Roccat have made affordable gaming gear for many years, supporting professional eSports teams along the way. So let’s take a look at the mouse that is FPS and MOBA approved, the Roccat Kiro.

The Roccat Kiro is an ambidextrous mouse which is one huge positive it has going for it. Mice that can be used by right and left handed players significantly improve the buyer base.  When you open the box, you will notice some extra bits of hardware. This is because the Roccat Kiro allows you to customise how many additional buttons you have. You can replace both side panels to have two extra buttons each side, none at all or only one side to have buttons. This is a fantastic feature as it really allows the player to make it their mouse. More ambidextrous mice in the market need to do this as it makes for a very personal feel to your gaming setup.

Speaking of side panels, they do feel a little cheap when they’re not attached to the mouse. However as soon as they’re attached via the magnets built into the Kiro, the cheapness seems to disappear. This could be a placebo but either way they snap perfectly, if you gave the mouse to someone who wasn’t aware of the removable panels, they wouldn’t even know. I opted to have the left side panel to have buttons and no right panel, this made for a perfect right handed mouse set up. There are no additional accessories included with the Roccat Kiro, not that there needs to be. For a mouse that is priced at forty pounds, anything else would be bits of advertisement fluff like stickers. Roccat give you what you ask of them, a mouse and the accessories to make the mouse your own.

Roccat’s “swarm” software is extremely user friendly with big sliders and tick boxes which do exactly what they say on the tin. You can set five stages of DPI, but as an old school FPS player I disabled four of them as I’m not a fan of on-the-fly sensitivity switches.  As is standard in gaming mice these days, there are also lighting options for the Roccat logo on the mouse. This includes a wide range of colours and effects so your mouse can light up your room in any colour you’d like. Kiro’s tracking is spot on, especially with polling rate set to 1000hz and lift off range set to high. Testing the Kiro in game I played Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Heroes of the Storm, World of Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto V.

Playing CS:GO was very comfortable and the Kiro seemed to handle the fast paced FPS environment well. The tracking was smooth and precise with no noticeable delay or lag. The cable on the mouse is rubberized, which is something you don’t see now a days as many are braided, so it would snag occasionally. Allowing better support for FPS, changing to a braided cable may be something Roccat need to consider.

Heroes of the Storm gameplay felt comfortable too, the Kiro is probably the most comfortable ambidextrous mouse I’ve ever had the pleasure of using, it makes for very easy lengthy gaming sessions. Again tracking works well but Heroes of the Storm is not a twitch-reaction game like CS:GO. I’m quite a noob when it comes to MOBAs so I didn’t utilize the side buttons in this game. For a low level MOBA gamer, the Roccat Kiro would work fine and I have no doubts that more advanced Heroes of the Storm players would enjoy it also.

WoW is a game that most of my gaming hours seem to slide into. Don’t ask me why, because not even I’m sure, but I do know that I still love it. This is a game I’ve played for many years so I’m comfortable using extra mouse keys, macros and personal set ups using my hardware. The Kiro performed above expectations as an MMO mouse. Although it doesn’t have the numbered keys on the side like some dedicated MMO mice use, steering my character’s movement was perfect. My two most important abilities where set as the side buttons, this is where I realised most that you could not tell they were not built into the Kiro like other mice.

Finally in GTA:V  the Kiro was used in a shootout. I’m a heathen kind of GTA:V PC player who drives with a controller and shoots with a keyboard and mouse. It infuriates my friends but hey, long live the heathens. GTA:V is not primarily designed as a shooter which means it has a different feel to games like Call of Duty and CS:GO, but the Kiro steps up they again to show there is nothing it can’t do well.

I must admit I was sceptical at first when I saw the thumb buttons were attached using magnets, thinking they’d be unresponsive or just not work. To my surprise they feel like any other mouse but with extra customisation.

A lot of care obviously went into the design and creation of the Kiro. The main palm rest and left and right buttons are coated with one smooth layer of rubberised plastic which makes for a smooth and sleek finish. As a palm grip player it is in that sweet spot of allowing my entire hand to rest on the mouse, without my hand feeling like it’s falling off  either end. On top is a minimalistic embossed logo, the only source of lighting on the Kiro, it works well.

All in all the Roccat Kiro is a fantastic mouse and sells for around £40, which is an incredible price for a gaming mouse in its price band. Sitting in the “jack of all trades” category it flirts with mastery for FPS play. I would happily recommend this mouse to any of my friends whether they be FPS, MOBA or MMO players, the Roccat Kiro works comfortably and competently in all gaming setups.