When it comes to competitive gaming, the mouse is the sword you carry into battle. It’s the firearm you wield. It’s the difference between a smooth match and a rough one, and ideally, should disappear in your hand so you forget it’s there. The Asus ROG Harpe Ace is the latest lightweight mouse to vie for competitive mouse supremacy and a top spot on our list of the best gaming mice. At $150, it comes with a hefty price tag, but is undeniably great.
ROG Harpe Ace Aim Lab Edition – Design and Features
The ROG Harpe Ace Aim Lab Edition is an ultralight gaming mouse that’s laser targeted at first-person shooters. Its design is simple and straightforward, with few frills and no gimmicks to distract you from gameplay. But what it lacks in add-on features, it makes up for with excellent specs, ergonomics, and in-game performance.
For this mouse, Asus partnered with Aim Lab, though it’s not apparent unless you’re already familiar with the product or happen to pass it under a UV light. There are five buttons total – left, right, and middle mouse on top, forward and back on the left side – but the two thumb buttons are colored Aim Lab teal. A small logo is printed at the front of the left side that only shines under a black light. Odd but minimalist, and I’ll take it over garish branding any day.
Instead, the core of the partnership comes with the Aim Lab software. A built-in suite of aiming trials allows you to assess different aspects of your current aiming performance. When it’s done, it provides a set of recommended settings to dial in the mouse to your exact skill and style. It’s not a magic bullet to becoming a better gamer, but it is a good starting point that takes some of the guesswork out of making sure the mouse is properly set up for your current skills.
The mouse feels like a natural counterpart to the Logitech G Pro X Superlight and Razer Viper V2 Pro. The shape is very similar, with a contour that promotes claw and fingertip grips. The rise in the middle feels a bit higher than the Superlight and is a bit more contoured than the Viper V2 Pro, so its feel is unique but ultimately familiar.
It’s also the lightest of the bunch at only 54 grams, though there’s less than 10 grams difference between all three. Unlike a lot of ultralight mice, the Harpe Ace uses a completely solid shell without the holes that have become so popular in FPS mice. The chassis is very solid and didn’t flex or creak at all, even when given an unrealistically hard squeeze.
What makes that weight even more impressive is that it’s able to do that while also packing in a Bluetooth 5.1 radio, storage for the 2.4GHz USB dongle, RGB in the middle mouse wheel, a bigger battery (or at least better battery life), and better specs than either of its biggest competitors. You could argue that a premium competitive gaming mouse doesn’t need Bluetooth since competitive gamers will never use it, but at $150, wireless versatility is a bonus I wish the others had.
It’s true that for competitive gaming, Bluetooth isn’t the best choice. Instead, ROG’s 2.4GHz SpeedNova wireless is clearly the way to go. It offers a wired-like connection with a 1,000Hz polling rate, so you’ll never miss a beat. Given the price, and the top-tier specs elsewhere with the mouse, I was surprised ROG didn’t go for 4K or even 8K polling. But since those high polling rates come with increased system demands, and you’ll really only see the benefits on 360Hz monitors, the standard but reliable 1kHz is a better bet for most gamers.
Under the hood, the Harpe Ace leads the pack in specs. It features a whopping 36,000 DPI optical sensor which can be adjusted in 50 DPI increments. It can track to a top speed of 650 IPS with 50G acceleration. Battery life tops out at 90 hours with RGB off, which is 20 hours more than the G Pro X Superlight and 10 more than the Viper V2 Pro, but that drops to 79 hours if you leave RGB on.
The buttons are also very good. Using ROG microswitches, they have great tactility and satisfying clicks. Asus also custom-matches the switches under the left and right buttons to ensure that they’re within 5 grams of actuation force of each other and will feel the same. The thumb buttons have a deeper press and sound but are no less tactile. They’re also wider and are well positioned to be directly accessible above the thumb without making them prone to misclicks.
Given the price point, the lack of optical switches like on the Razer Viper V2 Pro is disappointing. I didn’t experience any issues during my test window, but mechanical switches can be prone to double-clicking issues with heavy use, a trait optical switches don’t share. Logitech’s switches still have the best feel of the three, so I think the Harpe Ace comes in third in switch quality while still being good overall.
The mouse wheel is fine. Nothing spectacular. The rubberized finish and slashed tread make it easy to roll between weapons, but it sits low and isn’t very tactile when pressed. The RGB lighting also feels like a miss because of the teal thumb buttons. The default color cycle doesn’t look good and there are few colors that really match. Turning it off for better battery life isn’t much of a sacrifice anyway when it’s just the mouse wheel that lights up.
If you do happen to run the battery dry, you can recharge it while plugged, and the charging cable is excellent. It’s paracord-wrapped, very lightweight, and has almost no memory. It doesn’t bunch up and get in the way of gameplay and is right alongside Razer’s Speedflex cable for feel and functionality.
Absent from the top of the mouse is any kind of DPI button. It’s a continuation of a frustrating trend, as the DPI button is placed on the bottom of the mouse, alongside a pairing button for Bluetooth and opposite a connectivity switch. It’s fine if you don’t adjust DPI often, but since it’s also required for switching profiles, it makes accessing it for DPI or settings changes a chore.
Also included in the box are a set of grip tapes for the sides and top buttons, as well as a set of replacement PTFE glide feet. The grip tapes are stylish with a custom ROG pattern on each, and they aren’t over-aggressive like the Viper V2 Pro’s. The replacement feet are also a very nice inclusion, so if you use a fast mouse pad that wears out PTFE more quickly, you’ll have another set ready to go.
ROG Harpe Ace Aim Lab Edition – Software
The ROG Harpe Ace uses Asus’s Armoury Crate software for all of its customizations. Once you’ve selected the mouse from the peripherals menu, the settings are broken into six tabs for easier navigation. You can reprogram everything but the left mouse button on the first, including triggering macros, sending keyboard commands, or even going into Stealth Mode and minimizing all of your windows.
You can also adjust the mouse ring’s lighting across a half dozen different presets and hues of static lighting, as well as calibrate it to different mouse surfaces. Asus also gives you the ability to control its power-saving behavior to extend the battery life, and update its firmware.
The most important section is the Performance tab, as this is where you’ll input all of the settings that Aim Lab recommends. Here you can adjust its DPI, polling rate, angle-snapping behavior, and acceleration. The mouse can hold up to four DPI presets, and all of the settings can be saved across five profiles. Swapping profiles is accomplished by holding the DPI button and pressing one of four other keys, so the utility of this mid-match is limited.
The bigger piece of software is Aim Lab proper, which can be downloaded for free on Steam. Once you’re in, you can visit a settings optimizer, which will put you through a series of aiming tests to determine the best settings for your play style. These trials are lengthy at around 30 minutes but when you’re done, it will provide you with settings to get you started and, theoretically, play your best.
I say theoretically because no piece of software or handful of settings is going to replace good, old-fashioned practice. The more important thing that these trials do is get you to spend time with the software and have you engage with it just long enough to see yourself improve. It shows you that aim training can be fun and is a kind of game all its own.
It’s also important to note that you don’t need to have the ROG Harpe Ace to take advantage of Aim Labs features. The partnership has shined a spotlight on the Settings Optimizer in particular, but you can take advantage of its tests and recommendations no matter what mouse you’re using, so isn’t a reason to buy the Harpe Ace all on its own. But, considering that Aim Lab had a hand in its design, it only makes sense to give it a try if you do.
ROG Harpe Ace Aim Lab Edition – Performance
After a good two weeks of using the ROG Harpe Ace as my main gaming mouse, I can say that I have seen improvement. Whether that’s because I’ve taken to a couple rounds of aim training every time I’m at my PC or the capabilities of the mouse itself is up in the air, but I think it’s a little bit of both.
The ROG Harpe Ace is a great mouse. The shape promotes a nimble finger grip which is great for fast flicks in Call of Duty: Warzone and Battlefield 2042. The Razer Viper V2 Pro is more accommodating to lazily resting my hand, but the Harpe makes me feel like I’m dragging when I do that – so I’m more poised, if a bit less comfortable. For a mouse all about competitive accuracy, promoting the best form should be, and is, a top priority.
On its own, the mouse is a bit slippery. There’s a bit of texturing on the left and right sides, but I found the grip tapes made a big difference in how secure it felt in my hand. Unlike the Viper, where the tapes have a bit too much tread, the Harpe’s are better balanced and easier to make micro-adjustments with.
The sensor is fantastic. The maximum DPI is ludicrously high and I don’t have the robot-like skills to make use of anywhere near its peak, but between 1,200 and 1,600 DPI, I found it to be about pitch-perfect. I never once felt like missed shots were the mouse’s fault, and I wasn’t able to get it to spin out if I tried. Even cranking the DPI up to 6,400 and lowering in-game sensitivity, it felt pixel-perfect accurate.
Calibration is a must, however, and even after the Harpe Ace didn’t like my felt mouse mat. It worked very well with every other surface, but the dark gray fibers of the felt caused it to skip here and there. With my Razer Firefly or Steelseries QcK hard mats, it was fast and furious with its precision.
Ultimately, the shape never completely felt natural to me though. That high rise in the center always felt a little too high. I get it: it’s about being poised. But out of game, I still kept my Viper on hand for a more comfortable browsing experience.
