Two mice for two hours - first impressions on budget gaming mice

Looks like in the past year, I've been coming across cases where my equipment just up and dies, or becomes obsolete.

It started with my Sony Optiarc CD drive when I installed Windows 7 - apparently Windows didn't like it or it didn't like Windows, but I ended up replacing it with an Asus drive. Next, my NuForce NE-6's blew, and it wasn't even a year since I first got them. Then I found out a few weeks ago that my old Sansa Fuze had in fact, slowly decayed over the years I've had it.

Now of all things, my mouse started getting finicky - every so often, the device would disconnect from my computer despite the fact it was plugged in. If I waited about a second, Windows would recognize the device as still plugged in, and reconnect it for me, but the fact of the matter is it happened every couple of seconds I moved the mouse.

So, I went down to Fry's to look at their selection of budget gaming mice (since I'm much to proud to have a regular one), and within my price range, I found only two: the CoolerMaster CMStorm Xornet, and the A4Tech XL-760H. Of these, I picked up the Xornet first, so we'll start with that. Stock photo, incoming.

To be honest, I really wanted to like this mouse. The buttons were smooth like silk, really responsive, and didn't require too much pressure to push. The grips on the side were great, the body felt much like the buttons, and the whole thing was sweet and smooth as a baby... it's just that CoolerMaster designed the mouse for a certain type of grip, and slapped in an extra finger slot for your fourth finger.

Now, if you're like me, and you don't have big, American hands, then the extra ridge and width of the mouse means that your fingers end up stretching out to fit the mouse. Honestly, where the ridge began was where I wanted the mouse to end, so I could grip the side and control the right side of the mouse with both my fourth and fifth fingers right next to each other, as I usually do. Instead, there was no way I was going to fit both fingers on that ridge and still control the mouse well, or comfortably.

I tried a bunch of things here: I tried it normally with the fourth finger in the ridge and the pinky on the side, I tried it with a three-finger claw grip with my pinky on the ridge. I even tried my fourth and fifth finger sitting on the edges of the ridge, which ironically turned out to be the most comfortable despite the fact that two of my fingers were laying on an edged surface. As it turns out, though, this mouse was simply too wide for me. In fact - and here's the big killer - using the mouse caused fatigue after about an hour of use, maybe less. That's when it became apparent - I could not use this mouse.

So, today I went and did a little more Googling on mice. I looked around pretty much most places where I could have a mouse immediately, and pretty much the only thing left in my price range was the XL-760H. I never heard of their manufacturer, A4Tech before, but I figured I'd give them a try. Most of their previous offerings weren't rated poorly at the very least. By the way, here's my own photo, as the picture on A4Tech's site clearly has a custom skin on it, whereas mine does not. Keep that in mind when buying.

The entire body of the XL-760H is... frictionous. The material is coarse, though not uncomfortable, and it's obvious that this design decision was made so that gamers wouldn't find themselves slipping that much on the body.

It has your standard middle click/wheel, and the browser back and forward buttons, and DPI switch button, which is fairly out of the way and not likely to be hit. It also comes with an extra button (designed to exclusively be the programmable button) sandwiched between left click and the mouse wheel, which again requires deliberate effort to click, though this is more easily accessible than the DPI switch. A lot of things about the mouse are programmable, even right click can be remapped from the looks of things, and the bundled config tool can save your settings to the mouse hardware itself - really nice. Even the default six (!) DPI settings that are toggled between when you hit the DPI switch can be configured. If you don't want to cycle between those six settings each time you hit the button, you can configure two of them like I did and leave the rest out.

While all the buttons are all responsive and light, there is but a single exception - middle click. The mouse wheel is, in a word, stubborn, and requires quite a bit of force with your finger to push down. About ten minutes after I started playing with this mouse, I cracked open the box for the config tool, installed it, and immediately programmed the extra button to... middle click. Not any sort of macro or whatever, right now the extra button only serves to clear away the only single point of beef I have with the mouse. Ironic, huh? Maybe it'll loosen up with time, but for the moment, I think I'm perfectly fine with this.

The last couple of things the XL-760 does is first off, this anti-vibrate thing. What it does is make it so the cursor won't wig out or anything if you lift the mouse, and is accomplished by a little button switch on the bottom of the mouse. If it's pressed in, then it figures there's something underneath it and allows input. If gravity allows the button to fall, then movement input is cut. Now, normally I'd be a little worried about this, because the switch can fail, but thankfully that config tool I keep referring to can turn this feature off.

Finally, the last feature I have not seen in action is context sensitive mouse wheeling (vertical or horizontal). By the looks of things, it can sense where in a window you are, and if you're edged up towards the right edge, it will scroll vertically, otherwise horizontally. Yes, you can configure how close you need to be to the edge, and yes, for those of you who are thinking about what a pain this could potentially be... you can turn it off with the config tool.

We'll see how much I end up liking this mouse in the end, but I think I will be perfectly satisfied with it unless the device just dies on me or something. CoolerMaster's Xornet I would only recommend if your hands are wide enough to handle it, since it would've been a great mouse if it weren't for the shape. However, the XL-760H by A4Tech offers a more familiar form factor for the rest of us, does everything the Xornet can with more features, and costs just as much.