Oscar is also known as XL-740K, but we prefer the nickname for this rather 'original' mouse.  The least you can say about its style is that it's surprising.  The problem is that it didn't manage to convince anybody here in our lab.  In fact, that's putting it mildly.   While leopard skin prints might be back on the pages of glossy magazines, the red snakeskin effect left us feeling very doubtful about this mouse.  We forced ourselves to test it though, and we're glad we did, as it turned out to be a very nice surprise!

The combination of dry, non-slip surfaces makes for a mouse that glides very easily and follows all of your movements, even when your palms begin to sweat a little.  The scrollwheel is quiet and the buttons are only just a little too hard, but to criticise this mouse for that would definitely be to quibble.  The driver (see inset) is simple, useful and intuitive.  And the shape of the mouse itself, which is wide and quite long at 13 cm makes it easy to keep hold of.  Keeping your palm from trailing across the desk will reduce the chances of you having a sore wrist at the end of the day, but people with smaller hands might find such a large mouse more difficult.

So does it have any faults?

Apart from its looks, which we'll admit are atrociously ugly, the buttons on the side are large, loud and made from cheap plastic.  We didn't manage to reach 1000 Hz, either, with Oscar sticking fast at 500 Hz, despite our attempts to manually set it to 125 Hz or 1000 Hz.

When they're new, the feet slide easily across the desk, although they are quite small.  Extra feet are included in the packaging, but we're worried that you'll get through them very quickly.


If you turn the mouse over, you'll find a small flap.  Open it up and you gain access to seven small weights--that we suggest you remove straight away to lighten the mouse, which weighs 105 g when empty but 127 g with all of the weights installed.  If you want the lightest possible option to game with, then you'll want to make sure you've got something to poke the weights out with.

There is one last fault that A4Tech claims Oscar has but that we didn't manage to find.  The packaging claims a maximum speed of 45'' per second, or 1.14 m/s.  If that figure was accurate, it would be very bad ineed, because we've managed to move other mice at speeds of up to 4 m/s in the fastest games.  We pushed Oscar to the limit, though, and we didn't find any problems, unlike some other A4Tech mice.