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What do you look for in a gaming mouse?

2K views 22 replies 14 participants last post by  virtual sorcery 
#1 ·
Mice are a crucial part of any gaming set-up, but I've never really known what makes a mouse good. When I bought my first actual gaming mouse it was the Razer Mamba and I mainly bought it because I liked the lights. It was cool, but after a while I realized the sensor wasn't very good and a lot of people were having the same issue.

Now that I'm looking for a new mouse, I'm curious to know how everyone picks what mouse is right for them and what is important when making that decision.

I know there's a variety of factors that can affect someones' decision to buy a specific mouse, (i.e. shape/weight/RGB/sensor) but what do you guys feel is the most important and why?
 
#2 ·
Physical profiling and shape. Only today had I tested a total of 15 sRazers, Logitech and SteelSeries mouses. None of them lied correctly in my hand. Only my Rival 310 is good enough but I wish it was broader or at least higher.
 
#3 ·
Shape and price is really all that matters to me. I only care about the sensor to the extent of "does it suck?" and what DPI it can adjust to.

I'm not 1337 enough to be able to tell the difference between a 3366/3360/3367 as long as it can go to the DPI (650) I like.
 
#4 ·
Number one is the shape.

Then next, the sensor has to work well. The easy thing to test about that is acceleration, the rest about it is I guess just the feel.

I remember there was a mouse where I at first liked everything about it, but it was pretty heavy. After a week or so, I switched back to a much lighter mouse and the lower weight felt super great. It seems low weight can sometimes beat out shape etc.

Personally, I kind of hate RBG. I feel it's distracting. I disable the lights on the mouse in its software.

About why I mentioned the shape as being the most important for me: I have chronic RSI issues in my hand and arm because of playing too much Quake in the past. I found out I can only use finger-tip grip on a mouse without numbness and pain returning. This then makes it very important that the shape of the mouse works for my hand size for finger-tip grip. A mouse that only works well in claw grip or palm grip feels comfortable to use for me at first, actually better than finger-tip, but after a while there's always the RSI returning. Things like stretching exercises can't prevent this, over the years I found out I really can only use finger-tip grip long-term without pain showing up.
 
#7 ·
I've tried 12k dpi in my Rival with very low in-game sensitivity and holy moly... Was that a no-go.
 
#9 ·
g pro wireless. that is all i look
 
#10 ·
How you'd prefer a mouse to fit in your hand should be your first priority. Sometimes, your local stores don't have the mouse you're interested in after seeing it online for the first time. At this point, you need to know what makes a mouse fit poorly in your hand versus one that fits nicely in your hand. Make your best assumptions about the mouse you're looking at online and be honest with yourself before buying it. It's a hassle buying a new mouse, not liking the way it fits, and then returning it as a result. It's almost unethical in a way, but to each their own in that respect.

The following mainly applies to competitive FPS games. To those who still game with low DPI, please understand that higher DPI in a 3D field will significantly increase your precision in the moments that matter the most. At a certain point, higher DPI doesn't matter anymore, but there's a noticeable improvement even from 1600DPI to something like 3200DPI and higher. At this point, some would complain that such a high DPI is too hard to control. You need to turn down your in-game sensitivity when using such high DPI values. Create a second DPI setting to something around 800DPI to use outside of games and you're all set. The DPI confusion stems from old, outdated information that stated you should stick to low DPI values because higher DPI values are interpolated and aren't native to the mouse's sensor. This is no longer the case these days if you do your research on each mouse that catches your interest. It's fairly easy these days to find a mouse with a good, well known sensor that will also fit fairly well in your hand.

Anyways, fitment should be your number one priority. Second, make sure the mouse has an optical sensor that's known not to have acceleration, deceleration, or any other weird behaviors that some mouse sensors might have. Lastly, read up on reviews of the mouse that catches your interest and make sure there aren't any common problems with it.

https://youtu.be/16CI_Qdhpaw?t=48s
 
#15 ·
The following mainly applies to competitive FPS games. To those who still game with low DPI, please understand that higher DPI in a 3D field will significantly increase your precision in the moments that matter the most.
Regarding the highlighted section in bold: no it does not. Please refer to wo1fwoods excellent Overview of mouse technology thread and check "inverted world transform matrix" section.
The precision is completely independent from the CPI used and is only affected by the sensitivity setting. As long as your in-game sensitivity setting is low your incremental change in viewing angle with each mouse count is small, hence precision is high.

That means that if you use a low enough real sensitivity (as in many centimeters of mouse movement per 360° revolution in-game) you are completely fine with using low CPI. Only if you use higher sensitivity (say less than 10cm/360°) will CPI matter, but even then only slightly and 800 CPI is fine for almost everyone. Taking the example of CS:GO (or any other game based on quake engine or its derivatives like source) at m_yaw 0.022 and sensitivity 1.0 you turn 0.022° with every count received from the mouse. You can move in sub-pixel regions with that setting perfectly fine (depending on your resolution, but at least at 1080p, never bothered with 1440p myself). You can experiment with this at https://funender.com/quake/mouse/ , punch in the settings above and click calculate in the CPI section, the "estimated useful CPI" tells you the value at your settings at which one count means movement of one pixel in the center of your screen. If you are above that value then you smallest movements are sub-pixel. (note that there are advantages to sub-pixel movements, but you don't significantly improve precision that way.

This is the reason that you see pros with the best aim (say Dafran in OW) still absolutely dominate with mice on 400 CPI.

At a certain point, higher DPI doesn't matter anymore, but there's a noticeable improvement even from 1600DPI to something like 3200DPI and higher. At this point, some would complain that such a high DPI is too hard to control. You need to turn down your in-game sensitivity when using such high DPI values. Create a second DPI setting to something around 800DPI to use outside of games and you're all set.
1600 CPI is already high enough for everything, taking Source engine again this means you would need to use a real sensitivity of 5.4 cm/360°(!) or even higher to not be able to aim pixel-by-pixel. I don't know anyone who does that. There is one exemption of that, and that is games without a zoom_sensitivity factor that scales down your sensitivity when you lower your FOV (or not by default in a significant way). Quake Live is an example of that and that's also the reason why Rocket Jump Ninja had some artifacts in his movements for certain mice in his zoom test because he didn't take that effect into account. This problem does not exist in CS or TF2 or Overwatch.

The DPI confusion stems from old, outdated information that stated you should stick to low DPI values because higher DPI values are interpolated and aren't native to the mouse's sensor. This is no longer the case these days if you do your research on each mouse that catches your interest.
That's a separate problem unrelated to high or low CPI in-game, see above. You are correct that older sensors had a "native" CPI setting and other settings were extrapolated or interpolated from there, and that that is no longer the case with modern sensors.
 
#11 ·
Personal preference above all, rest is just marketing bullcrap, tipped with sponsored pros talking about stuff they have no idea about. In example, I can't see why people preffer claw grip, at all. It severely worses mouse handling, is prone to accidental clicks and provide no noticeable "reaction" time compared to regular, full-hand grip. And yet people use claw grip. So most important thing is how well the mouse lays in hand and buttons feeling.

Oh, and ambidextrous mouse is cancer, no way to place a hand comfortably.
 
#14 · (Edited)
fingers allow you to do a much more precise movements / micro adjustments than your whole hand can.
it is not worsening anything, you just can't do it properly. full hand grip is not a "regular" grip, it is one of the variety of grips, not better or worse.
 
#13 ·
For me it is about fit of hand and durability, I do not want to buy a new mouse once a year. The senor is important but anything past 2000 DPI is just nuts for me in gaming so that has little impact on my choice. I am also not a button *****. I want a couple of side buttons for comms and that is it. I miss the design of the original Sidewinder mouse so bad! Shape of the mouse is important for sure, I am a palm gripper and some of the less robust mouse butts just do not feel right.

My mouse of choice of late is the G603, I am a big man and like a heavier mouse. The fact it is truly wireless is a huge win for me as well, not even a recharge wire. Tie this to a nice control surface material pad and I am very happy.
 
#16 ·
I look for good shape+weight+sidebuttons and a "solid" sensor.
The sensor doesnt has to be the best but it shouldnt have acceleration or spinouts

The Problem most of the time is to get the right shape , i had the Kone Pure in my hand and thought it would be my endgame but after like 3 or 4 days i got pain in my hand and i had to use something different
 
#17 ·
@Ino. I did read over what you stated and what you linked there. Quite a bit of it went over my head. I only had one point throughout my whole statement though, and it's that you have more precision in a 3D field with higher DPI and lower sensitivity. I've experimented with it myself many times. Is there a trick to it? The video I linked perfectly sums up what I see when I use higher DPI and lower in-game sensitivity. A situation that comes to my mind where the highest precision matters most is trying to head shot someone on A site from pit in Dust II (just an example).

I've experimented with both sides of the equation, and I strongly believe higher DPI is best as long as the sensor can natively process it (which we know most mice can do these days). Since it's along the lines of the topic, I would like to know what you'd recommend when it comes to using a Windows mouse sensitivity less than six? I see that it's lightly explained in the thread you linked, but what does it mean when it says less than six is "okay" versus six being optimal?
 
#20 ·
What I meant is that there is a point, or rather a sensitivity, where more CPI might be required to be able to aim pixel-by-pixel, but it's very unlikely that anyone requires more than 1600 CPI to do that with a reasonable sensitivity. There is not really a downside to going high CPI low ingame sens, but in my experience as a low sens player it changed the feeling of how I aim in-game. I play at 60cm/360°, on 400 CPI that's roughly 1.8 in source games (and 5.8 in Overwatch). When I played 1600 CPI@0.45 the aiming felt more floaty to me while 400 CPI@1.8 feels more stable. Quoting from wo1fwood again: "Additionally, with higher amounts of CPI, it becomes increasingly difficult to precisely control your movement/cursor, as there will be a point at which you physically cannot control your mouse with enough precision to take advantage of these CPI steps. Refer to section V on minimum control areas for a more thorough understanding."

Looking at the example of pit to A site I believe the head is still bigger than pixel size and hand precision plays a much bigger role than theoretical capability of the mouse, unless someone has such a high sens that he is physically unable to move pixel-by-pixel. Seeing how pros used to do these shots back in 1.6 with mice that had strong prediction I don't believe it would be an issue for anyone. the reference to pros is only made here because in my mind they are equivalent to the best possible human performance, if they are not limited by these settings to make these shots then neither is anyone else. All that being said, there isn't really an argument against using high CPI, if you feel comfortable at your setting keep using it.

Regarding windows settings: they aren't relevant anymore with modern games, as they use raw input. It was only relevant in older games that used WM_MOUSEMOVE, like CS 1.6. But to answer the question regardless: Any setting below 6/11 drops counts received by the mouse, that means it still operates only with input actually received, however 5/11 is inconsistent as it drops every 4th count. Anything above 6/11 adds counts that were never sent to increase the moved distance of the cursor. As an example on 8/11 every count received by the mouse is doubled meaning that in a 2D environment there are pixels that you can't reach with your mouse because the smallest movement is already 2 pixels. I hope that cleared it up, otherwise there is a more detailed explanation in the Overview thread.
 
#19 ·
Personally shape > weight > cable > clicks > sensor

Purely because great sensors are so widely available nowadays that it's not the first priority anymore.

With the latest improvements on wireless in mind we really live in great times where pretty much everyone should be able to find a great mouse.
 
#22 ·
@Ino. That makes sense now. I agree wholeheartedly that higher DPI feels floaty. It's also interesting that Windows mouse settings don't affect games these days. I feel even better using a Windows mouse sensitivity of 2/11 now! :) God bless.
 
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