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Ducky Secret gaming mouse review — pure performance
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Review

Ducky Secret gaming mouse review — pure performance

by January 24, 2016
Positives

+ Simple design, time-tested shape
+ Excellent Pixart PMW3310DH optical sensor
+ Omron switches all round
+ Even RGB lighting
+ DPI is more than adequate for most users
+ PBT body for extra durability

Negatives

- Difficult to customize
- No dedicated DPI button or macros
- Pricey for the features offered

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Pokde Rating
Appearance
7.0
Features
7.0
Materials
9.0
Performance
9.0
Portability
8.0
Value
6.0
Bottom Line

The Ducky Secret is an excellent gaming mouse, if you do not rank customizability among the top criteria when picking out a new gaming mouse, but consider durability to be of the utmost importance.

7.7
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Ducky is well known for making high quality mechanical keyboards like the popular Shine and Zero series as well as various types of keycaps to satisfy keyboard enthusiasts. However Ducky has recently moved forward, stepping out of their comfort zone to bring us their first gaming mouse, the Ducky Secret.

 

Unboxing

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The Ducky Secret’s packaging does not feature a window for you to peek at it or get a feel of the size. There isn’t even a product image on the front. I usually prefer to have a look at what I am getting so the packaging here is not getting any love from me. But then I am to review the device and not the box, so let’s get on with it.

 

Appearance

Ducky Secret (2)

The Ducky Secret looks simple. One word is enough to summarize the plain black appearance, translucent plastic strips on the sides through which the RGB lighting will shine and the printed Ducky branding on the rear. In fact if it wasn’t from such a prolific manufacturer of quality peripherals, it may actually be mistaken for a cheap office mouse, especially if you turn off the RGB lighting.

Ducky Secret (11)

The front of the mouse is plain, you can see the unsleeved cable with the stress relief here.

Ducky Secret (6)

Flip it over, you get four very generically shaped Teflon mouse feet, an engraved Ducky logo, a label, 4 function indicator LEDs, and a DPI button which controls a lot more than just the DPI, but more on that later. The cable here is not sleeved, which gives us a very flexible rubber coated cord.

Really simple.

 

Specifications

Body material PBT
Sensor Pixart PMW3310DH (Optical)
DPI 400/800/1250/1600/2400/3200/5000
USB report rate 125/250/500/1000 Hz
Switch type Omron D2F-021F (made in Japan) x 3 (left, right, scroll click)
Omron D2F-021 (made in Japan) x 2 (both side buttons)
ALPS scroll encoder (mechanical)
Omron Tact switch (made in China) x 1 (DPI button)
Microprocessor NXP 32-bit ARM
Cable 1.8 m, rubber coated
Weight 120 g (without weight tuning), max weight 137 g
Included accessories 1 set of replacement mouse feet
11 g weight (6 g weight pre-installed)
User manual

 

User Experience

The Ducky Secret doesn’t stand out from the crowd in terms of looks, number of buttons or even DPI count. So let’s begin using it to find out if it stands out in the competitive gaming mice market.

The first thing you will notice after plugging the mouse into your PC is the lack of drivers. True plug and play. One less software to load when booting up, less RAM usage. Great. The not so good news is that for every setting you want to change in the mouse, you will have to press the DPI button on the underside of the Ducky Secret.

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Is that why they called it the Secret, because everything has to be done under it? You do get quite a few configurable settings like 7 DPI steps up to 5000 DPI, 4 USB polling rate steps up to 1000 Hz, surface tuning with 4 presets and a custom surface tuning, as well as 4 levels of angle snapping, which I believe most gamers will leave disabled. Every setting is accessed via pressing the DPI button and another button on the mouse, after which the function LEDs will light up in a different color for each respective setting.

The RGB lighting is configurable by pressing the DPI button and the middle button at the same time. The RGB lighting features seem half-baked as there is only a choice of cycle mode where the mouse cycles through every color slowly, single color mode in which you scroll up and down to select the color you want, and off. If you don’t mind the limited modes, you will appreciate the even lighting. The brightness of the lighting is also not adjustable, but I find the brightness to be just right out of the box, so you won’t have to worry about a bright beacon of light irritating you out of the corner of your eye.

The lack of drivers also means more than just having a difficult time adjusting your settings. You also can’t set an alternate DPI with a single button press for better accuracy when sniping, or set macros for the side buttons.

Ducky Secret (4)

The weight adjustments also require you to unscrew five screws to disassemble the mouse as the slots are on the inside of the top shell. You aren’t quite done with the screwing though. To install the weights, you will then have to unscrew four more screws to remove two thin plates that hold the weights in there. Then you have the choice of using either the 6 g weight, 11 g weight, or both for a total of an additional 17 g of weight. Not a whole lot of choice there. On the bright side, the stock 120 g weight of the mouse should mean that most users won’t have to add the additional weights for an adequate feel.

 

Alright, enough of the bad news, let’s get with to the good news.

Ducky Secret (5)

While we have it open, let’s take a look at the innards of the Ducky Secret. Japanese Omron switches all around. 5 RGB LEDs light up the strips at the sides while the scroll wheel has a dedicated LED.

The mouse fit very well in my hands. I am a 183 cm guy and my hands are fairly large. I can use the Ducky Secret comfortably either by palm or fingertip gripping it.

Ducky Secret grip visual

The shape is quite similar to the famous Microsoft Intellimouse 3.0 which is very widely regarded as one of the better designed ergonomic mice out there. While I had to flex my fingers every hour or so when I use my G502, I never felt any discomfort holding the Ducky Secret. Gliding it around on my Razer Goliathus Omega or the Ducky Flipper Extra is effortless thanks to the real Teflon glides used. The buttons are clicky and offer an audible feedback when pressed. I really dig those Japanese Omron microswitches. In case you don’t know, Omron microswitches are considered to be the gold standard. The scroll wheel has a “tread” of rubber for grip, and each notch is noticeable. When pressed, it also feels exactly like any other button on the mouse, tactile and responsive, once again thanks to the Omron switches used. The sensor feels accurate. I never missed a click on an enemy in my many games of DotA 2, or anything I wanted to click on, for that matter. I also didn’t really find a need to tweak the DPI as there are only 7 steps (I spent wasted a lot of time tweaking the DPI on my G502 in 50 DPI increments, in an attempt to get the sweet spot), and once I set it to my preferred sensitivity (1600 DPI), I got right down to work/play. Improved productivity? Yep.Another good thing that I noticed was its low lift off distance. It stops properly tracking at1 CD’s height and stops tracking completely at about 2. This is a boon for low sensitivity gamers who lift their mouse and reposition it on the mousepad repeatedly.

Ducky Secret (1)

The cord while not sleeved feels strong enough thanks to its really flexible nature and the presence of flexible stress reliefs on both ends of the cable. The USB connector is gold plated, with a longer-than-usual plastic grip that conveys a certain idea of toughness. Also worth noting is the PBT material that Ducky used for this mouse. PBT is commonly used in premium keycaps as it is more resilient than the more common ABS plastic which is less durable but easier to mold. I commend Ducky for molding the entire mouse body from PBT instead of throwing in rubber grips or, God forbid, rubber coat the entire shell. Those rubber surfaces just don’t add much to the usability of a mouse and rubber coatings just feel icky when they are beginning to wear out. Ducky also threw in replacement mouse feet in the package. All of these point to Ducky wanting you to keep using the Secret for a long time to come, and with the PBT shell, you need not worry about it looking worse for wear anytime soon.

 

Conclusion

This is a good first attempt from Ducky, but it is far from game-changing. The customization options on this mouse is quite poor, having to unscrew the mouse to add weights when most competitors have designed tool-less doors under the mouse for weight tuning. Changing any settings is also cumbersome as you will have to stop whatever you are doing and flip the mouse over to press the DPI button. The sensor while not providing a crazy DPI count, is accurate, which is more important. For its shortcomings, it does make up with a time-tested ergonomic shape, great sensor performance, all-Omron switches as well as an extra-durable PBT shell. If you don’t rank customizability among the top criteria when choosing a mouse but consider durability to be of the utmost importance, the asking price of RM299 may be quite attractive to you. At the time of writing Ducky is also throwing in a free Ducky Flipper Extra mousepad worth RM129, which actually makes the combo a very good deal. Actually, the difficulty of adjusting the settings may also have a silver lining. Less time wasted just tweaking the mouse, more time spent actually gaming/working with the mouse. Sometimes, simple is good. For its simplistic features, excellent sensor performance and durable shell and switches,

Pokde-Silver

 

We express our thanks to Ducky Keyboard Malaysia for lending us the Ducky Secret review sample.

 

About The Author
Vyncent Chan
Technology enthusiast, casual gamer, pharmacy graduate. Strongly opposes proprietary standards and always on the look out for incredible bang-for-buck.
2 Comments
  • shane
    September 28, 2016 at 10:26 am

    Is it the size of ducky secret and Armageddon hovoc iii are same? Looking for big mouse for comfort

    • Vyncent Chan
      September 28, 2016 at 12:57 pm

      We have returned the review sample of the Ducky Secret, but from my memory it is slightly bigger than the ARMAGGEDDON Havoc III mouse.

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