Gaming Mouse Benchmarks

I'm not much in the mood for writing today, and probably won't write anything for the next couple days, so here something to tide you guys over for a while.

ESReality.com has figured out an awesome way to test mice for gaming. It's an ingenious system, and a lot better than the subjective method of "Oh, I think this one feels pretty good to me" method that most reviewers use. Enjoy!

Mouse Benchmarks

edit: I changed my mind about not writing today, obviously. Here's my take on this review.

I like how this review was done. It gives you actual solid, quantifiable results. Most mouse reviews go like this. "After 2 weeks on my desk, Xbrand Xmouse was still very comfortable and didn't make my wrist sore, even after long hours of gaming. I experienced no skipping or anything while playing Xfastpacedgame." That's all well and good, but there are so many variables that change from user to user, this is hardly a good way to judge which mouse YOU should get.

It would seem from this guy's tests that the good ol' optical mouse is still vastly superior to the newer laser mouse for gaming. This is most likely due to the immaturity of the technology behind the laser mouse.

Under his "Perfect Control" rankings, measuring the speeds at which you have complete control over your movement, 3 of the top 5 mice were from Logitech. Not much of a surprise there to me. Nearly everything sitting on my desk says Logitech on it, only my monitor and speakers don't. The Logitech MX500 tops the charts here, with the MX300 in 2nd. This is only after overclocking the USB polling rate to 1000MHz from it's 125MHz stock setting. The highest ranking laser mouse was the Logitech G1, at 7th place.

The "Malfunction Speed" tests measure the speed at which the mouse begins to control erratically, and makes it's own random movements. 4 of the top 5 mice here are from Logitech again. The Logitech MX518 and the Diamondback from Razer had no malfunctioning limit. He was unable to make them not work correctly at any speed he could test. The highest speed he was able to test was 4.5 m/s, which is way faster than anyone's gonna be moving their arm or hand playing a video game. Again, the Logitech G1 bested all other laser mice at 8th place.

Oddly enough, only 2 of the top 5 mice are from Logitech in DPI ratings. Seems to me that all these new mice touting 2500dpi, 3200dpi, and so on are just spouting marketing fluff with high numbers like Intel did with their Pentium 4 line after AMD introduced the Athlon 64 and began a thorough 4 year arse-whooping. I am currently using an MX518, which has an adjustable resolution up to 1600DPI, but I rarely use it that high. I hardly ever even take it over 1000DPI. Most of my time is spent in the 400-800DPI range.

In the overall rankings, the MX500, MX518, and MX300 from Logitech, and the Razer Diamondback and Krait take the top 5 spots, in that order. All 5 are optical.

The MX500 is also their top scorer for "Bang for the Buck".

I have owned the MX500 and I use the MX518 now, and I can tell you from personal experience they are fantastic mice. Very comfortable, very rugged, and perfectly reliable. I've not had any experience with Razer mice, but I hear great things about them. I've owned nothing but Logitech keyboards and mice for years, and this is precisely why. They make fantastic products. The Logitech joystick I'm using now has only ever been bested in my experience by my very old Microsoft Sidewinder 3d, which stopped working for me just a couple years ago after nearly 7 years of duty.