Page 2 - A Closer Look - Hardware and Software
The Gigabyte AORUS M2 is the starting mouse in the M lineup alongside the M3, M4, and M5. The M3 was released much earlier compared to the rest of the lineup. The shape of the M2 shows some resemblance to the Logitech G Pro with its small and comfortable design. The AORUS M2 has an ambidextrous shape, making the mouse perfectly symmetrical. With the mouse at this size, it forces those with larger hands use a claw or fingertip grip. Even though I usually use the palm grip, claw and fingertip gripping felt very natural when I used this mouse. As a person who generally uses a palm grip, it did take some time to get used to this change, and your mileage may vary.
Measuring in at 117mm depth, 63mm width, and 36mm height, the Gigabyte AORUS M2 is on the smaller side in terms of dimensions. Compared to the wired Logitech G Pro, the AORUS M2 has dimensions within two millimeters of difference. Because the mouse is so small, it is also quite light at 76g. The weight is not adjustable, which is quite common nowadays. The cable is not braided, but keep in mind this is an economy mouse.
Going with the current trend, the Gigabyte AORUS M2 includes RGB lighting, adjustable in the RGB Fusion 2.0 software. There is one lighting zone to customize at the palm area of the mouse. In RGB Fusion 2.0, you can increase and decrease the brightness level as well as select one of five different lighting effects. The lighting effects are static, pulse, flash, double flash, and color cycle. These modes are pretty self-explanatory, but pulse is a breathing mode, while flash refers to a quick blink of a single color. Personally, I left the lighting on static as I do not generally look at my mouse while I use it. I was not too fond of flash and double flash as I just generally did not like the way it blinked.
As for buttons, the Gigabyte AORUS M2 boasts Omron switches rated at 50 million clicks under the primary left and right click buttons. These switches are quite popular and used in various amounts of mice. With the use of these switches, this mouse produces a satisfying click that anyone could ask for. A DPI button is placed in the middle of the mouse under the scroll wheel, but out of the way so it will not be pressed accidentally. The DPI levels are defaulted to 400, 800, 1600, and 3200 DPI. This gives a lot of room for adjustment and the flexibility is appreciated. For me, I disabled this button because I only use one DPI setting and thus do not need to change it on the fly. Finally, the Gigabyte AORUS M2 has two buttons on both sides. The buttons are a bit too easy to click, so accidental clicks may occur during use. These buttons can be customized through the AORUS Engine software gives the option to change the mouse buttons into normal mouse buttons, keyboard keys, macros, multi-keys, multimedia buttons, default settings, or disable them all together.
In the middle, the scroll wheel can be found sandwiched between the two primary buttons. I generally enjoyed using it for scrolling, as it has a well textured surface and spun easily with little resistance. On the other hand, the middle click was quite a bit stiffer and harder to depress due to the lack of scrolling resistance. I often scrolled instead of using my middle click due to this. Overall the scrolling is nice, but the middle click could use a little work.
Taking a peep at the bottom of the mouse, there are four Teflon pads. This is standard across mice in general so there is nothing special here. The bottom does have some design added to it, displaying the name of the mouse being the AORUS M2 as well as an engraved AORUS logo. The aesthetics of the bottom of the mouse is something I really enjoy even if I practically never look at it. These small details are still nice to see and bottom textured design at the bottom looks great in my opinion.
The sensor in this mouse is the Pixart 3327. This is sensor is capable of up to 6,200 DPI sensitivity, 220 IPS tracking speed, and 30G acceleration. 500 DPI is the lowest possible sensitivity on this mouse, adjustable in 100 DPI increments. The levels themselves are adjustable through the AORUS Engine software. The use of this sensor was chosen as a budget-friendly and lightweight option. We will investigate its performance in this mouse on the next page.
Moving on to the software, the Gigabyte AORUS M2 requires two peices of software to customize the mouse to its utmost potential. Firstly, there is the AORUS Engine that I talked about a little earlier. This software is for changing up the buttons and DPI settings, standard on most gaming mice. The second software is RGB Fusion 2.0, dedicated to changing the RGB effects if you could not tell from the name. I found this situation rather annoying, having to download two different pieces of software just to make this mouse function like it was intended to. This is the same issue discussed in the review for the Gigabyte AORUS K9 Optical. I understand the software works with many Gigabyte products, but the flow of using the software is just incoherent to me.
Starting with AORUS Engine, this is the bread and butter to mouse customization. You can change your sensitivity and change your button configurations, as previously stated. There are many options you can choose from when deciding on what you want your mouse to do, but the software cannot be expanded and is rather hard to read. When I first started changing up my sensitivity settings, I was questioning why 4000 DPI felt so slow. I misread the software as the incredibly small font actually stated 400 DPI, meanwhile I was reading the D as a 0. I only realized when I saw that I was reading 4000 PI, or four thousand pi, haha.
Next is the RGB Fusion 2.0, not shown. This RGB software works great as an idea to synchronize your entire computer setup, but is a strain to use when you only possess one Gigabyte product. The effects are decent, but the coloring is not the greatest. The software allows you to enter in the RGB values or the color code directly, but it does not actually do anything. The only way to adjust the color on this the M2 is to use the color circle or use one of its preset colors. I did enjoy the brightness level setting that it provided though, it worked as it was intended to. Overall, using both of these utilities in tandem was a struggle and the software could use some brushing up.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look - Hardware
3. Subjective Performance Tests
4. Conclusion
