XPG, the gaming brand behind ADATA has been hitting the PC gaming peripheral market quite hard lately. They’ve positioned themselves to be the cheaper alternative brand on the market, the budget peripheral if you will, which still performs when gamers need them most. Today we’re taking a look at the XPG Alpha gaming mouse, which offers some very competitive features in the gaming mouse space.
Inside the box is very minimal indeed. You get the mouse itself, a USB Type-C cable for charging the mouse and a small USB wireless dongle, which can live in the base of the mouse if you’re not using it. It’s a nice way not to lose it if you’re going to be travelling around with the mouse. There is also some paperwork too if that’s your thing.
The mouse itself is rather large, which does suit me down to a tee as I do tent to use a palm grip while gaming. You got your left and right mouse click, a scroll wheel, a DPI button on top between the main clicks, and two side buttons by your right thumb. There’s also a plate where you can rest your thumb when not using so it doesn’t scrape y`our desk or mousemat. RGB is a little understated here, but it also means it’s not super bright and garish and in your face. Either side of the scroll wheel lights up as well as the XPG logo. The mouse uses OMRON switches so you’ve got some decent quality behind the buttons, and they do offer some very light and satisfying clicks.
What was great was the fact that the little dongle provided was able to pick up a decent signal when it was plugged in around the back of my desktop. Now I do have my PC on my desk which of course is beneficial, but it saves me having to use a front USB port for the wireless dongle. I now just plug in the provided USB Type-C cable to the front every time I need to charge the mouse. However, I would have liked to have seen XPG provide some kind of solution, so you didn’t have to take up two USB ports at once if your dongle is around the back of the PC. I’ve seen brands in the past combat this by having some kind of USB extension cable, so you can hotswap your dongle and Type-C cable on the fly, and still have the mouse work while using your desktop. Or better still, some kind of docking station for your mouse, though if that’s the case, retail pricing will begin to significantly rise.
The mouse is covered on top in a soft to touch plastic which offers a decent level of grip, though I must say that it was a bit of a fingerprint magnet after a while, and a long period of time could see marks appear though this is not confirmed. After a single game of Farthest Frontier, the new city-building game that’s making waves on Steam Early Access right now saw a fingerprint appear. Down the sides is a rubbery material to aid with grip when whipping the mouse back and forth and is triangle patterned. On the bottom you can find three very soft feet to aid with gliding which did a great job and felt very smooth, and a PIXART PAW 3335 Sensor capable of up to 16,000 DPI, though why anyone would have their DPI that high is beyond me. There’s also a toggle switch to change between the wireless dongle and Bluetooth 5.1 so if your PC or laptop sports Bluetooth, you’ve got the option to use that instead of wasting a USB port on a dongle, and a door to store away your dongle when not in use.
The XPG Prime software needed to change the mouse settings is rather basic but is incredibly laid out and simple to use. The software offers you the chance to change your RGB effects, whether it does colour cycle or breathing effect or reactive, that kind of thing. But it also gives you the chance too to change your DPI levels at each increment, your polling rate, lift-off distance and angle snapping. You can even record your own macros too if you’re into that sort of thing or play the types of games where macros can work really well. Not much more to say about it here though, it’s simple and effective and offers some levels of customisation. One thing and I know it’s relatively small, but I would have liked to have seen the ability to set different colours or effects depending on which DPI setting I was using. There’s no cue as to which you have set unless you give the mouse a quick shake to test sensitivity, and during gaming sessions, especially if you’re quickly switching between guns let’s say and lining up targets can be a bit problematic. Yes the physical DPI button changes colour when you click it to signify a change in DPI, but my finger is covering it, and lifting on and off just adds time to changing my DPI.
*UPDATE*
It was shown on the XPG Prime software that there was a firmware update that needed to be completed. However, what I thought was going to be a relatively easy process, ended up turning into an absolute dumpster fire of a process, and one which resulted in no new firmware being installed. After hitting the Update Firmware button, it downloaded software, opened up my command prompt box for Windows, said it had some kind of sync issue. Not sure what that was, and then said that I had to plug in the mouse with the cable and unplug the dongle. Sure okay, I’ll do that. Try it again, same issue with the sync. but this time it’s telling me to just use the mouse wireless and try again. And this went on, and on and on and on. Just awful.
But for the most part, I must say that my gaming experience with the XPG Alpha was pleasant, though I did have an issue when fast-tracking was involved. Playing city builders or RTS titles like Two Point Campus or Age of Empires 4 it was fine, with no issues at all and moving the mouse around the map or game screen was a smooth experience, and I didn’t experience any misclicks. However, moving onto a faster-paced FPS game like Hell Let Loose or Hunt Showdown, where quick flicks can be the difference between getting a kill or dying, I noticed that every now and then fast movements of the mouse just weren’t lining up with how much I was moving on the screen. It’s like my mouse was moving faster than I was rotating. It was a rarity though, but happened enough for me I suppose to mention it in my review. It also did this very strange thing, which was difficult to replicate, but it kept flicking so far round. Like if I was just running around in a game of Hunt, one moment I’d be looking in front of me, then the next the mouse would glitch out and I’d be looking off in some random direction. And getting it back under control after that wasn’t really the best. It was overall though a very comfortable experience when playing games. The larger size makes it very easy to grip, and although this is by no mean the lightest gaming mouse on the market coming in at 3.4 grams, I found it to be good enough to get me through.
The XPG Alpha gaming mouse is definitely priced competitively at the lower end of the market, though when searching online, I couldn’t see where I could buy it from in the UK and could only see American e-commerce stores with a price of $79.99. The only online partner XPG has listed on its website is eBay (see below), so I’m not sure what’s going on there. Unless it’s just not available in the shops yet. But, if you’re after a new wireless gaming mouse, and don’t mind a chunky and heavy mouse, then I’d definitely recommend the XPG Alpha for its sensor, and smooth feeling when gliding across your mouse mat. But those glitches in movement when using it wireless? For me, just were not good enough. Use the XPG Alpha as a wired gaming mouse. Trust me, you’ll be far better off for it. For more info, head over to the XPG website.
