The Roccat Burst Pro mouse offers frictionless, featherweight gaming that's ideal for shooter fans

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• The Roccat Burst Pro boasts a svelte design that's incredibly lightweight and special smooth pads that ensure it glides across your desktop.
• Sensitive, accurate, and extremely responsive this medium-sized mouse should satisfy demanding gamers.
• With 6 programmable buttons and AIMO lighting support, this gaming mouse can be fully configured with Roccat's Swarm software
• You may also be interested in the best mice, the best gaming mice, or the best gaming keyboards.

It seems there's a bit of a race in gaming mice right now to see who can turn out the lightest, smoothest, most friction-free mouse experience. A wave of gaming mice with hexagonal chunks cut out of the body aims to keep the weight as low as possible without spoiling the feel. There's the Glorious Model O, the Cooler Master MM710, the SteelSeries Aerox 3, and now the Roccat Burst Pro.

Sporting a classic shape, with minimal buttons, the Roccat Burst Pro is incredibly light. It's a wired mouse, but the cable is specially designed not to create any drag and there are pads on the bottom that ensure a smooth glide on any surface. Throw in Roccat's durable and reliable Titan Switches and AIMO lighting system and you have a compelling gaming mouse that will delight first-person shooter (FPS) fans.

Coming in at $59.99, the Roccat Burst Pro is quite a pricey option. I've been living with it for a couple of weeks now to see how well it performs.

Roccat Burst Pro specifications

Dimensions: 4.72 x 2.28 x 1.52 inches

Weight: 68 grams

Sensor: 16,000 DPI

Connectivity: Wired

Programmable buttons: 6

Shape: Right-handed

Cable: 5.9-foot braided PhantomFlex cable

Design

The first thing you notice about the Roccat Burst Pro when you take it out of the box is just how light it is. This mouse weighs in at 68 grams, and it really does feel as light as a feather. Although the Burst Pro has hexagonal cutouts, there is a thin translucent layer covering the body, and this makes it easier to keep clean than something like the Model O, which is open to dust and dirt. The matte finish of the Burst Pro is easy to grips and there's a very subtle texture on the sides.

With an ambidextrous shape, the Roccat Burst Pro is symmetrical, except for the forward and back buttons on the left side, which are in the perfect spot for your thumb if you're right-handed. A chunky mouse wheel with a rubberized grip divides the main mouse buttons and there's a DPI switcher behind it. That's it for buttons.

The cable is permanently attached, but to reduce the potential drag Roccat has used a very flexible and lightweight braided cable that it calls PhantomFlex. It's just shy of 6 feet long and requires a USB port to plug into.

Turn the Burst Pro over and there's one last, very important, design feature in the shape of heat-treated PTFE (Polytetrafluoroethylene) feet. Now, PTFE, better known as Teflon, is quite widely used in gaming mice, but Roccat claims its treatment and tuning gets the most from it. After using this mouse for a couple of weeks, I'm inclined to agree. It glides around incredibly smoothly on any desktop or mouse pad.

As a medium-sized lightweight mouse, I think the Roccat Burst Pro could work with any hand size or grip preference, but it may be best for claw or fingertip grips and medium-sized hands.

Roccat is firmly on board with the RGB lighting scene, but it keeps things relatively simple, so there aren't multiple lighting zones or complex options. The light shines through the sides of the mouse wheel and the hexagonal holes under the translucent body.

Setup and interface

Plug the cable into your PC and you'll be prompted to download Roccat's Swarm software. Install the module for the Burst Pro and you can tweak scroll, tilt, double-click, and Windows pointer speeds, as well as choosing your preferred DPI settings. Other tabs enable you to reassign buttons, change the lighting effects, and tweak a few other things like the polling rate. There's also an option to set up different game profiles, which can include keyboard settings, too, if you have a Roccat board.

If you can't be bothered mucking around with lighting, you'll appreciate Roccat's default AIMO intelligent lighting system. It's supposed to react to whatever you're doing, and I found it worked well to show off a lot of different colors and effects. With just the single lighting zone, you can also pick a preferred effect if you have one. Compared to Razer and Corsair, the lighting options are a bit barebones.

Performance and features

Based on the marketing, the Roccat Burst Pro is not a mouse I would normally choose to buy, so I was surprised to find that I loved using it. I tend to prefer a bit of weight and no cable; recent favorites include the Razer Basilisk Ultimate and the Corsair Dark Core RGB Pro SE. I've tried lightweight mice like Razer's Viper in the past, and not been impressed, but the Roccat Burst Pro has won me over.

The combination of the low weight and those smooth pads on the bottom makes it absolutely effortless to move. It feels as though the gap between thought and onscreen action is reduced to a minimum with the Burst Pro, and it never failed to register a movement or click in my time with it. Roccat's optical Titan Switch offers a satisfying click and serious durability (Roccat says it's good for 100 million clicks). Going by the numbers, it has a 1,000Hz polling rate, and a maximum sensitivity of 16,000 DPI, which is more than enough for me.

While some mice can distract for one reason or another, the Burst Pro just does its job quietly and well. I never really noticed it during the workday, and for gaming, it has stood up to frenetic action extremely well. If you're into MMOs and RPGs, then the minimal buttons could be an issue, but this is a great mouse for FPS players. I have mainly test driven it with Doom, The Outer Worlds, and Shadow of War, and in combat situations, it performs accurately and reliably.

You may worry about the structure making it flimsy, but it's well-made. Even when slamming it down in frustration after an in-game death, the Burst Pro felt solid and tough. While the PhantomFlex name is a bit over the top, I was impressed by how little I noticed the cable.

There is another lightweight mouse I've been testing lately that I really like; the Glorious Model O is even lighter than the Burst Pro and glides around just as smoothly, but the open hexagonal holes do tend to collect dust and dirt. It may not look quite as cool, but the closed body of Roccat's mouse is definitely more practical.

Should you buy it?

Yes, it's an excellent lightweight gaming mouse for its responsiveness, comfort, reliability, and easy tracking.

What are your alternatives?

The obvious competitor is the very similar Glorious Model O, the wired version of which you can pick up for $49.99. It's extremely light, glides beautifully, and it's $10 cheaper, but it doesn't quite match the Burst Pro on performance and it's tougher to keep clean. The Cooler Master MM710 is even cheaper and lighter, and the MM720 is great for gamers who favor a claw grip, so they're worth looking at, too.

The bottom line

The Roccat Burst Pro is a very responsive, lightweight, comfortable gaming mouse that's ideal for gamers who like fast action, particularly FPS games. It offers an unfussy design with software to match and promises impressive durability. If you're looking for an ultra-light mouse it simply has to be on your shortlist.

Pros: Ultra-lightweight, pads glide easily, reliable buttons, very responsive, extremely comfortable to use

Cons: Quite expensive, wired.