Retro aesthetics are all the rage amongst many trying to recapture those warm feelings of their childhood through nostalgia tinted peripherals. We're seeing an influx of Commodore 64 inspired wares, with dusty grey plastic housings and orange highlights, like this XTRFY K4V2 TKL keyboard from Cherry. 8BitDo is another brand dipping into retro stylings, with the 8BitDo Retro R8 Mouse - N Edition releasing across Europe.
The Retro R8 Mouse joins the Retro 87 Mechanical Keyboard in grey plastic matrimony to complete this themed set. Aside from harkening back to a simpler time with aesthetics, the R8 actually looks like a really decent desk buddy, and fairly affordable too.
Like a fair few of 8BitDo's products, the Retro R8 Mouse comes with an included charging dock. It's quite stylish, and holds the mouse in the air on an angle creating an almost starship vibe to the end piece. Aside from charging the mouse, this dock can also act as an extender for the 2.4 Ghz wireless dongle.
Using the dongle and proprietary software allows you to set the polling rate of your mouse, which means you can choose to go as fast as possible for higher accuracy or slow it down and save battery. It boasts between 26 and 105 hours depending on the settings, so you know those higher polls are making far more checks. When you're done, you can park it back on its stylish dock and have it charged in 2.5 hours.
If you're not using the 2.4 Ghz dongle you can also go for a standard Bluetooth or cabled connection, and it even has a compartment to store the dongle inside the mouse for travel. As a multi-mouse user, this little feature is something I genuinely love to see.
Another boon to this mouse is it's built for both left and right handers, with programmable buttons on either side. You can also dial in the DPI and sensitivity, set macros, and go into a whole bunch of customisation in the software. It sounds like a really feature-full little rodent, which is incredible given the MSRP sits at $60 USD, €50 or £55.
In my experience, 8BitDo is great at cramming a whole heap of value into their peripherals. I've never tried a mouse from the brand, but the CRKD Neo S was a standout controller at its $50 USD pricepoint. If this retro rodent can do the same, then it looks like a great value mouse full of features. I just hope it comes in more exciting, less grey colour variants at some point.
