This one is unique. AKKO’s Echo, also known as the TAN8 Master, and it’s freaking carbon fibre! It’s also a pretty damn high end gaming mouse – PixArt PAW3955 sensor, Nordic 54L CPU and an 8000 hertz polling rate wirelessly all make it damn nice. It isn’t even all that expensive either, so let’s take a look at this fancy AF thing and see if it’s worth it, or if it’s a unique novelty. 

First we have to talk about that shell. This is by far the most unique mouse shell I’ve seen – not from its shape, that’s a pretty typical if a little large style – but the sheer lack of shell, the incredibly nice and soft feel to it, the rigidity despite the lack of material, and the lack of weight. All of this is unique and pretty cool. This genuinely has a unique, soft feeling that I haven’t experienced before on a mouse. It feels really nice and surprisingly premium. What I think is perhaps more interesting is that this comes in four colours, this white, regular black, pink and blue, but this isn’t paint. They’ve dyed the chopped carbon fibre. That’s unique. For those wondering if all the holes in the shell makes it super-ultra-mega lightweight, surprisingly not really. I mean it’s 55.4 grams on my scales, but that isn’t the lightest thing around these days. I’m also somewhat surprised that the two side buttons aren’t quite as well reinforced as I’d perhaps like – they aren’t about to fall off at the slightest press or anything, but they definitely wobble and press in more than I’d like. 

The shape itself is pretty damn large. My large hands only just about fit this, and I don’t think fingertip grip is really a possibility. Claw or palm for me here. It fits me pretty well though, and is remarkably comfortable for longer sessions. The weight isn’t exactly a problem either, while 55 grams isn’t the lightest, it’s far from ‘heavy’. This is more than comfortable. I think smaller hands would struggle though.

From a performance perspective the newer Nordic 54L15 microcontroller is remarkably impressive on the process node front – 22 nanometres! For microcontrollers 22nm is actually pretty damn good, making it more efficient than normal, and then you add in the PAW3955 which is even more impressive than the already upgraded 3950, with a single DPI stepping, up to 40000 DPI total, 60G of max acceleration, and so many lift off distance options you don’t even know what to do with them. Seriously, using AKKO’s web configurator you’ll be met with ELEVEN total lift off distance options, and something that I don’t think I’ve seen before, DPI customisation for X and Y independently. Like you can have 400 DPI sensitivity for vertical motion, but 800 for side to side. That’s actually really cool – something that’d definitely take some getting used to, but considering you have more horizontal than vertical view, maybe it’s worth tinkering with!

I’m happy to report on the latency front that this is pretty good – not the best I’ve had, not on the faster side at 2.6 milliseconds, but hardly glacial. Setting it to 1KHz doesn’t change much, besides increasing the maximum and a touch more instability, but the average remains functionally the same. That is mostly because the majority of the latency with the tap method on my very own latency testing tool – available at OSRTT.com by the way, link in the description – is the pre-travel with the switch, and the switch itself. These are OMRON optical switches so you don’t have longevity or debounce time to worry about, but there is some inherent latency in actually pushing the switch, and the switch reporting to the microcontroller, and then the microcontroller sending out a packet with that click in it all takes time. Interestingly though I’d argue these switches feel remarkably silky-smooth with very little pre-travel.

As for how it handles, right out the box I’m pretty happy with it. It has large PTFE skates on the front, back, and around the sensor, but if that doesn’t do it for you they include differing grip levels of dots you can stick on top (plus a full replacement original set too), oh and you even get some grip stickers for the top should you want to adorn it that way too. To me this feels great, and in games it tracks well even with fast motion, and glides beautifully on a mouse pad. This feels really nice in the hand, the lack of weight helps to make that feel more like an extension of your arm than ever before, and the fact it’s carbon fibre is just pretty cool. I like this.

The price isn’t even that bad. It’s £70. For a top-of-the-line, carbon fibre, wireless, 8,000 hertz gaming mouse! If Razer sold you this it’d be £250! If Glorious sold this it’d be £150. £70 feels like an absolute steal by comparison. This might not be the lightest, or the outright best gaming mouse available, but I’m perfectly happy with it, especially at that price. The only thing I’d say is that I couldn’t get it to work wired, and the firmware update just straight up didn’t work for either the mouse or the dongle. AKKO definitely needs to make that a better experience. But it works even on the current version, so all in all I’m impressed. Good job AKKO.