Summary
Gaming mice are like the shoes worn by your favorite elite athlete: sure they’ll give you a slight edge in competition, but without the fundamental talent, practice, and skills that edge won’t have the same sort of impact on your performance.
What Is a “Gaming” Mouse Anyway?
Before I get into why you probably don’t need one, it’s worth defining what a “gaming mouse” is. There are different types of gaming mice, and they’re not all designed for use with the same type of games in mind. For example, anMMO mouseis specifically designed to put programmable buttons under your fingers. Depending on which MMO you’re playing, this type of mouse really can make a huge difference to how well or how comfortably you play.
However, what most people think about when you mention video game rodents are those mice that aim to help with fast action gameplay. In other words, games that rely on your reflexes and coordination to win. Think of games likeCall of DutyorCounter-Strikewhere aiming and shooting faster than your competitors is crucial to your success.
Gaming mice are more sensitive than standard mice and can detect the tiniest of twitches in your hand, they’re balanced to the nth degree and often let you add or remove ballast to change their weight. These are the track cars of mice, but instead of holes drilled in the foot pedals to save a few grams of weight, you haveholes drilled in a computer mousefor much the same reason.
They Benefit Elite Players (That’s Probably Not You)
With sky-highpolling ratesand sensitivity, you need the reflexes of a fighter pilot to even benefit from what these mice offer. If you’re spending a fortune on a gaming mouse and then dialing its settings down to the same range as your mom’s office mouse, the only thing you’ve achieved is setting money on fire.
If you’re a serious player and are pushing up against the limits of what the average general-purpose mouse can do, there’s an argument to be made for using hyper-accurate gaming products and the sometimes ludicrous asking prices that go with them. However, just like buying a300Hz e-sports gaming monitorisn’t going to suddenly make you the headshot king, a gaming mouse is likely of little benefit to the vast majority of people who buy them.
Ignore the “Gaming” Label
That’s not to say thatbuying the right mousecan’t have a significant effect on how well you play or how much you enjoy playing. You can find many or all of these features on mice that don’t carry a “gaming” label, and sometimes a less expensive gaming mouse will work just as well as one that costs several times as much. If you don’t care about whether a mouse is officially labeled as a gaming product or not, then there are some key features that can make a difference:
Like most people, I’m a casual gamer. I’m not trying to qualify for some sort of eSports championship. I’m not under the impression that I could be someone who ranks among the top players on any leaderboard. A fancy gaming mouse isn’t going to change that. I’d bet that any of those elite players could thrash the rest of us using an old ball mouse found at their local Goodwill.
For most, it doesn’t make sense to spend money on a high-end gaming mouse with sky-high on-paper statistics, when a much cheaper gaming mouse or even a nice ergonomic office mouse will be of just as much benefit to you.
