deskthority

Roccat Savu is a mid-range mouse by the German gaming company Roccat. The name is actually Finnish and means 'smoke'.

Announced in early 2012, it has fixed several issues of older Roccat devices, especially the wheel. Feature-wise, it's somewhere between the cheap Roccat Lua and high-end Kone Pure series. Price is usually around €50, which happens to be a bit less than current MSRP of Zowie FK, Logitech G400s, Razer DeathAdder and other popular gaming mice with decent sensors.

Packaging, registration

Apart from the mouse, there's only a brief user guide and a registration card in the box. You have to download the drivers by yourself... yay! no useless CD.

The ID card is worthless AFAIK. If you decide to register your mouse online, you need the mouse's serial number, which is different from the number on that card. However, I don't see any point in using the Roccat World. Its benefits sound like a bunch of gimmicks to me. Discounts on gaming hosting? Exclusive interviews with sponsored pro gamers? Brand-specific wallpapers? I don't care. I won't give away my address just for that. Supposedly, you should be able to access Roccat's official store with replacement skate pads and stuff like that, but the website was broken when I tried to access it, and they're said to ship only to Germany and Austria anyway.

pictures Grip, build quality

Long story short, Savu is designed for claw/fingertip grip. The thumb is supposed to go into the pit above the thumb rest. The mouse is wide enough to fit three fingers on top. One finger can rest on the wider part of the right side.

Middle part of the body is rubberized, but I think it's not the kind of rubber that gets sticky and fugly easily. Sides aren't though. They have a rough, sandpaper-like texture. Some OCN members claim that this texture eventually comes off, although I guess you have to have very aggressive sweat to get to that point.

Considering that Savu weighs only 90 grams, it's surprisingly well built. Nothing squeaks even when pressed violently and plastic parts fit perfectly.

USB cable is just a typical braided cable. I'm not a big fan of that, but I don't expect any problems, because I don't travel with the mouse and use a mouse bungee (Roccat Apuri) most of the time.

Apart from the wheel, there are two primary buttons and two thumb buttons. All of them have nice tactility and feel even. Stiffness is just right, neither as stiff as Huano switches, nor very light, which would be a love/hate thing. I love position of the thumb buttons, they're right above my thumb. The wheel is relatively wide and has about the same stiffness as the other buttons, that's too stiff for me though, due to my malformed middle finger. Its steps are quite clearly defined... might be okay for gaming, but not so much for fast scrolling through longer documents/websites. It's a bit loud as well, when scrolling up.

One thing I dislike about Savu is size of the skates (same as on Roccat Lua BTW). They're somewhat big and you need to remove them to open the mouse. For example, Zowie MiCO is much better in this regard.

pictures (Roccat Savu) pictures (Roccat Pyra/Savu/Kone compared) video (playing AoE2 w/ fingertip grip @ 1600 dpi) link Sensor

Roccat Savu features an optical Avago 3090 sensor with a 4000 dpi ROM. One of its killer features is no angle snapping or acceleration out of the box. I'm not too concerned about precision, so just two things to point out:

1. 4000 dpi is hard to control and might be a bit jittery, and
2. LOD is huge (3+ CDs), unless you apply the tape fix or use a light-colored mousepad; it's a pity, because the mouse is very easy to pick up.

links Software

Now the best thing about Roccat mice. They have an on-board memory to store nearly all settings. Moreover, there are unofficial, but actively maintained and more or less complete open-source drivers for GNU/Linux, developed by Stefan Achatz. You can either download them from SourceForge, or use regularly updated binaries for mainstream distros, such as Fedora or Ubuntu. There are always two packages:

• optional, but recommended kernel module that brings support to older kernels back to 2.6.28; and
• `roccat-tools`, the configuration software itself, with some more or rather less useful extras, such as firmware updater.

The mouse is configured in a simple Python app called `savuconfig` that uses ordinary GTK GUI, unlike most official gaming hardware "drivers". There are five same tabs, one for each profile. Settings are sent to the mouse, when you press the _Store in device_ button. Alternatively, you can save all profiles through _File_-_Store all in device_. Each profile consists of

• light settings;
• sensor resolution, sensitivity and polling rate configuration;
• actions binded to buttons.

The _Gamefiles_ pane can be used to bind profiles to certain applications. Basically, you put a regexp for a certain class of windows (obviously, it depends on information provided by your window manager) in the text input field and then the driver's deamon tells to the mouse to switch profiles, whenever you focus a window that matches the pattern. I've never gotten it to work properly though.

One feature of official drivers that isn't present at all, is the "achievements" gimmick. Why the heck should mouse drivers make mouse use stats (such as the distance you've scrolled)?

Lights

In theory, the light at the back of the mouse is supposed to be able to produce any True Color color. In practice, it's better to stick to the obvious options: light turned off, one of the few preset colors or glowing rotation of preset colors. That's because of somewhat buggy color picker in the drivers and especially poor calibration on the hardware side.

Button actions

You can bind any of the five buttons and two wheel scrolling directions to

• any of the nine standard mouse actions (primary three "clicks", scrolling in four directions, extra two buttons interpreted as back/forward by default) and "double click";
• standard "multimedia" actions (volume or audio player controls);
• the Mod4/Windows key;
• any shortcut (combination of Ctrl, Alt, Shift, Windows and a keyboard key);
• a hardware modifier, timer, macro or an application launcher.

Easy* modifiers are one of the things I absolutely love about Roccat hardware. EasyShift is something like the "Fn" modifier you probably know from compact keyboards. It doesn't send any keycode, but accesses an extra layer on the mouse... and you can configure that layer by yourself, of course. It greatly benefits from the easily accessible thumb buttons.

The other two special modifiers are EasyAim and EasyWheel. The former changes sensor resolution while you hold it. The latter is associated with wheel scrolling; you can change profiles/sensitivity/volume this way.

I don't get what the point of timers is. Basically, if you press the button assigned to a timer, it triggers a timer and after given time sends an event to the host system, which reacts by playing a sound or showing a system notification (OSD). BTW the mouse can do the same when switching profiles.

Macros are probably more useful, although I never use them either. You can not only record a sequence of keyboard key presses (and optionally length of each key press), but paste a sequence of key presses necessary to type the text in the clipboard too, which sounds quite interesting.

pictures Conclusion

I really like Roccat Savu. It's a decent no-bullshit mouse with a very nice price tag compared to e.g. Zowie FK, Logitech G400s or Razer DeathAdder. It fits my fingertip grip quite well, but I recommend to try before you buy though. The killer feature, that truly separates it from the competition, is the on-board memory (with EasyShift) and GNU/Linux support.

Now I only wish Roccat will remake the ambidextrous Kova to have all this new stuff like wheel and materials ASAP.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Please add performance tests
http://deskthority.net/german-discussio ... t7313.html
and we will have a more complete review.
Let us also know, what mousepad do you use for testing.

Jitter at 4000 dpi and high LOD have already been mentioned; SS QcK is in the pictures. MS Paint drawings around the web/OCN look better than mine; I can't use the 400 dpi setting at all, it's like writing with my right hand (I'm *very* left-handed).

Enotus in a VM outputs a bunch of rubbish.

I really liked the feel of this mouse - should have kept it when I had it!

Most important thing for me "no-bullshit mouse"! And this is what seperates a okay mouse from a great one!
Thanks!

I had a Roccat Kone Pure and it broke after 2 months. I hit it once a bit harder at the desk because I raged and since then its not working properly.

Nice review!

When it comes to rage my MX518 suffered the most from, never broke... worked like a charm.
I actually don't know if the DA would survive a manly slap but I stoped raging at all... Not so easy in LoL Solo Q

Just a quick update: I've started to use the mouse on a Roccat Sota mousepad; now it's much faster (I've even switched from 1600 to 800 cpi) and has slightly higher LOD (definitely over 3 CDs, but still under 4 CDs).

Another update.

Roccat Savu doesn't track on Mionix Propus 380 (a very smooth plastic mousepad); a black Icemat is perfectly fine though, and I appreciate the large mouse feet now.

The thumb rest is somewhat smoothed out after less than a year, but neither sticky, nor explicitly shiny yet. Rubber coating is still in great condition, and the wheel and buttons work like new.

Good review davkol! I almost bought the Savu a while ago but went for my Sensei. I have read that Roccat quality build seems to be good compared to Zowie.

I currently have a white sensei to match my HHKB, I have a hard time to get used to it. Because it is made for left and right handed users, you have the mold for the thumb on each side of the mouse. I use my left ringfinger and pinky to lift the mouse. Because of the mold the fingers start to cramp after a while...

It is always impossible to find a mouse to match a white HHKB...

cookie wrote: ↑ It is always impossible to find a mouse to match a white HHKB...

A white glossy Version of the Rival got released a few weeks ago, you might want to take a look at that.

@cookie - come on, there a many mice that comes to my mind.

For a HHKB the best mice I can think of is WMO 1.1 or IO 1.1.
Further Zowie AM-FG would fit well imo.

I have a white IE3, best so far but the mousewheel and thumb buttons are terrible Plus the black parts does not match the color quite well. The WMO 1.1 does not have thumb buttons, which I need. I never had a IO 1.1 so I can't tell if it will fit my needs but I think that the build quality is similar to the IE3 :/

Availability is the main problem of your suggestet mice though

cookie wrote:
It is always impossible to find a mouse to match a white HHKB...

there is a white version of the Steelseries Kinzu cookie:

http://steelseries.com/de/products/mice ... s-kinzu-v3

I really need 2 thumb buttons, so the kinzu is out

The sensei frost blue still has the best matching colors, for my taste:

Well since I recently bought a keyboard from you I know you have good taste! [emoji41] The Sensei is a superb mouse but pretty expensive.

I hope everything is to your satisfaction The one I bought was a defective one which I found on ebay, I replaced the microswitches and it was like new! I must say that the sensor on my IE3 feels kind of better but I have no idea why?

For now I am pretty happy with it!

The White Rival looks tempting though... over 60€, man I already have more mice than I can possibly break in my lifetime

Have you found a nice white mouse yet? My white HHKB is on it's way and I also need a fitting mouse!

I think there's a Roccat Kone in white. Some corsairs are also white...

I was not happy with my roccat Kone and I dunno about Corsair :S

What's wrong with your Kone? I have a Kone xtd and I'm super happy with it.

I had the Roccat Kone Pure and it hurt my hands. Actuallly after that I was not using it for half a year and sold it, prior to that I used it a week and was quite happy a very good looking mouse.

I went with the SS Rival now - no specific reason tho