The user has to download the Naos software and manual from Mionix’s website. The mouse is plug-and-play but you have to have the configuration application up and running to tune it to your liking. Contrary to other gaming-grade mice from big name companies, Mionix just hit the right chord with its simple and quick software – and it has a big breakthrough called S.Q.A.T - Surface Quality Analyzer Tool, which, as the name says, verifies the surface the mouse will slide upon. We’ll talk about this feature soon.

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Figure 4: The Naos software.

Configuring the mouse is very simple affair. The new functions of the seven reprogrammable buttons can be saved into five different profiles (work, games, as you wish) and stored in the 128 KB built-in memory. The user preferences stay the same no matter which PC you plug the Naos into. However, the mouse doesn’t feature a profile selection button that most models keep on the underside –– the user has to assign one of the seven reprogrammable buttons to do that particular function. Since we didn’t do this, it was necessary to load the application every time we wanted to change profiles.

Programming the buttons is rather easy and intuitive: with a few clicks we had, for instance, the button 4 near the thumb be the equivalent to the E key, which unleashed the knife stab in Modern Warfare 2. We customized the Naos to our liking and chose one of the 24 available colors to lit the mouse representing each of the five different profiles. It’s also possible to leave it without any illumination if you so prefer.

The user can set three different sensitivity levels per profile to the maximum of 5040 dpi. That way, you can have several options for working-related applications and games. As usual, we like to lower the sensitivity for precise action as sniping and an upper value for intense firefights. The user can also set the speed of the pointer and scroll wheel and even the lift distance to improve the tracking quality.

But the star of the software is the S.Q.A.T tool that analyzes the quality of the sliding surface. Just hit the button on the menu and drag the mouse for ten seconds so the application can judge the surface as either “poor,” “acceptable,” “good” or “excellent.” Our wooden table got a “poor” rating and, as expected, our Razer Destrutor mousemat (tested here) rated as “excellent.”

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Figure 5: The S.Q.A.T. tool.