Certain utilities are easier to pick up than others.įor maximum comfort, some gaming mice let you customize the body of the mouse itself.

The software's quality and functionality can vary wildly from vendor to vendor that's where our reviews come in. Gaming mice also stand apart in that the better ones tend to feature vendor-supplied software for setting up these custom features and shortcuts, defined sometimes on a per-game basis via profiles. What most gaming mice have in common, though, is a combination of high-performance parts-laser sensors, feather-light click buttons, gold-plated USB connectors-and customization features, such as programmable macro commands and on-the-fly resolution switching. In the latter case, depending upon the style of the game that the mouse is intended for (first-person shooter, real-time strategy game, MMO), you may see a variety of specialized features. Some gaming mice are general gaming models, while others are designed for specific game genres. Gaming mice amplify every element of the basic mouse concept to the extreme: more buttons, higher tracking resolutions, curvier curves. Let's take a look at our favorite mice across a number of categories, including our top picks in gaming, budget, and ergonomics categories, then move on to discuss other genres and aspects that affect all mice. (For example, a few 'travel gaming' mice exist.)

There's a lot of variance within each, and some crossover among all of these classes. For this same reason, however, travel mice tend to be small for most hands-you can use them just fine for short stints, but they become uncomfortable over long periods due to the unnatural grip required.īeyond these 'ordinary' mice are two key mouse genres: the gaming mouse, and the ergonomic mouse. They're designed to fit easily into the pocket of a backpack or laptop bag.

Travel mice (or 'mobile mice') offer many of these same features but come in a smaller size.

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