AOC Agon AGM700 Gaming Mouse Assessment

Monitor producer AOC is entering into the gaming peripheral enterprise, beginning with a line of mice and keyboards. The dearer and feature-rich of its first two mice, the Agon AGM700 ($39.99), is a traditional first-person shooter (FPS) mouse. It has a number of the specialty options you’d look forward to finding on a flagship mouse, corresponding to customizable weight-tuning and a vivid pink sniper button, for a price range worth that’s typically reserved for no-frills esports mice. However although it appears to be like like a diamond within the tough, some notable flaws maintain AOC’s debut from shining.

Push-to-Headshot

The Agon AGM700 is a right-handed eight-button mouse. On prime are two click on panels and a scroll wheel, plus two buttons within the middle column: one for biking by way of DPI presets, and one for biking by way of the three onboard mouse profiles, with RGB lights to point your choices.

On the left facet, you’ve got the same old Again and Ahead buttons and the under-thumb sniper button, the signature function of FPS mice. By default, urgent and holding the sniper button dramatically decreases your mouse sensitivity to permit for high quality precision changes on the fly, like lining up your reticle simply earlier than a headshot.

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(Photograph: Mike Epstein)

Measuring 1.47 by 2.5 by 5 inches (HWD), the Agon AGM700 has a simple form with some refined weaknesses. The hump guides your fingers into a cushty grip however fails to correctly assist your palm, as the bottom drops off sharply on the very backside of the mouse, leaving a part of your hand hanging and your wrist pointing down.

(Photograph: Mike Epstein)

I’m additionally not an enormous fan of how the mouse appears to be like. It incorporates a easy black base panel and two silver click on panels textured to appear like brushed aluminum. The edges have a grippy texture that makes the intense pink sniper button look misplaced. Some components—notably the pink button—may be made to really feel much less misplaced with complementary RGB lighting, however general, the mouse appears to be like like a hodgepodge of elements thrown collectively and not using a robust aesthetic route.

These points are solely pores and skin deep. Underneath the floor, the Agon AGM700 has robust parts, together with a PixArt PWM3389 sensor, which might observe at as much as 16,000dpi and stays correct at as much as 400 inches per second. It additionally options Omron mouse switches which can be rated to final by way of 50 million clicks, which is normal for premium gaming mice.

(Photograph: Mike Epstein)

As a last flourish, the AGM700 additionally options weight-tuning. In a storage compartment on the underside of the mouse, you’ll discover 5 cylindrical 5-gram weights which you could take away and shift round to vary the mouse’s heft and steadiness. Weight-tuning has turn into a comparatively obscure function in recent times. Within the esports period, avid gamers need their mice to weigh as little as attainable, so the notion of including or eradicating mass feels moot. The AGM700 weighs 4.41 ounces with the weights in; versus most gaming mice, that is extraordinarily heavy. Until you actually like a mouse with heft, you may most likely simply take the weights out, bringing the mouse’s weight all the way down to a extra cheap 3.42 ounces.

Although AOC is a brand new participant within the mouse sport, its Home windows-based configuration app, G Instruments, appears to be like surprisingly dated. The one-screen app has no frills. It offers you fast, direct entry to instruments for remapping buttons, creating macros, adjusting DPI presets, and altering RGB lighting, with out the prospers discovered within the configuration apps corresponding to Razer Synapse and Corsair iCue.

For instance, the image of the mouse within the app isn’t interactive. You alter mouse features with a collection of drop-down menus, slightly than by clicking on the buttons you’d wish to remap. That lack of polish makes some configurations way more difficult—for instance, you may’t see proposed changes to your RGB lighting sample onscreen—and the app’s aesthetic simply is not interesting.

It additionally has a really restricted capability for making customized mouse profiles. The Agon AGM700 can retailer three onboard profiles, which is fewer than common however greater than you’d anticipate from a price range mouse. The app itself can solely swap amongst 5 profiles complete. If you wish to have extra, you’ll have to export them and stash them in your PC till you want them. This can be a important hurdle if you wish to make particular profiles for a lot of video games.

If at First You Don’t Succeed…

AOC might have been conservative with the Agon AGM700, however as a substitute opted to swing exhausting and fall brief. There are many nice mice in this worth vary, together with the HyperX Pulsefire Haste and the Superb Mannequin O, however most are quite simple five- or six-button designs with out particular options, for good cause. There are some good decisions within the AGM700, sufficient to recommend that AOC might turn into a powerful mousemaker in time, however as an entire, it does not fairly cling collectively.

(Photograph: Mike Epstein)