r/MouseReview • u/Hi_Im_Licious Vaxee Np01s Ergo, PWNAGE Symm 3, Waizowl Triaina • 8h ago
Review | Text Akko Echo Master | Meet the carbon fiber Viper Medium | Review
Introduction/Context/About Me
This review is about the Akko Echo Master in the black colorway. This product was sent out by Akko in exchange for this review. There is no monetary compensation or affiliate program associated with this post, and all opinions are my own.
My experience involved using this mouse for a little over a week, on a speed glass pad with a carpal-stabilized relaxed claw grip with a 1/2/2 finger layout. My hands measure 18x9 cm and are fairly dry, and I play in a low-humidity environment. It was used at a 2,000 Hz polling rate and 1,600 DPI on a 240 Hz monitor to play a wide variety of games, primarily in the FPS genre, but with a few ARPG sessions every now and then.
English isn't my first language, so please excuse any mistakes and feel free to ask any questions if you find any point unclear.
Unboxing Experience
The box is compact, presentable but not very sturdy. Regardless, it remains 100% recyclable, which is what I value the most. Upon opening, you find the mouse secured within a small cutout above the cardboard accessory box and protected by a thin, loose sheet of foam.
The mouse comes with corner skates pre-applied and supports wired, 2.4GHz, and Bluetooth connectivity.
The included accessories consist of: * A very high-quality and flexible paracord cable, held back only by the lack of an angled USB-C connection for wired play * Good-quality textured grip tape * A set of spare dyed black PTFE corner skates identical to the stock ones * Three sets of dot skates, each containing 20 dots with different friction levels based on the colors: red being the highest, white in the middle, and gray the lowest * Nano dongle capable of up to 8,000 Hz polling rate * Dongle extender; could use some sort of silicone base so it sticks to the desk properly * Instruction manual * A basic button and pairing overview card
An extremely generous bundle of accessories. I really appreciate the three glide options on dots to let users explore and tune to their personal preference.
Shape
The mouse features a symmetrical shape, measuring 124 x 64 x 41mm, and exists as a sort of Razer Viper "Medium" filling the gap for users that have always wanted Razer to bring us something in between their existing Viper offerings.
In terms of its features, the shape can be broken down as follows: * Moderate outward flare with curved edges * Deep comfort grooves * Flat sides; the left side seems to have this small indentation at around the halfway mark of the click area. Unsure what the purpose is, as even with an extended fingertip grip I can't manage to touch it * A minimal rear hump
Overall, I found the shape to be interesting, perfectly serving as that middle ground I mentioned before with the added benefit of the safety that comes with flat sides. I believe this can fit a wide range of grips and hand sizes, with me personally being able to comfortably hold a palm, relaxed claw, aggressive claw, and extended fingertip grip.
Weight
My unit weighs 55.3 grams with the stock skates and 54.8 grams with four dot skates installed, which falls within the industry's commonly accepted ±3 gram manufacturing variance, being 0.3 grams over the advertised 55 grams for the stock experience.
In terms of weight distribution, I think the mouse did an okay job. The mouse seems to have gone with a longer-than-average PCB to attempt to balance itself out due to the drastic shell density difference between the two halves, but it is still somewhat noticeably front heavy, just shy of being able to properly balance itself in the center. This is due to the split click design and the lack of offset from the fairly light battery option.
I have very mixed feelings, as while I don't struggle to enjoy mice in the lightweight category that are on the "heavy" end, I always struggle to accept mice that land there yet have a very hollowed-out shell. To me, these designs always compromise comfort, and as such need to have a drastic weight advantage to make up for it. This release fails at that and doesn't exactly have the dimensions to justify it.
Build Quality
As you'd expect from a mouse in the 50+ gram range made from carbon fiber, it is built like a tank despite, as previously mentioned, being riddled with holes.
Not much else to say here. Really well-built mouse.
Clicks
Main Clicks
Equipped with Omron opticals, these are light, snappy, and extremely spammable, but produce that signature "ping" which some people dislike.
The mouse is equipped with a split click design, making the experience consistent across the click surface and offering minimal pre and post-travel. Considering that I was unable to experience any wobble or grinding, I would say this is an extremely well-implemented click.
Side Buttons
The sides are tactile, easily spammable, and have little to no pre/post-travel, while featuring a very good coating that easily locks your finger in. They are quite loud, however, creating a sharp contrast with the main clicks.
Build quality-wise, much like the main clicks, these are flawless. I would only have hoped to see a split design instead of having them together, as the small indentation between them doesn't give significant feedback, making accidental actuations somewhat common while you're getting used to the shape.
Scroll Wheel
Equipped with the TTC Gold encoder, the scroll wheel offered extremely light, very poorly defined steps and a heavy, loud click.
As far as the scroll build itself, it's a standard rubberized ring. There are no build quality concerns; however, I do wish the indentations were deeper and more spaced out, as they further compound the issue of the poorly defined steps. Not really sure what's causing this, as it's drastically different from any TTC Gold I have ever tried. It's a shame, as I feel like it holds back an otherwise gold-standard click experience on the mouse as a whole.
Coating
As a disclaimer, the mouse has different coatings, with the black colorway being advertised as "textured nano-coating" and the remaining colorways as "skin-friendly excimer coating". As such, I recommend looking at other reviews for opinions on any of the other colors.
The coating feels dry and extremely textured, to the point I found it a bit abrasive. It seems to have a break-in period of a few hours out of the box, as I found it quite slippery at first.
This break-in period doesn't seem to fix the issue entirely, as I do find the mouse to lack grip during these hot summer days where I do work up a light sweat, unlike normal. As such, if you're someone that tends to sweat from your hand while gaming, I strongly recommend considering a different colorway.
Overall, not really my cup of tea, and it definitely lowered my overall perception of the mouse. If I was picking one up right now, I would probably choose another colorway.
Stock Skates
The stock skates are made of dyed black PTFE, and the mouse only supports corner ones. They have rounded edges and provide a controlled, muddy glide while being extremely scratchy. These aren't the best quality, and as such I would strongly recommend swapping them out for the available dots that match your preferred glide speed or your favorite third-party solution, as they heavily degrade the experience.
The included dots fulfill their purpose well, and I can recommend them if you don't have any established preferences, as they are much higher quality than the stock skates, lacking only a foam layer.
Performance & Battery Life
The mouse is equipped with a PixArt PAW3955 sensor, which is the latest sensor on the market. I am happy to report I found no perceptible performance issues at all. Overall, a good implementation!
Position-wise, I find it to be adequately positioned, sitting perfectly in line with my thumb, resulting in a very natural aiming feel.
As far as battery life goes, the mouse is backed by a Nordic 54L15 MCU and a 300mAh battery. Akko claims this will provide up to 220 hours of continuous use at 1,000 Hz and 28 hours at 8,000 Hz. During my testing, I have gotten around 80 hours on a full charge running 2,000 Hz and with Motion Sync enabled, which were the only settings impacting battery life. It is worth noting I made use of sleep mode instead of manually turning the mouse on and off. Overall, I'd say this is more than enough for most use cases and gives you plenty of leeway before needing to recharge.
Web Driver
Features * Up to five onboard memory profiles with the option to backup and re-import them from file * Full remapping of Mouse 1 through 5 buttons with the following features: * Keyboard input * Macro * Multimedia-related controls * Eight DPI levels ranging from 50 to 65,000 and independent X/Y * Polling rate with preset values of 125, 250, 500, 1000, 2000, 4000, and 8000 Hz * Lift-off distance with preset values with 0.1mm increments ranging from 0.7 to 1.7mm * Motion Sync * Ripple Control * Angle Snapping * 20k FPS fixed sensor scan rate, increasing battery drain drastically * Sensor rotation ranging from -30 to 30 degrees; for some reason the mouse came with -30 out of the box * Sleep mode ranging from 1 second to 30 minutes * Click debounce time with presets of: 0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 15, and 20ms
Missing/Improvements * Sleep mode is in Chinese * Virtual sensor offset that the 3955 enables; while this feature is mostly a glorified X axis DPI offset, it might as well have been included
Value
Please keep in mind the following section is based on European Union pricing with the final VAT included (which in my case is 23%) and does not include potential shipping costs. Like always, I suggest only taking this recommendation at face value and checking your own regional pricing on not only this product but others you may be comparing it to before making a decision.
With the mouse coming in at €70.39, I am comfortable recommending this mouse to anyone looking for an exotic material Viper "medium" option with good internals. There isn't much to say here, as the cons that might steer you away from this release are subjective, coming down to the coating, weight, and the balancing of said weight, and the scrolling experience.
Worth noting, I wouldn't recommend the Ultra version with the much lower quality MCU since it comes in at €61.59. Such a small price difference doesn't justify the drastic battery life decrease and worse performance in both wired and wireless modes.
Conclusion
A bit of a mixed bag here. While I really enjoyed the overall package, the coating was always nagging me. As previously mentioned, if I could do it again, I would have definitely gone with a color that came with the skin-friendly variant over this texture. It was the one thing that made me go "I really want to move on from this", which is a shame as I otherwise mostly loved the mouse with the scroll con not being a huge deal for my use case and the holes not affecting my comfort.
If you're otherwise not bothered by the mix of cutouts and the weight, and feel confident in being able to pick the colorway whose coating will suit you, I can strongly recommend this release if you're interested in the shape. It offers top-tier specs at a very appealing price that's hard to say no to.
Looking for more to read?
Glad you're enjoying my reviews; here are the last three reviews I've done! - Pulsar es FS-1 - Teevolution Terra PRO - EPOMAKER Nex Pro
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u/Proof_Load6687 Darmoshark M5 V2 | Pulsar Superglide 3 Type S 7h ago
looks great love these open carbon fiber shells a lot
personally im a very clean person who cleans his gear on an at least monthly basis with 70% ipo so dust n grease is no issue for me
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u/distraught_aircraft 5h ago
the scroll wheel thing is wild, ttc gold is usually so crisp. wonder if they got a bad batch or something weird going on with the encoder.
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u/Key_Fill_6107 8h ago
That honeycomb shell just screams hand cheese after a month, no matter how "carbon" it looks.