I can’t stress enough how much I like QPad. Their products are extremely well built, they last a long time – or in my case they have anyway – and they generally perform very well. The QPad DX-900 is their flagship wireless gaming mouse, and for the most part it works great. There is however one huge caveat, which we will go through in our review.
QPad is giving gamers the choice with the DX-900 to use a claw or palm grip, by including two different rears. The first that comes as standard had a very steep drop off, but if you’re a claw grip gamer, you’ll be right at home. For us palm grippers, we’d need to install the included butt and it’s simple to do as the covers are on magnets. Just slide on and off and you’re good to go. Underneath that cover is a storage for the wireless dongle, which acts on a 2.4GHz frequency by the way, so if you’re ever travelling, or are using the charging cable to give the mouse more juice, you’ve got no fear of losing it.
The RGB effect on the rear of the mouse is subtle, which actually makes the QPad DX-900 feel rather tasteful by design. The driver software allows you to choose a solid colour, or a rainbow effect and both just purely light up the rear Q logo. A purple light shone just under the scroll wheel when I was connecting the mouse to the dongle, but that’s it. I never saw it light up again.
The software that’s needed to access all of the features, like polling rate, DPI increments, RGB choices and Macros is all very plainly laid out and is actually a nice experience to use. Everything is clearly labelled, and there’s no getting lost in menus or complex renamed settings. Everything is as clear as day, and I appreciate that very much.
For some absurd reason though, QPad decided to put the DPI switch on the base of the mouse. When I play games, I love to switch my DPI on the fly. If I’ve got a sniper rifle out, my DPI can be as low as 400. But on the front line, with an SMG zipping through enemies, I’m more towards the 1200-1600 mark. This mouse makes it impossible for me to play games the way I want to play games. I can’t switch my DPI on the fly without lifting my mouse up, moving my left hand away from the keyboard to hit the DPI switch, and then resume playing. I mean, what was QPad thinking with this? And as harsh as it sounds, I could quite happily tell people, who take gaming seriously, to avoid this mouse altogether, for this very reason. It’s just such a bizarre and poor design.
But if you’re someone who chooses a DPI sensitivity and leaves it at that, then this mouse could be the one for you, as you’re not going to be switching it so aren’t going to need to keep turning the mouse over. For gaming, the QPad DX-900 gaming mouse is a pretty solid experience though. The PAW 3335 sensor is pretty accurate when pacing round a map, and the 40G acceleration is kept low, although gamers would probably want to turn this off in their Windows settings. There’s a 1000Hz polling rate and also a 400 inches per second max speed, which again isn’t bad at all.
Put it this way, I never once had a complaint when running around Black Ops: Cold War when playing online, and if you’re more of a single-player gamer playing titles like Cyberpunk 2077 or Destiny 2 or something similar, you’re going to be hard-pressed to find any complaints with the QPad DX-900. I paired mine with a mouse pad from FNATIC, and it worked perfectly and it felt very smooth gliding across the surface. There are some decent glide pads on the base of the mouse too which is appreciated and definitely helps with tracking.
Battery life is always going to be a concern with wireless mice, especially gaming mice. And again, in terms of connectivity, it wasn’t bad and I had no issues with dropping signal between mouse and dongle. The dongle to clarify was plugged into the rear of my PC, so there wasn’t exactly a clear signal path between the two. One thing I did find however, is that the battery drained quickly. And yes, while there is a USB Type-C port to charge the mouse, it meant having to use another USB input on my motherboard for both the dongle and a charger. I much prefer wireless mice with docking stations, especially for my desktop.
For this reason, it also makes it difficult to recommend for desktop gamers. With the mouse being the size that it is, and the dongle that’s provided, it almost feels like the DX-900 is being catered towards gamers on the go. Those with gaming laptops, where hotswapping the dongle and USB Type-C cable wouldn’t be as much of an issue than those with USB ports on the rear of their PC case. It just seems like it’s a bit of a messy setup. The best way around clambering round to the back of your case, is to use a USB extension cable. This way you can trail it around to the front of your system, and just use that to hotswap between the cable and dongle when needed.
There’s a lot to like here about the QPad DX-900 gaming mouse, and I am still a fan of QPad as a brand, as I think they make very nice, premium-feeling and well-built products. The DPI switch being on the bottom for gamers is a massive issue here though, and such an oversight in design. The separate dongle and cable issue might just be me being fussy though, so don’t ignore this mouse because of that, I just don’t like going around the back of my PC too often, especially if it’s to charge devices. Use a USB extension cable and you’ll be fine. For 99 Euros though, it’s a lot of money. Though it’s priced competitively in the wireless mouse space, the DPI switch location makes it very hard to recommend this gaming mouse. I’m sorry QPad, the mouse is great, that switch just needs changing. For more information, head over to the QPad website.
