It’s been a long time since I bought a really decent mouse. The last one was a Logitech, can’t remember the model number as it was so long ago but I do remember it lasting well as well as being lovely to use. Ever since I have been buying on a budget, so a modern quality mouse was something I was eager to try.
I thought the mouse was well presented in the box, though my son didn’t like the soft foam or all black interior. I don’t know if that is because he is 16 or a Razer owner, but apparently he’s a tough audience. Ignoring the instructions I unpacked it and plugged it in.
I’m going to be in a minority here, I have an old USB keyboard with a integral USB hub as that was all the rage a couple of decades ago when the keyboard was purchased. I rather like having mouse and keyboard hanging off one USB connector so it’s a feature I use, but in this case for some reason it wasn’t compatible with this mouse. With a shrug, I re-plugged it into the USB3 hub in the monitor and it worked.
That leads me to the second way in which I am a minority audience. My main operating system is Fedora Linux. That’s what I work in, and even play a few games in, and that’s what I was running. If the mouse needed any special drivers to work then I was almost certainly sunk, but it worked just fine for everyday office and programming tasks. So first hurdle for Linux usage passed with flying colours. To be exact, slowly changing colours as that is the default LED pattern.
So here it is, on my really worn out optical mouse pad. The now retired Gigabyte mouse just behind, with a tube of glue that was awesome for sticking the rubber pad back on the side
Second hurdle coming up, I wondered if I could tie the LED colouring to my CPU load so it went from a light green to an angry red when I started a build job. I didn’t find any official software for Linux, but there is an open source effort on github. It only took a few minutes to grab the package and give it a try, but sadly it looks like this mouse is just too new so it wasn’t recognised. There is a Sensei 310 mouse listed, but “lsusb” in a console showed my mouse has a different ID. From a quick browse at the source I could see that even if I tried hacking it up I wasn’t going to get the LED control I wanted. Oh well, it was a stretch goal so not too disappointed. Support may get added in the future, or I could have a go myself if I am ever that bothered.
Enough of work, rebooting into Windows to get a better selection of games I continued to ignore the official drivers and fired up my recent time sink: Might and Magic Legacy. That’s a funny turn based playing style, but there is still a lot of clicking and dragging and I was close to the end so I finished the game with the new mouse. Worked like a charm.
With Might and Magic done I figured it would be a good time to try installing the mouse software. There is a link printed on page one of the manual, it installed easily onto Windows 10 and I had a few minutes playing with LEDs and sensor settings. The sensor can go from horribly slow to hyperactive. You can choose two speeds and use the little button on top to switch between. I figured the company had got this set up rather well as standard, so I put that back to default.
I felt it was now time to throw something properly frantic at it. Doom! I had a great time clearing a couple of levels and the mouse performed flawlessly. Going back to my old mouse for a bit, it felt a heavy compared to the Sensei but the thing that surprised me was the Gigabyte felt like it had a mouse cable made of 30 amp ring main compared to the way more flexible Steelseries. There is only half a millimetre difference in cable diameter, but all the world in feel.
RGB haters will be pleased to hear that if you use the Windows software to turn the LEDs off then the mouse remembers and they stay off across power cycles, booting into other operating systems like Linux etc.
So here it is, installed on my desk alongside a cup of tea and the old mouse gone. My overall impression: good button action, nicely weighted, cable is good quality, sensor has yet to miss a beat. The buttons for left handed users are a bit in the way, but the only times I pressed one it was distracting but didn’t trigger anything in game that was disastrous. Really nice bit of kit, the only flaw for me is I would prefer right handed only and they do make that option. I think my lesson is learnt though, I shall stay off the cheap mice in future.