Mionix Naos QG – Review
Testing
I’ve had the chance to test the Naos QG for a few weeks now since getting it early as part of the Kickstarter.
I should say that without checking the Kickstarter page I don’t think I would have found the software itself. Thankfully a helpful person over there linked both the driver software and the Overwolf software that is used for the actual in game overlay for the heart rate and GSR display.
Whilst I was writing this Mionix released an improved driver which sped up the rate at which the sensors picked up their readings.
So firstly, we will go into the software itself.
The Mionix Hub software is tailored to the Naos QG and has a separate page for the Quantified Gaming aspect of the mouse.
This has tally’s and milestones for your clicks, distance, time and scroll. Then at the bottom is a large display of your heart rate, speed and clicks per second. The whole page is effectively a gamification of day to day tasks.
Statistics
The Statistics page shows a graph which has your speed, clicks per second and heart rate over a session. It also allows you to select sessions to view older data. It will also show your most used apps over that session.
The Buttons page as its name suggests is where you can edit what each button does and is the page where I expect you will be able to assign macros (when they are implemented)
In Performance you can set the DPI and add 5 DPI levels across the huge 100 – 12000 DPI range. It is in here where you can also disable the heart rate sensor, should you want to, and make changes to the angle snapping, angle tuning, polling rate and safety click latency.
In Color you can make changes to the LEDs on the Logo and Wheel, these are RGB so you have a near boundless number of colours to select. There are no options for customisable lighting modes, with a simple on or off being the only options.
Macros are not functioning at this exact moment in time, but they are expected to be added in a software update at some point soon. It is a tad annoying that they are not available on release, but I am sure that Mionix had good reason not to include it.
Overwolf
The Overwolf software allows you to have an on screen overlay for the heart rate and GSR readout. So, there is some additional resource usage to make use of this information. Which for me averaged a combined 220MB. The more things you have enabled in Overwolf will obviously mean more resource usage.
The overlay looks nice, but it will snap over the top of some games that you decide to play. I personally have been unable to get any control over the window when it does this which is quite annoying.
For streamers who use OBS Studio (like myself) you will need to enable overlay capture for this display to be caught. Which again is quite annoying as it means any other game overlays like Steams will also be picked up. It would be nice to have the option for keeping the overlay separate from the game itself so you could capture just that window and have more control over it.
Thankfully with the Open Developer API it should mean that we are not stuck with Openwolf for long.
In use the Mionix Naos QG has been solid. The ergonomic design is far better than I thought it would be. The little pinky rest on right hand side helped make using the Naos QG for long gaming sessions an easy experience.
The rubberised texture of the mouse helped stop the mouse from becoming slick during these long gaming sessions. It doesn’t have the rough PBT texture of the Ducky I previously reviewed and because of this I worry about the longevity of this surface covering.
Other mice I have used for a long period that also have a rubberised texture have never fared well and over my current use the surface of the Naos QG has already started to become shiny.
On the Naos QG the buttons have a nice reassuring click and the DPI buttons are well placed.
The large mouse feet allowed that the Mionix Naos QG to skate over the various mats I had available. With it showing no preference to cloth or hard mouse mats.
