MADCatz is a gaming peripheral company with quite a few different products under their wing, they created a separate organization to focus a particular style of the gaming mouse; the Cyborg RAT series.

The most striking feature of the RAT is its ability to physically morph into a different beast by swapping out the top and side plates, as well as move the buttons on the right.

The stats:

• DPI range: 100-6400
• 4 programmable DPI profiles
• 6 programmable buttons and 3 position switch
• Up to 18 extra “virtual buttons” via combinations
• 30 gram weight fine tuning

The RAT 7 doesn’t look like your run of the mill PC rodent, between the different mice plates are gaping openings, allowing you to see inside the guts of the beast. You can clearly make out how the mouse is constructed, an aluminum skeleton fleshed out with different panels which can be swapped out (palm- and pinkie-rest) or moved back<>forward (thumb rest).

Inside the package you’ll find a nifty box that holds all the custom panels for safe keeping. There’s also a weight cartridge that can hold the 5 custom weights of the RAT.

Without the weights the mouse is already on the heavy side, adding a further 30gr was not necessary for me, this is of course a personal choice.

The palm rest was the second option I started testing to find my preference, the thickest one was too high for me, the rubberized one too grippy, so I left the default one; position wise you can move the palm rest in 4 different positions, the furthest away is definitely for those with very large hands!

Removing the palm rest is tool-less, swapping the pinkie-rest requires a custom hex driver, luckily one is included with the RAT and is never far away. Again the stock one was ideal for me, although I did like the big one, but in the end it was too cumbersome in fast gaming sections.

This leaves two physical customizations before we get to the software, both are for the thumb rest, which can be moved forward as well as outwards with the included hex driver.

The Cyborg software is a two part installation; first you need to install the mouse drivers; afterwards you can load up the Cyborg configuration tool; above you can see all the buttons available on the RAT 7, each one can be configured as a single action, or link them to MACRO actions. The small red button as highlighted in the middle picture allows for instant "slow down" DPI mode; useful if you need extra precision when sniping from afar. It's location however is not perfect and accidental presses were registered during heated gaming sessions. You can disable the button if it conflicts with your gaming style.... or tweak the button with a custom command to link it to a keyboard press. Than link that keyboard press to an action in-game and you got another button on the mouse. While at first hitting the button by accident happened often, after months of using the mouse, the small button proved extremely useful and accidental hits were drastically reduced. Definitely a killer feature of this product.

Through the software you can also predefine different game profiles; making it possible to have endless button setup variations for each game.

The unorthodox look of the RAT 7 with its gaping holes and open structure lead me to believe it would make for an uncomfortable fit, while it did take some to adjust to its unique physical form, it was far from unpleasant. And after a while I noticed an increase in aiming accuracy and this continued the following days, as I became more accustomed to the design and fine tuned the layout of the different components. In the end I do think the added customization options improved my gaming experience and the mouse ended up as one of my favorites in this roundup.

AIRSHOT Rating: 9/10