LBATS X7 Gaming Mouse Review

Introduction

The LBATS King Kong X7 is probably a name you may never have heard in the world of gaming peripherals but don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. I don’t blame you either as I hadn’t heard of this brand until a few weeks back but they sound like an interesting contender in the world of mice. From the get go it feels and looks hard wearing with its metal chassis and mechanical looks but at the same time the X7 also feels like it wasn’t an overly expensive piece of hardware to produce which is why it comes in at a such a great budget friendly price! Take a moment to see how it looks and if it’s worth your time and money.

Specifications

The X7 features 10 programmable buttons and is aimed to be convenient for you to take control of your favourite games such as League of Legends or Dota. The mouse features a high precision 4000 DPI, 4 modes of customised dpi settings with each of the 4 having a customisable colour LED light indicator, that helps to create a cool gaming atmosphere.

• Brand: LBATS (Lightning Bats).
• LED light: RGB (can be turned off using the button on the base).
• Operating voltage: 5V.
• Operating current: 100MA.
• System requirement: Windows XP/Windows Vista/Windows 7/Windows 8, needs a free USB (1.1/2.0) port and a CD-ROM drive but the drivers can be obtained from LBATS website.
• Acceleration: 30G.
• DPI: Adjustable DPI, Max. 4800DPI.
• Mouse cable length: Approx. 1.5m/4.92ft.
• Package size: 16.3 x 11 x 7.3cm. Package weight: 300g. Package Contents: 1 x gaming mouse. 1 x CD. 1 x English user manual.

Closer Look

Right off the starting line the packaging for the box is really aesthetically pleasant, the mouse arrives in a sleeved cardboard box similar to a mobile phone box where the outer sleeve slides off leaving you with the beige box. The box is where the party is at upon sliding the top portion off, the presentation inside is well thought through with loose fit plastic casing to both protect and keep the mouse in one place. Taking the plastic packaging out gets you to the driver disc, instructions and extra glide pads for when the fitted pads wear out and of course the X7 mouse itself.

First real impressions of the mouse, to me, are a mixed bag of good and bad. Once the mouse is out the box its feels pleasantly light to use and decent size for the hand, I have more of a palm grip on mice so the sloping back portion is a great and comfortable fit for me but your mileage might vary, but one issue I have spotted straight away is the metal and rubber scroll wheel has a slight side-to-side rattle. Luckily the rattle doesn’t affect performance with page scrolling so that’s a good sign just a little saddening there is a rattle but it’s hardly noticeable once you really get into it and when you have headphones on gaming away you are very unlikely to hear it anyway. The mouse features 2 hex key screws on either side as well as what looks to be an adjustment bolt on the bottom right left-hand side but upon closer inspection these actually appear to be more of an aesthetic feature than practical, more so the bolt on the bottom left does at least whereas the side bolts perform a function which holds the side plastic portions together with body of the mouse.

I quite like the matte finish black that has been used as I feel it give the mouse a sense of stealth, with its non-reflective surfaces but the contrasting silver trims and innards also help give the mouse a very robotic or mechanical look. The RGB LED in the centre area of the mouse is really well done as it’s more of a soft glow outward instead of a really bright and in your face light and when using the mouse most of the hand hides it so there less of a distraction too. The way the frosted plastic has been used is to great effect as it almost looks like a face or skull in the centre area and the LBATS logo is also clear frosted plastic so you can see the RGB, depending on what setting you have chosen, pulsing or flashing away which is a very interesting design. The metal chassis of the mouse while staying light helps give it a feel of rigidity and a sense that it’s built to handle a fair bit of wear and tear due to the additional mouse glider pads supplied out of the box, which you don’t get very often with mice so that is a nice bonus.

The X7 is also great as a day to day mouse as the function buttons make browsing web pages, computer folders and media playing simpler. Due to the ability to program the buttons differently, I have the two smaller buttons on the left and right clicker buttons set to skip forward and back for music, the button on the inner left-hand edge is set to double click and of course the backwards and forwards buttons mapped in the logical place with easy access by my thumb.

Software

So LBATS have their own software client that you can use, you will need this in order to program the cool features this mouse has, it allows you to tweak each of the other different DPI settings from 250 up to 4000. This is also where the RGB settings can be changed as the X7 features an RGB LED in the centre of the mouse. It can be programmed to a respiration mode, so the RGB pulses as though the mouse is breathing through the colours. The colours on the RGB go through blue, yellow, magenta, cyan white, red and green. The neon mode is a much faster flicker or flash between each of the previously mentioned colours and these can both be further fine tuned with a second counter so the colour change can be set to suit everyone’s RGB fix.

The software is self is easily installed via the mini disc provided within the box the mouse arrives in or, if like myself you do not have access to a disc drive or have one installed on your PC, the driver is obtainable from LBATS website page for X7 mouse.

The LBATS software also has two sub menus within it, one for basic changes such as DPI settings for each click on the DPI button, if using windows 10 a notification will pop up stating which DPI level the mouse is on and what speed that setting correlates to. This is also where all the RGB modes, the speed of changes and type of effect the mouse will use for that RGB goodness.

The advanced menu is more for super fine tuning action speeds, the mouse speed can be set within this area from 1 being the lowest to 11 being the fastest the mouse will support. The scroll and double-click speeds can also be set up which is quite nice as the mouse can be set to a perfect speed each person which is a really nice feature. The advanced portion is also where macros can be recorded for those who enjoy playing World of Warcraft or any other MMORPGs that having mouse macros can save time in the games. You can download the X7 software suite from here.

Performance

Overall day to day performance is better than I had expected, it handles being flung about the desk like a champ. Having the ability to map macros makes life just that little bit easier for the mundane tasks or folder exploring, it’s also very enjoyable having my music playing and being able to move that little bit less to skip the song along.

The important part is how well does it game, I tend to play more first person style games such as GTA V which I have used as my test game for speed and reaction and the mouse can keep up really well. The scroll wheel rattle is not really audible when headphones are equipped but depending on how fast you move the mouse around you can feel it knocking which for me is a downside as it’s an odd sensation.

The DPI settings are quite handy and once it’s set to just the right level life’s a breeze with the X7 mouse, gliding across monitors and back again with short precise movement. Impressively the mouse can keep in the most demanding of titles, I gave it a test drive in GTA V and it had no problem keeping up with my sporadic and manic movements, left and rights swiping as well as the crazy clicking when shooting at things in the game.

It has been quite enjoyable getting to grips with the mouse and after deciding to use it as my daily driver I feel that any quirks or issues would be easily noticeable and there are a couple such as the scroll wheel rattle and DPI settings. The LBATS website for this mouse states its X7 mouse is up to 4500DPI, which sadly is a bit of a porky on their behalf because the software only allows up 4000. Other than that the performance on this relatively budget mouse has been pretty stellar.

Conclusion

Overall I have enjoyed using the LBATS X7 mouse for the last couple of weeks, one of my favourite features is, of course, the RGB lighting – I mean who can resist RGB? The main item I have taken from using this mouse is it’s a great budget buy, okay it might not as hardcore as a Steelseries mouse but if you want a bit of kit that will do the job and comfortably I might add, this mouse is the one for you. There are a couple of niggles that can be overcome, such as the wobbly scroll wheel and sometimes the occasional wrong button press but those are bearable especially when you get as good a level of performance for the price of £17.99 (correct as of publishing date).