Skip to main content

Roccat looks to be ‘leader’ in PC gaming devices with Leadr wireless mouse

roccat leadr wireless gaming mouse
Image used with permission by copyright holder
On Monday, May 15, PC gaming peripheral maker Roccat announced the launch of a new wireless mouse, the Leadr. It features a polling rate of 1,000Hz, meaning the device updates the computer with input information once every millisecond. By comparison, the average wired desktop mouse updates the processor every eight milliseconds or so, thus Roccat is pushing an extremely high refresh rate on a wireless device because in a game, every millisecond counts.

Backing the 1,000Hz polling rate is a custom Pixart 3361 optical sensor Roccat dubs the Owl-Eye. According to the specs, this sensor has a sensitivity up to 12,000 dots per inch, a maximum acceleration of 50G, a maximum tracking speed of 250 inches per second, and a framerate of up to 12,000 frames per second. The sensor comes packed with an IR LED inside a 16-pin molded lead-free DIP package.

Recommended Videos

However, Roccat says the custom Owl-Eye sensor is optimized for the “golden range” between 400 and 3,000 DPI. Thus, PC gamers may not experience high precision tracking when going beyond that 3,000 DPI threshold.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!

“9 out of 10 professional gamers choose a DPI under 2,000 due to the undesirable smoothing that occurs at DPIs above that — in every sensor. Our own Roccat pros do the same,” the company says. “When developing Owl-Eye, we focused on accuracy and responsiveness within the golden range.”

Here are the hardware specs provided on the product page:

Wireless transmission: 2.4GHz band
Polling rate: 1,000Hz
Battery duration: 20 hours
Button count: 14 ergonomic + 2D Titan Wheel
Lighting: 16.8 million colors
Separate color zones: Logo
Mouse Wheel
Processor: 32-bit ARM Cortex-MO chip @ 72MHz
On-board memory: 512KB
Maximum DPI: 12,000
Acceleration speed: 50G
Maximum speed: 250 inches per second
Lift-off distance: Adjustable
Cable length: 71 inches
Cable type: Micro USB to USB
Size (inches): 3.18 x 1.81 x 5.07
Weight (pounds): 0.295

According to Roccat, all 14 buttons are fully programmable through the free Swarm software. These buttons are joined by the X-Celerator single-axis analog thumb paddle mounted on the left side, meaning this mouse wasn’t designed for left-handed PC gamers. There’s also a mid-knuckle dorsal Fin Switch “for rapid and instinctive control.”

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Packed with the new Leadr mouse is a premium charging dock stand for juicing up the included 20-hour battery. It connects directly to the PC to send and receive wireless signals from the mouse. But if the peripheral has a low battery and the user still needs to game on, the “top-up” cable can be detached from the dock and plugged straight into the mouse.

Finally, in addition to programming the buttons, Leadr owners can customize the two lighting zones as well with the Swarm software for Windows, Android, and iOS. Here users can store their settings in the cloud, share their profiles and macros, and even manage the device through their smartphone and/or tablet. Swarm serves as the hub for all connected Roccat devices, and even supports the AlienFX lighting systems on Alienware desktops and laptops.

Roccat’s new wireless Leadr mouse for PC gaming is available to pre-order now for $140 on Roccat’s website. The peripheral isn’t slated to ship until May 31, 2017.

Kevin Parrish
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kevin started taking PCs apart in the 90s when Quake was on the way and his PC lacked the required components. Since then…
3 new Xbox Game Pass games to play this weekend (November 8-10)
An alien in armor with a light sword standing in front of a space ship window with a planet in the background.

This is a good week for strategy game fans subscribed to Xbox Game Pass because November's first new additions to the service all fall within that genre. Two of them are real-time strategy game classics from Blizzard Entertainment, and the other is a strategic take on an arcade classic. If you're playing on a console, these additions may not mean as much to you, but for Game Pass subscribers with access to a PC, these recently added strategy game games are well worth your time.
StarCraft: Remastered
StarCraft Remastered Announcement

The original StarCraft is a monumental release for Blizzard Entertainment. It gave the studio a third pillar franchise alongside Warcraft and Diablo, was one of the first major esports games, and set a standard that most RTS games after it have tried to follow. In 2017, Blizzard released StarCraft: Remastered, updating the classics' visuals, audio, and online features; that's the version of StarCraft that has come to Xbox Game Pass. While there are more approachable RTS games nowadays, PC gamers should check out the original StarCraft if they've never played it before to better understand the foundational building blocks of the RTS genre.

Read more
Your next gaming PC could be fully built by Nvidia
Nvidia's A100 data center GPU.

Nvidia might be at the heart of your next gaming PC, not just through a graphics card, but also through your processor. Team Green is working on an Arm-based PC platform that's built around a CPU and GPU designed by Nvidia and that is reportedly set to launch in September 2025, according to DigiTimes.

According to the report, Nvidia is planning on launching a high-end computing platform based on Arm instructions in September, with a commercial launch following in March 2026. This is the first we're hearing about a timeline for Arm-based chips designed by Nvidia, but it's not the first time we're hearing about it. About a year ago, Reuters reported that Nvidia began looking into Arm-based CPUs as "part of Microsoft's effort to help chip companies build Arm-based processors for Windows PCs."

Read more
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a breath of fresh air on PC
Combat in Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

I assumed Dragon Age: The Veilguard would have problems on PC, not only due to the horrendous port of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor from EA last year, but also because of the fact that it's been in development limbo for several years. But I've put a few hours into the game on PC across some different hardware, and I'm pleasantly surprised. There are a few rough patches, but Dragon Age: The Veilguard is solid on PC.

After tinkering with the game a bit, I'm here to give you the best settings to optimize your performance on PC, as well as some of the key differences you need to know about in the settings menu. This is a massive RPG, and I only had a few days to test it, so performance might dip later in the game. For the first several hours, however, my experience was great.
Best settings for Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Read more