When we saw the Roccat Tyon mouse back at Computex, we already knew that Roccat had a winner on (or should we say in?) its hands. We saw that with the Tyon, Roccat took a whole new approach to building a gaming mouse, giving you more control than ever before. Since then, we've also seen a lot of excitement in the community for this mouse, along with a sheer overload of impatience. Well folks, the Roccat Tyon is now available in shops, so be careful not to run each other over on the way.
Aside from carrying a heap of switches, the Roccat Tyon also comes with two distinct paddles, which are what set the Tyon apart from all other gaming mice. The paddle at the top of the mouse is the so-called fin-switch, which you can press either to the left or to the right where it will act as a standard clicky switch.
What's really interesting, though, is the paddle on the left of the mouse -- the X-Celerator Thumb Paddle -- because it acts as a single-axis analog joystick. Using just a little bit of imagination, you can already figure out what such a control is good for, as it will work for almost all axis-operated movements that you can use in games. The demonstration that we got at Computex involved flying a jet in Battlefield 4, where we were instructed to use the X-Celerator Thumb Paddle to operate the plane's pitch, which made mouse-operated flight very easy.
Beyond the paddles, the Roccat Tyon follows a fairly standard gaming mouse recipe. It comes with a high-quality 8200 DPI laser sensor, an on-board ARM processor with 576 KB of memory, 16 programmable mouse buttons and a Roccat Easy-Shift[+] button for additional macros. There's also dual-zone 16.8 million-color RGB LED lighting, a 1000 Hz polling rate over USB and a 1.8 meter braided USB cable.
Roccat priced the Tyon at $99.99, and it should be available in black and white through a handful of online retailers and Best Buy.
Follow Niels Broekhuijsen @NBroekhuijsen. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.
