Gaming Mouse Group Test

Hand Usage Shots

To give you an idea of how the mice look when someone has got their grubby mitts round them I employed the help of former catalogue hand model, Wil Harris. Below is a line-up of how his particularly large hands sit on the various mice:

Below on the left we have the Saitek GM 3200. As you can see Wil's third finger is fairly redundant and the arch of his palm and fingers demonstrates the poor design of the mouse.

The hand looks far more comfortable when resting on the Logitech MX 1000. Notice the little alcove that your thumb will naturally search out to rest itself. Button placement is very effective and the hand looks relaxed and comfortable. Despite being old the MX 1000 is still a great wireless mouse.



The Razer Krait (below left) is a much smaller mouse, more suitable for those who prefer to use their fingers to game. Also notice that despite having LED's running up the side Wil's finger covers most of them making them slightly redundant whilst your actually holding it.



On the right we have the brilliant Logitech G3. Again this is more suited for those who like to use their fingers and not their palms to do the moving. If you notice though that Wil's third finger doesn't comfortably sit on the right hand side button. This highlights the only real issue we had with the mouse. The sensitivity button is small and located out of the way so you won't accidentally press it.

The Creative mouse is by far and away the smallest of all the mice. As you can see from Wil's Crane stance (mouse Kung Fu) he's had to pivot all his fingers so that he can correctly manipulate the buttons. As I said, despite this being slightly uncomfortable it is quite an effective mouse for competitive FPS gaming. Certainly not a mouse to use for general purpose desktop functions.

Conclusion

There are plenty of options out there for the gamer to choose and it can be quite daunting to select the right one for you. This is a problem made worse by the fact that almost all PC gamers will buy their mouse without having ever felt it in their hands, I know I've done it. My advice is to do your best to try before you buy, perhaps try going to a LAN event and seeing what you think of other people's mice.

I was most impressed by Logitech, which for a long time has been considered the premiere mouse maker in the world. Both the old wireless mouse and the new G3 mouse were great performers. I'd have to say that, for gaming, you can't do much better than the G3. It's got enough buttons to satisfy anyone, is comfortable is all games and desktop usage, has a reasonable pricetag and feels and looks great.

The mouse market is still growing though, with new models hitting us every couple of months. The nature of the mouse mean that there will come a time, probably soon, when we reach the limitations of what it can do. Can they actually get much more accurate? Can you really design them much differently? How many more buttons will they try to cram on? Either way, a good mouse can really improve your gaming experience and is certainly worth forking out the relatively small amount of cash to ensure you have the best one for you.