Microsoft Habu Laser Gaming Mouse (Black)
by Microsoft
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Our Price: $70.00 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $45.00 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Microsoft Habu Laser Gaming Mouse (Black)
Customer Review: Excellent Mouse, works great
Summary: 3 Stars
I have been using this for almost 2 years now. It fits great in my medium sized hands. The weight is perfect for long use.
I unplug it from pc and take it to work almost every day.
Con : I get annoyed by other mouse now since i started using this mouse
Update, i had to fix the cable by cutting it, but that's no problem because it was under heavy use. The right-click button stopped with the clicking sounds and doesn't work so great anymore. I've never had this issue with another mouse. same thing happened to a friends razer diamondback. shame because i really liked the size and design
Customer Review: Good with problems
Summary: 3 Stars
Its the best feeling mouse I ever used but the software has problems.Customer Review: Promising product marred by flaws and poor quality.
Summary: 2 Stars
I picked up this mouse about 18 months ago for $45 after my elderly Microsoft IntelliMouse (old ball type) finally gave up the ghost. I respected the build quality of MS peripherals (I've had a few of their keyboards, mice and even a joystick or two) and have always been able to run their stuff hard and put it away wet and still get years of use out of them. This mouse does not hold up to that legacy in any way. Knowing what I know now I wouldn't even buy it for $20, let alone $40+. This is the first laser mouse I've used on a regular basis and I was mighty impressed with its increased accuracy over my old ball mouse. It slides around on my mousepad like its floating on air, is light, balanced, comfortable in the hand and very responsive. Too responsive even. Even the slightest twitch is felt by this mouse and there is no way to filter that out. While this may be awesome for a sniper in an FPS its an exercise in frustration for some puzzle games or anything fiddly.
This puzzled me because one of the most commented upon features of the mouse is its advanced profile system and the ability to change profiles on the fly. No matter how I tweaked the sensitivity I could not completely filter out the slight involuntary motion, I could lessen it but not eliminate it. On top of that the software is a pain to use. Installation issues aside (I had no problems but many have reported them) the software is clunky, too stylish for its own good and annoying to use. Some settings also don't stick. I quickly grew tired of the harsh blue glow of the mouse and disabled it only to find it was back on the next time I started up my PC. Checking the settings again showed the piping was still "off" but a look at the mouse proved otherwise. Cycling profiles corrected this but its annoying as heck to do because you have to to it EVERY TIME you restart your system and the button for it is mounted on the bottom of the mouse. On top of that swapping profiles causes the mouse to "go dead" for a few seconds so using the feature in game is probably a death sentence for any hardcore FPSer. After awhile I just found a setting that I liked, cloned it to all the profiles and uninstalled the software. I've learned to live with having to swap profiles to lose the blue glow.
Okay, so, bad software aside its still a good mouse, right? Not so much. As the months wore on more and more issues started to crop up. The rubbery "piping" that glows blue started to discolor because of the sweat of my hands (what do you expect my hands to do during a 4 hour session of Battlefield?), its now a dirty brown color. Dirt and grime also builds up in the many seams and cracks around the piping and removable side buttons. Thinking it just needed a good cleaning I took the mouse apart and ran into several issues. First off the screw holding the mouse together is mounted under the rear glide pad. Fun stuff. Once I opened the mouse up I was unimpressed with what I saw. The light tube that carried the blue color around the piping of the mouse had partially fallen out. I never noticed because I turned it off but the poor build quality didn't impress (I also noticed it uses the same innards as a Razer Copperhead Tempest, just an FYI). The next problem was cleaning it. The rubbery piping collected gunk like a champ and was a pain to clean and get back into place, the glow tube kept falling out and getting everything put back together again was made difficult by the flexible piping and odd shape of the top portion of the mouse. The mouse needs regular cleaning to keep everything going smoothly and its not fun, easy or quick to do.
Okay, bad software, mediocre build quality and being a pain in the butt to clean, other than that its good, eh? Nope. After about 14 months I would get seemingly random instances of the mouse not tracking properly. It wouldn't track left/right almost at all and up/down slowed noticeably. This would pass after a few seconds of wiggling the mouse around. I for the life of me can't find the source of this problem. I've cleaned the thing inside and out, remade the profile settings and even taken a q-tip and cleaning alcohol to the laser lens and I still randomly have the issue. A few months later the buttons started to act up. Right click works great but left click, the workhorse button of a mouse, double clicks some of the time without reason. I've never had this problem with any other mouse and I don't have it with any of the other mice I use regularly. Again, cleaned it and mucked around with the settings but the problem still persists. Lastly the profile swapping button on the bottom of the mouse easily get s pushed aside. Sure, I probably use it more than most people but its still pretty easy to push aside to its no longer seated properly. I've had to take it apart because of this more than once now. Looks like I'll be getting a new mouse sometime in the near future, I can tell you right now it wont be a Razer. If this is an indicator of the quality of their products I feel sorry for anyone stuck with anything they make.
To sum up,
The Pros:
Ergonomic. Light, balanced, comfortable.
Laser mouse. No ball to worry about/clean.
Snappy buttons/wheel. The buttons click nicely and work well.
Accurate. It tracks well, has a ton of resolution options and preforms well (while it lasts).
Slick looking. The black with blue glow looks great, just don't get tired of it cause your kinda stuck with it.
The Cons:
Crap software. Its buggy and a pain to use.
Cleaning issues. Don't get this thing dirty, its got more nooks and crannies than an English Muffin and is harder to clean than any ball mouse I ever owned.
Poor build quality. Nuf said.
Poor Reliability. It might last you a year or two under hard use and then you'll have to put it out to pasture.
Two stars. Don't waste your money on it. Buy it only if its a gift for someone you don't like.
Customer Review: Not so great....
Summary: 2 Stars
I bought this mouse as a replacement for my Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer which I've had for almost 8 years now. It finally developed a short in the cord and cuts out occasionally. Other then that it still works perfectly. Imagine my disappointment when right out of the box I noticed that the bottom button bellow the mouse wheel on the Habu stuck in the down position the very first time it was depressed. Definitely not the quality I was expecting.
I decided to go ahead and try to install it anyway. I was really curious to see if it was as tough as everyone is saying. IT IS!!! I consider myself pretty good with computers. I have built several of them. This was by far the toughest install I've dealt with. Even with following some instructions I found on the internet step by step, it still failed to recognize the mouse and upgrade the firmware. I finally had success (quite by accident) after uninstalling the Habu software, installing the software update from razer and then flashing the firmware. Basically follow the instructions in Adams review and you should be fine. I wish I had read them before wasting 3 hours of my life.
So now it works. How good is it? The mouse itself is very comfortable. I like the interchangeable side buttons. I opted for the buttons further to the rear. The scroll wheel and left and right buttons all work fine and have a nice feel to them. The major complaint I have is with the two buttons below the wheel. The bottom one sticks and even the top button has a "cheap" feeling click to it. The tracking for the cursor is very smooth and precise.
Now on to the software. The UI is ugly and tacky but is fairly straight forward and easy to figure out. The biggest disappointment here is with the standard options for the buttons. There are no options for forward, back, close or minimize. All of these were available on my 8 year old mouse. I ended up having to make and assign macros to each button to get everything to work the way I wanted. The macros function itself was a bit buggy. Sometimes they would work and sometimes not. After redoing them several times it seems to have "taken" and is working OK. It's just allot of hassle to go through to get to what I feel should be a standard option.
Amazon is sending me a replacement. I will see if the sticky button was just a fluke.
Pros:
Nice Looking
Comfortable
Excellent tracking and precision
Cons:
Extremely difficult install
Sticky button "cheap" feel
Lack standard options for button assignments
Expensive
Lack of tech support
Customer Review: Nice mouse, but inconsistent
Summary: 2 Stars
Our company purchased 5 of these mice last year. The new mice worked great, and had everything that I (as a moderate gamer) would want: 7 buttons, on-the-fly dpi adjustment, good surface responsiveness, and smooth motion. However, after about 6 months, two of the mice started having issues with the buttons:
-the first mouse occasionally issues two clicks when the left button is depressed once; this doesn't sound bad, but this is a big problem both when gaming and when doing simple things like attempting to rename files (the files launch instead).
-the second mouse's wheel doesn't work correctly when scrolling, as it will often throw in an opposite-direction scroll at random times. In addition, after 12 months' time this mouse's right-click now has erratic behavior.
The other three mice aren't used as much, so I'm not sure if they are having issues or not.
In short, the working mice function well, but a failure rate of 40% (2 out of 5) is unacceptable, and as a result we will not be purchasing any more of these mice.