What to Look for in a Gaming Mouse

MicroCenterOfficial · November 2023

This is part of a series on choosing your perfect mouse: Check out the Productivity Mouse edition as well as our Mouse Buying Guide!

When gaming mice are made for all different tastes and preferences, it can be tricky to find the mouse that’s perfect for you. There are universal gaming mice, mice for MMOs, mice for shooters, and mice for just about every other genre of game. It can quickly get overwhelming. So, we’re going to break down what’s important to look for in a gaming mouse and then dig a bit into one of the most modular mice on the market.

Button Count

The easiest decision to make is button count. A traditional mouse has somewhere between three and five buttons, but gaming mice can have fourteen or more. Thankfully, a simple question makes it easy to choose between a mouse with a few buttons and a lot of buttons: what are you playing?

If your focus is on shooters or other similar games, you probably don’t need a ton of buttons. Mice geared towards FPS players have between five and nine buttons; left click, right click, scroll wheel, and then usually two side buttons as well as a DPI button (more on DPI in a bit). A few mice even have a ‘sniper button,’ an additional side button usually towards the front of the mouse that drops your DPI so you have more control over your aim while looking down a scope.

If you’re regularly playing MMOs or MOBAs, you might benefit from a plethora of extra buttons. Some mice have upwards of nine extra buttons on the side. These are frequently programmable for easy macro access, putting access to all of your abilities at your fingertip, literally. Of course, some MMO gamers find all those buttons daunting and make do with a more traditional gaming mouse.

DPI

DPI, or Dots Per Linear Inch, is, to put it simply, how sensitive your mouse is. It’s how much your curser will move on the screen relative to how much you moved your mouse. If you lightly nudge your mouse with a high DPI, your curser will rocket to the other side of the screen. On the flip side, if you have a low DPI, that same nudge might result in only the tiniest of movements from the cursor.

DPI settings are especially important for shooting games. Pretty much all gaming mice will have options to change your DPI in an app. Most will even have a button or two to change DPI settings on the go so you won’t need to fiddle with settings when you switch games or players.

When looking for a gaming mouse, make sure that your mouse can be set to your preferred DPI. If you don’t have a preferred DPI yet, pick a mouse that has a high DPI limit so you can play around with your options and find the setting that works best for you.

Latency

Low latency is very important but often forgotten about. We gamers need the input of our mouse movements to get translated to the game as soon as possible. It’s not fun when you click at a crucial moment only for your gun to go off seconds later, costing you the win.

The problem of latency has been solved for wired gaming mice for a long time now, as the direct connection all but eliminates delay. When it comes to wireless mice, latency is far more important. When I was growing up, it was almost unheard of to play with a wireless mouse, because of the long input delay. Now, with gaming-grade mice, wireless latencies are as low as 0.5ms. That’s well within playable ranges and makes using wireless mice for gaming possible!

Extra Features

Some mice have extra features unique to themselves. Some mice, like the G502 Hero, come with attachments that will change the weight of your mouse, so you can dial in the exact weight that works for you. There are also super light mice for those who want a mouse to be as unobtrusive as possible. If you’re looking for a bit more control in your scrolling, Logitech’s G 903 features four-way scrolling. If you’ve got a feature you want in a mouse, chances are we’ve got it at Micro Center (not sure what you’re looking for? Stop in and talk to an associate!)

There are tons of mice out there to choose from and we could spend days breaking down each and every one. Instead, we’ll focus on one mouse that’s a great option for just about everyone looking for a gaming mouse: The Razer Naga V2.

The Razer Naga V2

The Razer Naga V2 Pro Wireless MMO Gaming Mouse is one of the most versatile gaming mice currently available. It has several attachments for changing the macro buttons for different styles of gaming, combining several different gaming mice into one. Quickly and easily swap between a 12-button, six-button, and two-button setup and tailor your mouse to the game you are playing at that exact moment. Playing World of Warcraft for a bit? Toss on the 12-button. Buddies want to play Apex Legends? Log out of WoW and snap on the two-button.

The Naga V2 Pro Wireless is, as the name suggests, traditionally a wireless mouse with connections available using both Bluetooth and the included dongle. Thanks to Razer’s Hyperspeed Wireless technology, the Naga features high-performance connections with incredibly low latency so you can game without worry. When the battery starts to run low, simply plug the Naga into its charging cord and keep going!

While there are a ton of mice out there, and that can make it hard to choose, I think it’s great that gamers have so many options. It allows everyone to find the mouse that is perfect for them with the exact features that they need.

If you’re ready to take the plunge into the world of gaming mice, come swing by your local Micro Center and take a look our wide selection of mice. We’ll be happy to help you figure out which one is right for you!