I said, LEXIP claim this mouse is best for flying sims and city-building games, so that’s what I did. Elite Dangerous was the hardest to get up and running, as flying a ship isn’t as easy as just flicking the mouse. Well, it is, but you’d then have to rely on keyboard commands to really get going. With the LEXIP PU94 though, you can assign your pitch, yaw and roll to the mouse, as well as accelerate and decelerate to the thumbstick on the side. But where this mouse really shone for me though was with city builders. I’ve got a massive soft spot for Anno 1800, and using this mouse was a bit of a gamechanger. I usually navigate the map using my arrow keys on my keyboard and click on the mouse wheel to rotate the camera. Though with the PU94, all movement can be done with the mouse. Lean it forward and your camera moves forward, pull it back, and the camera moves back. The thumbstick on the side controlled the zoom.
The LEXIP PU94 is great, there’s no denying it. It’s innovative, it performs super well and its design is great and comfortable to use. However, it’s definitely not going to be the mouse for everyone. LEXIP have got it right. This mouse is for flyers and city-builders, and for those types of games, it smashed it out of the park. However, for a game of Siege, or a Warzone or even Fortnite, a more traditional setup would be better. If there was the ability to lock off the mouse tilt so you could push the mouse around your desk without tilting, it would be unstoppable. But for me, I had to change my gaming profiles to the mouse tilt wasn’t assigned to functions. It was too easy to accidentally tilt the mouse while aiming around the screen, so if you’re about to fire on an enemy, the tilt might do something else, like throw a grenade or jump. But if you play a lot of Cities Skylines, Anno 1800, Elite Dangerous, Flight Simulator or the other myriad of flyers and builders out there, then give this mouse a look. It’ll take you some time to get used to the functionality, but it will definitely help speed up your gameplay and become more accurate with what you want to do in games. For more information, head over to the LEXIP website.
