I have spent more money on gaming mice than the average resident of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan makes in a year. As if it weren’t already established fact, this officially makes me a Terrible Person.
What’s worse is that, on average, these mice last maybe a week or two. My ongoing and doomed quest to find the perfect gaming mouse is perennially thwarted by a reality that is as true as it is completely outside of my control.
It’s that the people who design gaming mice don’t actually have hands.
There is a simple recipe for making a good gaming mouse. It’s not much harder than making sure you put the buttons someplace people can actually reach them. But of course, if you don’t have hands, you have no frame of reference. Which results in mice like this:
$79.99. Ching!
That’s the Saitek Cyborg R.A.T. 5, my current and newest rodent. I bought it to go with my new PC on account of a favorable review in Maximum PC and the promise that it was “the most adjustable gaming mouse in the world.”
That latter may actually be true. The thing comes with a bunch of built-in knobs and screws that you can use to change the whole shape of the mouse, plus three or four different snap-on chassis of varying texture, width, and height, supposedly to accommodate any gamer’s paw.
I don’t like it very much. After spending hours snapping parts on and off, rotating knobs, swapping out the included weights, and messing with the awful software, I have a mouse that’s no more comfortable or easy to game with than any of the others I’ve used. It’s not the worst I’ve come across, not by a long shot, but it’s hardly the most comfortable or feature-rich. The palm rest digs unpleasantly into the heel of my hand; the thumb buttons aren’t anywhere near my thumb; the RMB clicks too easily while the LMB requires 35 pounds of force. The thumb scroll wheel is not programmable and doesn’t have a click. The “sniper” button is too hard to reach and can’t be reprogrammed. The bundled software is annoying. Sigh.
The R.A.T. 5 replaced this doozy:
$89.95. Ching!
What you see there is a Logitech G9x. And chances are I’ll be going back to it sooner or later, because though I hate it, I think I hate it less than its replacement.
Logitech’s got a long history of producing gaming mice, and this one is okay, but I’m vexed again by the placement of the thumb buttons (the thumb naturally goes up and down, not forward and back, in this position), and by the overall dearth of programmable buttons. I don’t need to change my DPI on the fly. No one does. And I certainly don’t need LEDs that change color at my whim. I’d rather Logitech had focused a little more on ergo design and more buttons (and, again, better software) than pointless bells and whistles.
Seriously, just looking at the G9x I can see like four places that’d be perfect candidates for additional buttons. Once you reach a certain threshold in sensitivity – a threshold which, I might add, mouse manufacturers have long since passed, to the point of absurdity – a gaming mouse is about packing as much functionality into an ergonomic shell.
If mouse designers actually had hands, they’d find their jobs very easy. But they do not have hands.
The mouse I’ve owned with the most potential was the Microsoft Sidewinder, circa… about 2006 I think:
$69.99. Ching!
You know what makes this Sidewinder so great? The vertically positioned thumb buttons. In no other gaming mouse anywhere have I seen thumb buttons that actually match the way the human thumb works. Plus these aluminum buttons had a great, hefty click and a smooth finish. Sure, I could have done without the digital display, and as with the G9x there’s room on the Sidewinder for more buttons than they actually put there, but in general you cannot beat this mouse… were it not for one problem.
The god damned thing is the size of a toaster oven.
You can’t get this model any more, but back in the day I took a gamble (having been warned in an otherwise glowing review that the thing was obnoxiously huge) and bought one. This was a mistake. My hands are not huge, meaty paws. I wouldn’t go so far as to call them dainty, but at 5’7″ I’m on the smaller side for a dude and my hands (my everything, actually… alas) are true to form. I couldn’t even get my mitt around this thing. I gave it to a friend with giant ogre hands, and to my knowledge he’s still using it, the bastard.
After the Sidewinder and before the G9x was a period I like to call “The Razer Interlude,” when I owned an assortment of mice from the company that actually invented the concept of boutique gaming mice.
$99.00. Ching!
To a great extent, I can pin all my current complaints about gaming mouse design on Razer, which innovated the space in 1999 with the Boomslang, a ball-mouse that retailed well north of $100 (the one to the left is a Lachesis, which I replaced with the G9x) and sold so poorly that Razer actually disappeared for a while, before returning with an “improved” line of extraordinarily expensive gaming mice.
Razer was one of the first to add thumb buttons, and it was the first to put them in the wrong place. All other manufacturers have followed suit. Meanwhile, the Razer Diamonback (which I owned before I got the Lachesis) featured a pair of “pinky” buttons that were actually operated with the ring finger if you could operate them at all, which you couldn’t because as usual the buttons weren’t anywhere near the finger that was supposed to push them.
Each of the mice you see here brought some good stuff to their design, but none are ideal… let alone perfect. At this point I’ve kind of given up on finding the “perfect” gaming mouse, though this won’t stop me from trying. On the shelf behind my computer lies a row of perfectly good, often $100 mice, their cords wrapped around them, sitting dormant and idle. Each has failed me in its own way, and the R.A.T.5 is likely to join them shortly.
But where I’ll buy tomato sauce on sale and eat generic brand cereal to save a buck, where I’ll agonize for six months over the purchase of a new video card, when it comes to mice I’m like a shoe-shopping teenage girl from Beverly Hills. No extravagance is too great, even though I know perfectly well it’ll gather dust on the shelf sooner rather than later. To the citizens of Kyrgyzstan, I apologize.
Send an email to the author of this post at steerpike@tap-repeatedly.com.
What are you, nuts? I have a Logitech MX 518 and I adjust the resolution constantly. Sometimes when I’m at work and my gaming PC is turned on I’ll reach over and adjust the resolution just because I can. It’s the one essential operation I can’t live without. That and throwing grenades with the thumb buttons. Can’t do without that either.
Changing resolution on the fly is critical in a game like BF3. For those that don’t know why, pickup a mouse where you can and you’ll figure it out the first time you go to snipe or use a tank.
Testify!
I also have small’ish hands and have had a hard time finding a mouse that works for me, right now I am using a Logitech G700, and once I got used to the unsettling finish on it that makes it feel permanently dirt encrusted, it is actually a pretty decent mouse, recommended.
What I really want however is a mouse that has a small joystick built-in under the thumb.
Logitech G700… look at all those buttons… dammit! Now I have to buy that one!
CrashMonkey and Pi are clearly readers of discernment and taste, yet, one wonders if perhaps 13 buttons is a trifle on the side of too much*? Perhaps Pi is as nimble in mind as dexterous in the digits and can remember what all 13 buttons are for, but I could not. I will grant that Saitek peripherals are an abomination against design and function whose only redeeming feature is an unwillingness to wear out which is a property both good and bad. At least with a Logitech device, if you don’t like it, chances are in three months you can replace it entirely without guilt since it likely wont work anymore.
*but the 18 programmable buttons on my keyboard are entirely necessary
*guiltily enjoys using his sidewinder mouse and looks shamefully at his ridiculously large hands*
The sidewinder is really too big? Really?
Couldn’t agree more with your insight on the thumb buttons issue… vertical placement is far superior to horizontal.
I would also like to see a “ring finger” button added along the right-hand side, and perhaps 2 to 4 additional buttons located on the top left side for easy access with the index finger.
I would happily pay $150 for a sidewinder style mouse with the additions mentioned… you know, if any mouse engineers happen to be listening…
Thirteen buttons is probably more than I need. I’d love… say… eight though. Eight honest to god programmable, logically placed buttons. By “programmable” I mean I can ACTUALLY PROGRAM THEM, not like my R.A.T.5 which includes three perfectly good buttons that are hard-wired to functions I don’t use. By “logically placed” I mean somewhere my digits can reach them.
ArcherAvatar, all I can say is you are a lucky dog with those giant ham hands of yours. The Sidewinder’s the size of a melon, and if it weren’t I’d still be using it.
I’ll also defer that some gamers may want to switch resolution on the fly. I play shooters online without needing to do so, but then again, I suck at them. But at least give me the option to reprogram the on-the-fly sensitivity button to something more useful. I need freedom!
And that mouse Pi has.
It’s called a sidewinder? Now I like that mouse even more, perhaps we should call it a moose!? It’s awesome. I even added all the weights to it so it’s large and heavy.
signed
the ogre
The Logitech MX500 series of mice and all its descendants (Gx00 series) are the most comfortable, logical, functional mice there have ever been.
Its flaws are, yes, horizontal rather than vertical thumb buttons. And adjusting DPI on the fly is useless as well. The slowest setting is molasses and the highest is the speed of sound. Replace the latter with more flexible buttons, fix the former for ergonomics. Ta da.
Do you have giant freakish paw hands though, xtal? My hands are delicate, beautiful things; the hands of a surgeon or an orchestra conductor.
Not really.
I’ve been doing research and apparently there are three types of “grip” that people use: the Palm Grip, the Claw Grip, and the Fingertip Grip.
Reviewing Youtube videos of each, I’m closest to the Palm Grip. What I really need is a normal, plain-old mouse (like what comes with a Dell), except with more buttons.
I went through a similar run of mice for a time there. I think I went through four of them before I finally settled on my “Logitech G5 Laser Mouse”. Dobry recommended it to me.
I’ve been happy with it for a while now.
great write up steerpike. cannot beleive how much you are willing to spend on a mouse. that said i can be like that with trainers.
i currently use the Logitech MX518. comes in at a decent price and is very adjustable the match whatever type of game you a playing.
also after reading this it got me looking online a reviews and i was very happy to see that my current mouse came 3rd in this top 10 list while i think yours was around 7th.
check out the link.
http://bestgamingmousestore.com/
That’s a great site, Luke, thanks. I think I’m finally going to throw in the towel on the RAT5 and get myself a G500. They’re only about $35 pre-owned on Amazon, so as soon as I scrub of someone else’s hand-slime, it should be good as new.
Steerpike,
My “G5” mouse is the “G500”. If not exactly, it’s damn close. Looks just like it, same design, buttons, kick ass little weights and everything. I’ve been pimping that mouse to you for years! I speak glowingly of it very often.
Great article Steerpike. I too am very fussy with mice.
I’m currently using a Razer Krait. It was cheap, it has a left mouse button, a right mouse button and a scroll wheel which unfortunately doesn’t click. That’s it. Oh and it glows orange which is kind of annoying. And it’s very small and low. It was abandoned long ago after it started double clicking with a single click (imagine navigating windows with a double click on everything, or trying to conserve ammo in a shooter… yeah exactly). The wireless Logitech mouse that briefly replaced it had many more buttons and was fully programmable but needed muscling about because its tracking wasn’t so good. After reading a tutorial, busting the Razer Krait open and carefully applying some WD40 to the clicky-clicker things I managed to get it working again so I stuck with that.
The mouse I use at work is an Evoluent Vertical Mouse and while they look pretty ugly and feel a bit strange at first they’re amazingly comfortable and I’m tempted to get one for gaming.
Looks like Evoluent have just released the Vertical Mouse 4 with vertically positioned thumb buttons! 😉
http://www.evoluent.com/vm4r.htm
Wow. After reading this, I feel weird for gaming with just a regular old mouse.
But that one on the top… I don’t even understand what it is supposed to be.
I am confused, you mention specifically that one the mouses you bought was a ball mouse. Like there is any other kind?
I have one that has the ball on top of the mouse it is awesome in a terrible sort of way I feel like I am in Star Trek when I use it.
By “ball mouse” I meant the old-skool mouse technology that had a rolling orb inside rather than a laser to sense movement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_%28computing%29#Mechanical_mice
I’m on to the Logitech G500 now and… so far I like it. But with Skyrim coming out tomorrow, that’s when I’ll really give it a run for its money.
Sorry, I was just teasing you while making fun of myself. I am a mouse troglodyte
I really did use a trackball mouse for about 2 months. Those were dark times
*facepalm*
Shoulda known. 🙂
A trackball for gaming sounds hideous. Right now I’m semi-liking my Logitech G500. She’s still not the girl for me, though.