When the GIGABYTE Aivia M8600 Macro Gaming mouse landed on the office desk, I was impressed by the packaging which left no stone unturned. Spare battery – check, Spare feet – check, robust box – check, in fact this is the one area where I have absolutely no complaints. Unfortunately for the Aivia M8600, it is the only area.

Aesthetically, the mouse is very good looking. Its aggressive styling is matched by the stealth like black angular features of the mouse. All was going so well until I powered it on. Sadly, the LEDs are of a very poor design and despite my best efforts in the excellent GHOST software, I could not find any colour that looked right unless it was either red or green due to the inability to match the colour of the sensitivity/charge chevrons. Worse still was that some of the colours were simply two LEDs together to try and emulate that colour such as magenta (red/blue) which looked like both a red and blue LED – not magenta!

I could forgive the poor aesthetics if the ergonomics worked. Sadly this is where things rapidly go downhill. When you first hold the mouse you will notice how heavy it is. Batteries are heavy so GIGABYTE cannot be solely to blame here, especially as they say the mouse is capable of over 100 hours use without a recharge which I was unable to refute. The weight would not be such a problem if the mouse could be comfortably manoeuvred for extended lengths of time though which sadly it cannot. What I find unacceptable is for a mouse to cost in excess of £80 that has not an ounce of rubber anywhere other than the scroll wheel. The plastic textured sides are nothing but a cheap imitation of what should have been there – rubber. I can appreciate GIGABYTE may have been wanting to keep the weight down by using lighter plastics but was there really any point if the mouse is impractical to use?


To make matters worse, after a few days use I noticed that the large gaps in the mouse’s frame starting to show signs of being filled up with dead skin, such was the poor ergonomics and overall design quality of the mouse. The M8600’s one saving grace is the fantastic GHOST software. While it too has its faults, it is easy to use and makes the mouse very customisable by setting up macro scripts and altering scroll speed along with the (poor) LED lighting. Sadly, this is not enough to bring the GIGABYTE Aivia M8600 back from the brink as a mouse that is customisable but inherently uncomfortable is no use to man or beast. All this is before I even begin to talk about the £80 it will cost you to bag one of these mice! I would find it very hard to justify that price or recommend this mouse as even though it has the feature set, there are better wireless and wired choices around for a almost half that price.

To summarise; GIGABYTE have set out to create a mouse in the guise of ‘one size fits all’ a jack of all trades if you like but have ultimately failed as rather than suiting everyone, it doesn’t really suit anyone and especially in my case, was quite uncomfortable to use for any lengthy period which is a shame as I had high hopes for this mouse and hailing from GIGABYTE, I expected much better both in terms of quality and usability. So, with this in mind I am reluctant to give out any award on this occasion and thus its back to the drawing board with this one I’m afraid GIGABYTE.

Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net. Thanks to GIGABYTE for providing todays review sample.