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Gaming Mice Get Benchmarked
Via Joystiq, an article at the ES Reality site where they do their level best to benchmark mice in a logical fashion. Post author Sujoy explains: "In this environment where performance is king, it's ludicrous to think that mouse performance has never been measured for reviewing the products. Imagine reviewing the latest graphics card in the same way. Without benchmarks, reviewers would have to resort to loading up their favourite game and commenting on how their frag count improved. You would have no way to compare NVIDIA and ATI cards apart from the quality of the packaging. Without benchmarking, graphics card reviews would be almost entirely useless. So why do we put up with mouse reviews that are just as useless?" They have scales based on control, speed, and DPI to determine how good, really, that mouse is.
Not long ago, I bought one. I don't care what the benchmarks say, I thought it was an utterly terrible mouse. It had a really bad feel to it (probably because it's ambidextrous), the mousewheel was hard to use when your hands were sweaty, and for some mysterious reason the mouse started to malfunction when I used it on the right side of my mousepad, but worked properly on the left. Pretty interesting considering that the entire surface is perfectly uniform! I also recall that the mouse had about three separate sensitivity settings for it, not to mention whatever sensitivity settings you have in your game. I eventually uninstalled the mouse software because it was just making things more difficult.
A total waste of money. I resumed using my old Logitech MX510.
The emphasis on "perfect control" is silly. Users should not need to move their mouse fast enough to the point where these perfect control numbers matter. The more important measurements are sample rate and DPI. The higher, the better for both, as it makes mouse movement smoother since the mouse updates come in faster and they don't need to be enlarged as much, which reduces "laggy" and "jaggy" mouse movement. This means that the Fatal1ty 2020 mouse is the current best, assuming the ergonomic aspects are to your liking.
True, Trackballs are not mice. But when you take into the acount the benefits of a trackball (NOT Thumbballs) you see that they are far superior. Trackballs are safer and more accurate. I hate it when I have the mouse in the right position and it moves when I click the button. That problem does not occur with a trackball. Also, you never get to the edge of a mouse pad or out of range of your arm. There's nothing more archaic about the mouse than having to pick up the entire pointing device to replace it somewhere else to move it again. It is faster just to move your hand. I remeber watching some video game tournaments watching everyone constantly picking up thier mice while playing - what a waste of energy an time. I realize that most people don't know about trackballs becasue their computers came with mice, but that is just a sad case. DeFKnoL, Loving my Kensington!