What really makes all of this work is Roccat’s new Swarm software, which replaces the old driver software used for its previous mice and keyboards. Roccat’s old drivers were packed with features, but so dense that it could be hard to find what you needed. They also had some annoyances enabled by default, like an achievement system tied to obnoxious VO that yelled at you when you ‘leveled up.’ Swarm mercifully disables that stuff by default, and lays out important controls like button mapping, DPI and sensitivity on easy to use tabs. The UI has more breathing room and is easier to navigate.
Assigning commands to the thumb buttons is surprisingly easy thanks to two great interfaces. First, there’s the drag-and-drop interface for the button grid, which lets you create and then choose templates based on how you have the keys configured. The second is the truly massive list of pre-configured game macros that can be assigned to those buttons, as well as more generic commands, like media playback controls, web browser navigation, and so on. The game macros are the especially interesting part: Roccat has hundreds of macros stored for various games, and you can easily modify and create your own in Swarm, too.
I don’t love Swarm’s macro features because I’m a big macro user. I almost never use macros. I love it because it’s so well-implemented, it actually made me interested in programming or assigning macros for my games. It made me reconsider the way I use a gaming mouse, and the best way to assign controls for various games. I’m used to assigning buttons in-game, but Swarm made it more appealing to assign commands in the driver software, because it’s easy to use and there are tons of presets as examples.
I also saw how Swarm could make that experience better. Assigning button commands in-game works just fine, but when you start switching out the buttons on the Nyth, and assigning different buttons to different profiles, that’ll make for a lot of re-assigning controls in-game. Saved profiles in Swarm, on the other hand, can be tied to whatever button layout you choose, and then set to activate based on specific executables you boot up. With a bit of setup time, you can have all your mouse controls automatically kick in when you boot up a game.
The Nyth hardware is cool by itself, and the software is useful by itself. In unison, they’re fantastic—although the software could be even better. There are tooltips designed to help new users understand what different settings do and mean, but they don’t provide any extra information (the tooltip for Sensitivity settings, for example, says ‘set your mouse sensitivity’). With a little more work, Swarm may be the best mouse software in gaming.
The Nyth felt good in my hand, though at 136 grams it’s a touch on the heavy side. Its Philips Twin Eye Sensor supports up to 12,000 DPI, which is certainly overkill, and I don’t know if tracking remains consistent at high settings (you can read more about DPI and tracking performance in my Gaming mouse myths busted article). The mouse did exhibit some high lift-off distance issues that surface tuning didn’t seem to fix, but setting the lift-off distance to ‘very low’ solved the problem.
From my time gaming with the mouse, mostly at 1600 DPI, I didn’t detect any issues with acceleration or inaccurate tracking. The Nyth is by far the best customizable mouse I’ve used, but I don’t know if it’s the right buy for many gamers. At $120, it’s far more expensive than most of my recommended gaming mice, and customizing your mouse for different games is absolutely a niche interest. But if that’s an interest you have, this is the mouse to get.