Roccat Burst Pro Lightweight RGB Optical Gaming Mouse Review
NOTE: Roccat graciously sent me a final retail unit of this mouse to review at my discretion alongside marketing assets and technical information. I don’t receive a kickback if you decide to buy one, and none of the links in this article are affiliate links. I wasn’t sponsored to write this, and I had full editorial control over this article.
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Now, I have no real insight into this, but I imagine that the inception story of the Burst Pro went something like this:
Roccat Design Genius: “Let’s make a slightly better Razer Viper, shave a couple of grams off the weight, and sell it for a lower price.”
The only real feature that the Roccat Burst Pro gives up compared to its obvious direct Razer competition is the second set of side buttons on the right side, so if you’re a left-handed user, then this mouse isn’t as accommodating. In every other way, I find the Burst Pro to be a superior mouse. Before this review, the Razer Viper and Viper Mini were my go-to models, and now both of those live in my closet as backups.
Roccat’s Burst Pro sells for a standard price of $59, and it’s available in both black and white models (official site here). It’s a wired, ultralight gaming mouse with full support for Roccat’s AIMO RGB lighting system. It weighs 69g, about two grams lighter than the Razer Viper and within striking distance of the 61g Viper Mini. Like those Razer models, it uses a fully covered shell without exposed holes, but in a brilliant design touch, the lighting inside the Burst Pro shines through the honeycomb frame and gives you a better understanding of how they made it light while also looking very cool.
Right away, the Burst Pro feels like a solidly-built mouse in the hand. It has a smooth matte coating with subtly textured sides. It’s not quite as nice as the “performance coating” on the Roccat Kain 200, but I think that coating also would have added to the weight. My Razer Viper recently developed a small creak in the left side panel after a year and a half of use(in spite of my original enthusiasm about its design), but the Burst Pro feels better out of the box and I suspect it’ll feel just as good months from now.
The clicks on this mouse are loud, powerful, fast, and responsive, and I love everything about the way they feel. It’s a perfect example of Roccat’s famous “Titan Click” design. Essentially, they’re using a high grade optical switch that’s engineered to be very responsive, and it’s perfectly seated and angled under the button to maximize contact with the plastic frame. The result is a click that’s significantly louder and clickier than you might be used to on some other mice, but I think it’s awesome. It’s precise and snappy, and perfect for hours of Diablo III or accurate competitive gaming.
If you’re not a fan of clicky switches you might not love the way that the clicks sound, but you likely won’t notice it as much when you’ve got game audio playing. The click of the wheel is similarly strong and enjoyable, though it’s not as firm as the click on the Kain 200 due to the lighter weight of the wheel itself. In spite of that, it is still seated stably in the frame. The scrolling action of the mouse wheel is firmly stepped, and slightly louder when scrolling up.
The frame design is large enough that I can hold it in any grip style. I’m most comfortable with a palm grip, but the textured sides and smart thumb button placement mean that claw and fingertip are also quite viable. I’ve played for hours over the last week with no comfort issues. The “Phantomflex” cable lives up to its branding. It’s a light, hyper-flexible cable that’s 1.8m long, and while that cable length is a little shorter than I usually like, the pliable cable really does nearly disappear during use.
Sensor-wise, Roccat has you covered. I know it’s a little weird to talk about the tracking performance this late in a mouse review, but so many mice are so good at this now, and the Burst Pro is one of those. It uses Roccat’s custom OwlEye 16,000 DPI sensor, which is based upon the PixArt 3389. The Roccat Swarm software lets you set plenty of options, including five sensitivities you can toggle between with the prominent DPI button under the wheel. I never set my DPI much above 1800 on my 4K display, but it’s always fun to crank things up for no reason and watch my mouse cursor fly around too quickly to be usable. The Burst Pro has more sensitivity than you’ll ever realistically need.
The Swarm software also lets you activate either a custom RGB profile, or Roccat’s AIMO lighting system. AIMO is an intelligent, automatic lighting option that works across most of Roccat’s hardware. It’ll react in real-time to your gaming and typing actions, and send waves of light across and through your mouse, keyboard, headset, and mouse mat edge lighting if you have the right Roccat gear. It’s awesome, and works well enough that I left it turned on during the entirety of my week-long review process.
Razer has been touting the 8khz polling rate of their newly-updated Viper, and while it’s true that the Burst Pro doesn’t have this (in this current model), I also think it’s a bit of a silly feature...or at least way too ahead of its time. A polling rate that high doesn’t innately lead to more responsive gameplay, as game engines have to actually support that extreme rate of input. A higher polling rate also slightly pushes up CPU usage, which may not be great for gamers on lower-spec systems.
Roccat makes a big deal in the Burst Pro marketing about the heat-treated glides on the bottom of the mouse…and they’re actually great. They felt instantly smooth and responsive on my mouse pad. Both the Viper and the Viper Mini had about a day of “break-in” where they felt scratchy at first and then reached an acceptable smoothness, but I had no such issues with the Burst Pro.
You might think it’s unfair to keep bringing up the $39 Viper Mini in this review…but in keeping with my design theory at the top of this article, Roccat also sells a cheaper $29 version of the Burst aimed squarely at that model called the Burst Core. It uses the same frame design, and cuts slightly back on the sensor and the lighting. It also doesn’t have heat-treated glides.
I don’t have a single real complaint about this mouse, and I think it’s probably the best you can do as far as price vs. performance in today’s gaming mouse market. As long as you don’t mind a robust click sound, you’ll be richly rewarded with high performance movement and control, a sleek design that’s comfy to hold, and build quality that seems ready to stand up to a lot of gaming.
In the future, if Roccat adds their performance coating or rolls out a wireless version of this mouse, I will eagerly buy it. The Burst Pro is a clear example of a mouse that resulted from a talented team carefully studying the market to learn what works while also incorporating years of their own precise design experience. There are some lighter mice out there of course, but many have exposed holes that will fill with dust and gunk over time, which is a no-go for me personally.
If you love getting a great deal and you want a perfect example of what a modern ultralight gaming mouse can be, the Roccat Burst Pro should be your first choice. Its prominent clicks won’t be to everyone’s tastes, but as a fan of player-feedback-above-all, I absolutely love them.
