Computer "Gaming" Mice: are any not trash?
- Thread starter drivebymessiah
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Thankfully, there's better SteelSeries representation in this thread than the one a few months ago. Incredibly durable mice, incredibly comfortable, plenty of options for particular side-button layouts and grip styles. I use the now-defunct Xai, and it's the single best mouse I've ever used. If it breaks, I'll replace it with a Sensei[RAW].
Razer wise i only have experience with the (old) deathadder, had a long life and worked pretty good. just kinda faded away after six years.
Have a Steelseries sensei now and it is gosh darn awesome
don't care for the screen underneath and i whould like more on the fly controle over my dpi but the shape is just perfect for me. (in line with the famous microsoft intellipoint that people have mentioned in this tread)
To people mentioning that gaming mouses aren't needed, it is not that black and white, sure if someone is good he can be good with a 5 dollar mouse or a 100 dollar mouse, but if you go up against skilled players, a mouse that fits your needs can make a difference, helping you to perform your best. kinda frustrating if your mouse can't keep up with your reflexes.
Have a Steelseries sensei now and it is gosh darn awesome
don't care for the screen underneath and i whould like more on the fly controle over my dpi but the shape is just perfect for me. (in line with the famous microsoft intellipoint that people have mentioned in this tread)To people mentioning that gaming mouses aren't needed, it is not that black and white, sure if someone is good he can be good with a 5 dollar mouse or a 100 dollar mouse, but if you go up against skilled players, a mouse that fits your needs can make a difference, helping you to perform your best. kinda frustrating if your mouse can't keep up with your reflexes.
Working with the RAT7 right now, I was going strong with a Razer Naga Starwars mouse, but my Roomba decided to murder it.
Generally I expect them to last a year.
Also Kudos to Bogglez for pointing out the model name, now I can buy a replacement for the Rat when it decides to die.
I would like to note however that my Lachesis mouse has lasted 4 years. It serves as my backup mouse.
Generally I expect them to last a year.
Also Kudos to Bogglez for pointing out the model name, now I can buy a replacement for the Rat when it decides to die.
I would like to note however that my Lachesis mouse has lasted 4 years. It serves as my backup mouse.
I'm using Razer Naga's as well. I have the older hard wired version for my desktop setup and the wireless/wired Epic for my laptop, honestly I usually keep it plugged in as the way the dongle is set up is kinda dumb for a laptop. Its actually more suited for a permanent desktop home, and why would you use wireless in that situation?
Anyways I have experienced no problems with either so far and the wireless one gets beaten up in my laptop bag and the thing is plugged in and out every day. I've had it for...damn cant remember, a year? more? the wired one even longer and they both get used a lot.
They are over priced but they work well, I use nearly all of the buttons however, the 10, 11, and 12 buttons are a bit hard for me to reach but otherwise they are very comfortable for me.
The color cycling is pretty on the epic too =)
Perhaps you guys beating the hell out of your mice in 6mo need to masturbate or something, relieve some stress, don't take it out on your mouse.
Anyways I have experienced no problems with either so far and the wireless one gets beaten up in my laptop bag and the thing is plugged in and out every day. I've had it for...damn cant remember, a year? more? the wired one even longer and they both get used a lot.
They are over priced but they work well, I use nearly all of the buttons however, the 10, 11, and 12 buttons are a bit hard for me to reach but otherwise they are very comfortable for me.
The color cycling is pretty on the epic too =)
Perhaps you guys beating the hell out of your mice in 6mo need to masturbate or something, relieve some stress, don't take it out on your mouse.
This has yet to fail me - http://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/gaming-mouse-g500drivebymessiah said:
Hasn't even "diminished" in quality or effectiveness. And, believe me, I've put it through it's paces.
I've had my G500 for some time now and it still works like the day I bought it, save for the occasional cleaning of the sliders on the bottom.NLS said:
If you do ever need to replace your G5, I can easily recommend the G500. The high range of DPI settings, programmability, and weighting options make it quite nice for a mouse in it's price range.
God, that sounded like a damn advert.
My last few mice have been Razer Abyssus. Honestly, I think they were/are pretty bad, but after removing the horribly buggy and shitty driver software and using MarkC's fix they behave so much better.
1000hz polling rate and 1800DPI although it can go up to 3500DPI. It's just a matter of what you find comfortable really. I only got the Abyssus because it was cheap :/
1000hz polling rate and 1800DPI although it can go up to 3500DPI. It's just a matter of what you find comfortable really. I only got the Abyssus because it was cheap :/
For those with some experience with my problems that didn't assume I was cramming my mouse crevices with cheeto dust between rage-pounding and honestly suggested some lesser known brand models on the merits of quality: thanks, I'll have to look into that.
TL;DR starts now:
I was going to respond directly to replies earlier but put it off and now there are a surprisingly high number of replies. I'd like to amend my original thoughts to address some of the recurring comments.
I don't abuse my electronics nor am I hard on them. They surely see higher than average use. I'm not even a key spammer and tend to obsess about not ever clicking or button pressing more than is necessary as part of my perceived precise and efficient control strategy. I have a friend I voice-chat with regularly and always notice him wood peckering his keys or mouse button, game depending. I am not a slob and do not eat over my keyboard/mouse. I wash my hands frequently, daily, and clean any build up off my mouse whenever I notice it. I used to sometimes pry all the keys off my keyboard and clean that too with rubbing alcohol and cotton swabs but its been a while. The one element of potential extra wear that comes to mind is that the air is very dusty where I live and I tend to open windows at night forgoing AC during long summers to avoid the wrath of exorbitant PG&E electricity bills. I do what I can to combat the dust but it's a losing battle living in an area ranked in the top 10 for America's worst air quality. Somehow, though, it doesn't seem like this would be a large contributing factor being that computer mice are mostly enclosed devices.
There has also been an update to the status of my Razer Naga. It is actually my second Naga as the first developed a couple stiff thumb-pad keys and a problem where the left click would execute a double click action with a single press. I utilized a RMA and was issued, what I have now, a refurbished product which I've had for a little over a year. I noticed within a few months that the left click required more pressure but it wasn't major and I tolerated it. Recently the degradation toward a stiffer left click has accelerated dramatically to the point of my original post. In the time between I found a youtube contributor proposing a fix for my problem but found that my refurbished Naga had the access screws glued in place. Had I a retail warranty I might have recourse through the manufacturer but it appears that warranty was cashed in with the first return and I received a 90-day covered refurb with glued access screws so it could never be fixed again.
The Naga video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIR3MfrD7Gc The uploader isn't much of a charmer but watching it you learn that the point of contact from the outer plastic to the internal left button mechanism is a plastic standoff (same material as the shell) that wears away with use as it appears other Naga owners have the same problem. Interestingly commenters to that video also can't remove the access screws.
I have a spare logitech mx518 that I'm using now. The left click is noticeably stiffer than the right. However it is, I would estimate, a 2x magnitude difference as opposed to the 30-50x magnitude difference exhibited by the Naga. I am somewhat sensitive to the left click no longer being a "hair trigger" because long duration use with the worn out naga was causing some wrist discomfort. The logitech mx518 is a replacement from an RMA 518 where the optical sensor died which replaced an mx510 where a sensitivity stage button went out (which was enough to require a new one as i was in mmo-mode at the time and utilizing the button being assigned to a keystroke) which replaced an RMA 510 whose optical sensor died. All that being said, I very much like the shape of the mx518. I think it's a great design. I just wish it had more buttons and a higher available polling rate. Granted high polling rate response time was only clearly noticeable on CRT monitors which I no longer have, I wish to incur as little local lag as I can.
Referring to the chief design feature of the Naga - all those buttons: I do not play any MMO's anymore but have always put effort into control customizations to ensure maximum effectiveness. To that end I have to recognize my right hand can handle a lot more than three, or even five, buttons in addition to moving the mouse. In any game with many commands, distributing them within the bounds of a comfortable workload to both hands is key. Most recently I had become accustomed to using the thumb pad for Starcraft II control groups 6-10 which I can't hit reliably without looking at the keyboard under a default configuration. Any statement of, "That's just more buttons than are needed" is erroneous coming from any gamer that plays the gamut of genres. The "necessity" of an alternate control scheme is relative to the advantage it provides.
I honestly don't believe the optical sensor in a mouse justifies a 70$+ pricetag that is being payed. What's left? All so much molded plastic and the buttons we interact with. A keyboard has more than 10x the buttons and plastic and they cost less than 10 dollars. Furthermore the higher dpi advertisements are all garbage anyway since unless you have a resolution of 6000 pixels across, the fine motor control of a trans-human cybernetic micro-transistor surgeon, or if the only game you play is Piroutte Master G-Force xTREME, you aren't going to get more precision from 5600dpi: you probably have less from a lowered windows sensitivity setting ignoring a portion of dpi to translate it into a significantly lower number of horizontal pixels. The tradition in gaming has been to increase precision from lower dpi while higher dpi gives improved speed. The only real important improvements added to mice from a tracking perspective, that are advertized, are the increased polling rates & on-the-fly dpi adjustment from a preferential perspective. However polling rate adjustment through various modifications/hacks has been around for years prior to it ever showing up as part of a driver feature so I have to wonder whether or not it really represents any increased investment in the optical sensor. And the few areas
As a gamer, part of a gaming consumer group, consuming gaming mice: I feel like there are not any honest 'gaming mice' from the manufacturers I have encountered as the mechanical aspect (button presses & clicks) is as cheaply constructed as any other and the actual manufacturing cost likely much the same as the cheapest optical mouse available.
TL;DR starts now:
I was going to respond directly to replies earlier but put it off and now there are a surprisingly high number of replies. I'd like to amend my original thoughts to address some of the recurring comments.
I don't abuse my electronics nor am I hard on them. They surely see higher than average use. I'm not even a key spammer and tend to obsess about not ever clicking or button pressing more than is necessary as part of my perceived precise and efficient control strategy. I have a friend I voice-chat with regularly and always notice him wood peckering his keys or mouse button, game depending. I am not a slob and do not eat over my keyboard/mouse. I wash my hands frequently, daily, and clean any build up off my mouse whenever I notice it. I used to sometimes pry all the keys off my keyboard and clean that too with rubbing alcohol and cotton swabs but its been a while. The one element of potential extra wear that comes to mind is that the air is very dusty where I live and I tend to open windows at night forgoing AC during long summers to avoid the wrath of exorbitant PG&E electricity bills. I do what I can to combat the dust but it's a losing battle living in an area ranked in the top 10 for America's worst air quality. Somehow, though, it doesn't seem like this would be a large contributing factor being that computer mice are mostly enclosed devices.
There has also been an update to the status of my Razer Naga. It is actually my second Naga as the first developed a couple stiff thumb-pad keys and a problem where the left click would execute a double click action with a single press. I utilized a RMA and was issued, what I have now, a refurbished product which I've had for a little over a year. I noticed within a few months that the left click required more pressure but it wasn't major and I tolerated it. Recently the degradation toward a stiffer left click has accelerated dramatically to the point of my original post. In the time between I found a youtube contributor proposing a fix for my problem but found that my refurbished Naga had the access screws glued in place. Had I a retail warranty I might have recourse through the manufacturer but it appears that warranty was cashed in with the first return and I received a 90-day covered refurb with glued access screws so it could never be fixed again.
The Naga video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIR3MfrD7Gc The uploader isn't much of a charmer but watching it you learn that the point of contact from the outer plastic to the internal left button mechanism is a plastic standoff (same material as the shell) that wears away with use as it appears other Naga owners have the same problem. Interestingly commenters to that video also can't remove the access screws.
I have a spare logitech mx518 that I'm using now. The left click is noticeably stiffer than the right. However it is, I would estimate, a 2x magnitude difference as opposed to the 30-50x magnitude difference exhibited by the Naga. I am somewhat sensitive to the left click no longer being a "hair trigger" because long duration use with the worn out naga was causing some wrist discomfort. The logitech mx518 is a replacement from an RMA 518 where the optical sensor died which replaced an mx510 where a sensitivity stage button went out (which was enough to require a new one as i was in mmo-mode at the time and utilizing the button being assigned to a keystroke) which replaced an RMA 510 whose optical sensor died. All that being said, I very much like the shape of the mx518. I think it's a great design. I just wish it had more buttons and a higher available polling rate. Granted high polling rate response time was only clearly noticeable on CRT monitors which I no longer have, I wish to incur as little local lag as I can.
Referring to the chief design feature of the Naga - all those buttons: I do not play any MMO's anymore but have always put effort into control customizations to ensure maximum effectiveness. To that end I have to recognize my right hand can handle a lot more than three, or even five, buttons in addition to moving the mouse. In any game with many commands, distributing them within the bounds of a comfortable workload to both hands is key. Most recently I had become accustomed to using the thumb pad for Starcraft II control groups 6-10 which I can't hit reliably without looking at the keyboard under a default configuration. Any statement of, "That's just more buttons than are needed" is erroneous coming from any gamer that plays the gamut of genres. The "necessity" of an alternate control scheme is relative to the advantage it provides.
I honestly don't believe the optical sensor in a mouse justifies a 70$+ pricetag that is being payed. What's left? All so much molded plastic and the buttons we interact with. A keyboard has more than 10x the buttons and plastic and they cost less than 10 dollars. Furthermore the higher dpi advertisements are all garbage anyway since unless you have a resolution of 6000 pixels across, the fine motor control of a trans-human cybernetic micro-transistor surgeon, or if the only game you play is Piroutte Master G-Force xTREME, you aren't going to get more precision from 5600dpi: you probably have less from a lowered windows sensitivity setting ignoring a portion of dpi to translate it into a significantly lower number of horizontal pixels. The tradition in gaming has been to increase precision from lower dpi while higher dpi gives improved speed. The only real important improvements added to mice from a tracking perspective, that are advertized, are the increased polling rates & on-the-fly dpi adjustment from a preferential perspective. However polling rate adjustment through various modifications/hacks has been around for years prior to it ever showing up as part of a driver feature so I have to wonder whether or not it really represents any increased investment in the optical sensor. And the few areas
As a gamer, part of a gaming consumer group, consuming gaming mice: I feel like there are not any honest 'gaming mice' from the manufacturers I have encountered as the mechanical aspect (button presses & clicks) is as cheaply constructed as any other and the actual manufacturing cost likely much the same as the cheapest optical mouse available.
I know that feel bro. I went through 3 or 4 microsoft sidewinder x8s and a roccat kone + in just 2 years. I got a cyborg rat 7 now though and it seems to be holding really well so far, maybe the fact that the shape is customizable and adjustable has to do with it, I don't know.... But it seems to be able to endure the harsh punishment of "using it to click on things and absolutely nothing else" with most excellency.
I have a Cobra E-Blue, and I like it a lot. It's got a button that switches between three different tracking sensitivities, and two thumb buttons. Only thing that sucks is that sometimes I hit one of the thumb buttons accidentally, and it'll either go back or forward a page on whatever website I'm at.