The Speedlink Decus is designed to be an esports-grade gaming mouse for palm grips, with an accurate optical sensor, a stylish red design and seven programmable buttons. It also comes with customisable lighting, although the red colour scheme might limit your colour choices somewhat. Let’s take a closer look!
See the Speedlink Decus on Amazon
Features & Specifications
- Professional gaming mouse
- Incredibly ergonomic
- Fully customisable functions and look
- Pixel-precise optical sensor with adjustable accuracy from 400 to 5,000dpi
- Customisable lighting with 7 colour options
- 7 programmable buttons, incl. dpi switch and rapid-fire button
- Powerful Macro Editor
- 5 profiles with separate button, sensor and colour configurations
- Auto-loading game profiles
- Internal profile memory (128Kb)
- USB polling rate configurable up to 1,000Hz (ultrapolling)
- Ergonomic shape with rubberised surface
- 4 additional weights for weight customisation
- Flexible USB cable with hardwearing sheathing (1.8m)
- Dimensions: 92 × 128 × 41mm (W × D × H)
- Weight: 127-145g
- Base weight system with 4 x 4.5g weights
Design
Let’s take a look at the Decus, shall we?
Like other Speedlink mice, the Decus comes in an eye-catching red and black colour scheme. This is augmented with a considerable network of LED backlighting, shown in white in the picture below.
In addition to the normal left, middle and right mouse buttons, the Decus Respec has a black parallelogram-shaped DPI button below the scroll wheel and a ‘double-tap’ button next to the left mouse button. As the name suggests, this button clicks the left mouse button twice whenever it is clicked; the delay between the two presses can be set in the software as we’ll see later.
On the left side, there are forward and back buttons (mouse 4 / mouse 5).
On the bottom of the mouse, you’ll find a cavity for four 4.5 gram weights to be removed. This lightens the mouse considerably, and may well be worth trying.
The Decus is a sizeable mouse, with a wide body that extends 92mm — by comparison, the Fnatic Clutch (review), SteelSeries Sensei and Razer DeathAdder are all about 70mm (about an inch less wide for our American friends).
However, this extra width is largely represented by the thumb and pinky grips, which extend out from the main body considerably. That makes for a comfortable palm grip, but it’s difficult to quickly raise, move and drop the mouse for rapid repositioning.
The Speedlink Decus Respec is similar in size to the Speedlink Omnivi, as shown below, although it does have a slightly more streamlined appearance and fewer buttons.
Overall, the Decus Respec is a large red mouse that looks powerful.
Software
Let’s take a look at the mouse’s software now. First of all, backlighting can be set to one of seven colours (red, yellow, green, blue, white, dark blue, purple) in the mouse’s software or turned off; by default it slowly shifts from colour to colour . The scroll wheel is also backlit in blue, but cannot be changed. It’s also not possible to choose an arbitrary colour for the remaining backlighting, which one assumes must be technically possible.
The mouse buttons can be rebound to mouse buttons / functions, keyboard buttons, common Windows commands, or macros — just about everything you could want.
Macros can include delays and loops, which is nice.
The mouse’s DPI can also be set, and X/Y can be set independently if desired (but we wouldn’t advise it). USB polling rate and the delay for rapid fire can also be chosen.
In another section, you can choose Windows mouse settings like pointer speed and scrolling speed, although confusingly the choices are listed from 1 to 8, whereas Windows point speed is on a scale of 1 to 11 (where 6 is the default). Again, we’d advise keeping your Windows settings on their defaults, with ‘Enhance pointer precision’ disabled, and all adjustments to be made to in-game sensitivity or mouse DPI.
Finally, there’s a link to the Speedlink website, version numbers for the software and the mouse’s internal firmware, and a button to completely reset the driver settings in case something has gone wildly wrong.
Overall, the software is comprehensive and reasonably intuitive; nice job Speedlink.
Testing
We played a long gaming session of Counter-Strike and Overwatch in order to test this mouse to its limits. We found the mouse’s optical sensor quite accurate, particularly when set to a low 400 or 800 DPI setting. The wide body of the mouse makes it comfortable to use, but makes lifting your mouse difficult. The buttons are generally well-positioned, although the side buttons could have been made more prominent — it’s sometimes hard to find them in a firefight. The double tap button is not particularly useful, but happily it can be rebound to something else. The mouse is comfortable too, thanks to its wide body, particularly once the weights are removed.
Wrapping up
The Decus Respec is solid mouse with a precise sensor, a comfortable grip and plenty of programmable buttons to play around with. The software is comprehensive, and the inclusion of multiple backlight colours is also nice.
Of course, choosing a mouse is a very personal thing. If you prefer light, slim mice then the Decus Respec simply won’t suit you. However, if you’re willing to sacrifice a bit of quickness for long-term comfort, then the Decus Respec might be a strong choice.
See the Speedlink Decus on Amazon
Pricing and alternatives
Unfortunately, the Decus is not as competitively priced as we would like at £55, although it’s more competitive in its native Germany. Let’s take a look at how it compares to some well-known alternatives from Razer, Logitech and Corsair:
| Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon US | ||
| Speedlink Decus Respec | £55 | €50 | N/A | |
| Razer Deathadder Chroma | £58 | €73 | $50 | |
| Logitech G502 Proteus Spectrum | £50 | €70 | $60 | |
| Corsair Sabre RGB | £43 | €50 | $40 | |
| Logitech G700S Wireless | £41 | €78 | $41 |
At US or UK prices, it’s hard to strongly recommend the Decus Respec over Razer, Corsair or Logitech’s offerings. However, if you’re looking for a wider mouse that emphasises comfort, the Decus could still be worth a look.
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