Gamers on a tight budget often came across a bunch of seemingly good deal for a fancy looking mouse with a lot of flashy LED effects, but these so-called gaming mouse don’t usually last long most of the time. Still, there are brands that actually delivers on both affordability and quality for the gamers in need, and Armaggeddon is one of them.
We’re taking a look at Armaggeddon’s NRO-5 Starship III gaming mouse today, courtesy of Armaggeddon Malaysia and Leapfrog Distribution. Having the word starship in its name sounds fancy enough for a gaming mouse, but will it perform just as well when it comes to gaming? We’ll find that out for sure… Let’s get into this!
- Macro-ableâ„¢ Laser class gaming mouse
- Up to 6-level CPI adjustments on-the-fly [Default 500/1000/2000/4000]
- 9 Buttons + 4 way click scroll [Save up to 12 macro scripts]
- Adjustable polling rate: 250Hz-4ms/500Hz-2ms/1000Hz-1ms
- High performance tracking speed:Â
- Up to 150 inches per second
- Avago 9800 Laser sensor
- Ultra durable 1.8m Nylon cord
- High-quality Teflon foot pads
- Framerate: 12,000 Frames per second
- Acceleration: 30G
Unboxing
The Starship III ships in a black-yellow packaging with the prominent features highlighted at the front of the box, Armaggeddon’s style as usual.
At the back of the box, you’ll find the specifications written in various languages, mouse size guide as well as the 2-year limited warranty notice.
The packaging has a little cutout to display the product, right after you open the velcro-secured lid at the front of the box.
The content of the box are, the Armaggeddon NRO-5 Starship III Gaming Mouse, driver CD, Quick Start Guide and replaceable mouse skates.
The braided cord is used for enhanced durability against pulling damage with a ferrite core attached to minimize any potential interference that could affect your overall gaming experience.
It’s good to see that Armaggeddon didn’t put on the gimmick description such as faster polling rate. The USB connector is gold plated for extra protection against oxidation that makes the connector looks dull.
The Armaggeddon NRO-5 Starship III’s isn’t really a unique looking mouse to begin with, as we’ve seen similar gaming mouse from other brands with the same right-hand ergonomic design for improved comfort and rubber coated surface for a soft and matte finish but with a much lower cost and specifications.Â
The Starship III comes with 5 extra programmable side buttons to fit your gaming needs, especially MMO games for quick access to a series of skill to casts. Â Â
The LED indicator will indicate your current DPI, as of the 4 adjustable DPI on the mouse.Â
The right side of the mouse has a finger support design for you to rest your ring finger and that little finger.Â
The scroll wheel is pretty acceptable, the scroll is smooth and easy to control; the DPI toggle button is pretty accessible and it doesn’t need much effort to actuate.
At the bottom are 5 Teflon mouse skates and the Avago 9800 laser sensor.
There is a latch to access the weight management system of the Starship, simply drag on it to release the hidden compartment.
Here’s the hidden compartment – the removable weights for weights customization!
This is great for users who are picky about the weight of the mouse as one could adjust the weight of the Starship III by adding and/or removing weights.Â
Software
The GUI of the mouse software is very simple and straight forward, everything can be accessed with a click to expand the required function. The left panel consists of functions like Button Assignment, Macro Manager, and X/Y Sensitivity Settings. Armaggeddon is also considerate enough to label out all of the Starship III programmable buttons that made things easier for the end users, thumbs up on that!Â
With a total of 12 programmable buttons, you can record key combination according to your personal preference and needs to each of the buttons. Having 12 macro script does sound pretty badass, but the shortcoming of the macro recording design is that you’re not allowed to edit the recorded macro. Meaning that you will have to start from scratch if you did any mistake and wish to correct the macro, or perhaps wish to further tweak the macro.
The sensitivity of the mouse movement in both X axis and Y axis can be adjusted here if you find the default sensitivity doesn’t suit your needs.
If you’re not in the mood for the fancy lighting, you can always turn it off here. We doubt anyone would do that though…
The CPI is set to 500, 1000, 2000 and 4000 by default, but you can adjust each level of CPI to your liking at the range of 500 to 8200 CPI. The color of LED lighting can be configured here as well.
USB polling rate of the mouse can be adjusted as well according to your personal preferences. Effect of the USB polling rate isn’t that noticeable at most of the time, but gamers who utilize their mouse for precise movement will find this useful to get to that sweet spot for the games they played.
The mouse speed and scroll speed isn’t something that we will tweak that often, but for those who need faster scrolling and mouse speed, this is the thing for you.
Angle snapping is one of the most commonly seen features on gaming mouse nowadays, but it doesn’t always work as well by just cramping it up to the max and it’s not something universal that works great for all games. There’s a total of 10 level of angle snapping for the Starship III, just find the sweet spot according to your preferences and things will turn out well.
Once you’re done with all the tweaking, you can save the settings to a designated profile. The software allows you to configure up to a total of 6 different profiles, but switching between profiles will require you to load it via the software manually.
User Experience
To give the Armaggeddon NRO-5 Starship III a try, Tom Clancy’s The Division is our pick mainly because of its intense and terrifying gameplay in the PvP enabled zone. Here’s what we think about it, tip to the end:Â
- Glide:Â The Starship III glides pretty well on both hard mat and cloth mat and we recommend one to use a mouse bungee ie: the Armaggeddon Tarasque to eliminate little draggy on cloth mat.Â
- Grip: The ergonomic design and rubber coated surface did provide some enhancement to the grip and it’s suitable for gamers who uses the palm grip and claw grip method. The only issue here is that the rubber coated surface will turn sticky and peeled off over time, something which Armaggeddon should really to look into, as some brand has already ditched such design and went for UV matte coating instead.Â
- DPI Button: The DPI button isn’t that favorable for those who have larger palm as reaching the toggle down button requires your index finger to reach down much deeper, which is not really comfortable. If you have a small or medium sized palm, the DPI toggle button is pretty easy to reach with minimal movement on the index finger. Â
- Weight: Unless you have a super strong arm and need an extra light or extra heavy mouse to perform well in game, the Starship III is actually one of the gaming mice that doesn’t really have the weight issue as it comes with adjustable weight feature that allows you to adjust its weight whenever, wherever you want.  Â
- Profiles and Macros: While you’re able to toggle between 6 different profiles and a decent macro execution time, we find the profile switching rather troublesome and the macro recording feature to be very limited. Profile switching can only be done through the software and the macro recording is pretty much a one-shot recording that doesn’t allow further modification in the future.
Verdict
Retailing at the price of RM269, the Armaggeddon NRO-5 Starship III falls in the just about right category. Honestly, the Starship III will do just as fine even without the software. The software comes in useful if you need the extras from the software such as macro feature, sensitivity adjustment, polling rate adjustment, etc. We’re pretty much okay with the Starship III, but it’ll be even better if Armaggeddon would look into these few issue we have even though it’s rather subjective:
Profile switching button – We’re aware that the settings we configured will lose its function if we don’t use it on a PC that has the software installed along with the files for the profile, but it’s better if we can actually toggle between these profiles with a certain key combination on the mouse. It doesn’t have to be an extra key or two, just a combination to trigger that just like how we do with the shortcut keys on our keyboard.
Don’t use rubber coating already – As a gamer, we’re very sure that it’s not the first time your rubber coating gaming mouse turns sticky over time and things turns even uglier when it started to peel off. There are brands that have already ditched the rubber coating method and went for UV matte coating to overcome this issue. It might not feel as good as the soft touch feels on a rubber coated surface, but the matte surface isn’t bad either. It feels just as good (nearly) and it last much, much longer and will definitely not become sticky over time.Â
By considering the pros and cons we’ve experienced from the Armaggeddon NRO-5 Starship III, we deem it worthy enough to earn our silver award and recommended award here at www.tech-critter.com.
Pros
- Ergonomic design which gives a comfortable grip even after long hours of usageÂ
- Good price over performance value
- Adjustable weight
- Wide range of CPI selection from 500 to 8200
- Tracks well on both cloth and hard mat
- Easy to use softwareÂ
Cons
- Profile switching has to be done from the software
- Macro recording feature is very limited
- Rubber coated surface will turn sticky and peel off over time
