£10 Gaming Mouse vs £70 Gaming Mouse – Worth paying more?
THIS is the Logitech G203. I bought it for just £12.59 and it is possibly the best selling gaming mouse on Amazon. Considering you get a whole, complete, working, and name-branded gaming mouse for that sort of cash, why would you ever want anything else? Well, a whole lot of companies think they know why. Something like THIS, the Endgame Gear OP1 8K, costs over FIVE TIMES AS MUCH as the G203, and yet, for the right person, I’d wholeheartedly recommend this over that. Why? Well let me explain!
The G203 has a lot going for it. It’s pretty well built, it’s a very easy shape to get to grips with – pun intended – and because it’s a name-brand mouse, it’s pretty good to play with too. It’s a pretty flat design, and I’d say pretty medium-sized. It fits my larger hands fine, and should fit smaller hands just as well, if not better. You get two buttons on the side, obviously left and right click, a nice rubber scroll wheel, and a DPI button to cycle through DPI levels depending on what sort of sensitivity you might like. The sensor here isn’t the Mercury sensor you might be familiar with, it’s actually marked as 1855, with up to 8,000 DPI in sensitivity, and polling rates of 125, 250, 500 and 1000 hertz available. I did take a peek inside and found it uses an STM32F as its microcontroller of choice – a surprisingly decent chip for such a cheap mouse. You’ve got OMRON main switches and Kailh switches for the DPI and side buttons. You even get some RGB LEDs for a rather nice effect along the back – not that you’ll see it, being under your hand and all! Lastly, you can control everything with Logitech’s software, including changing the DPI steps, button mappings, and RGB settings.
That all sounds pretty good, so what’s the catch? Well, nothing here is exactly ‘top notch’. The sensor, while perfectly adequate, isn’t amazing. Playing with it I definitely felt it was a little off compared to the higher end stuff I’m used to. I think the best way to describe it is that a really good gaming mouse quickly feels like an extension of yourself. It feels like there is a very direct connection from your arm to the mouse cursor on screen, and any movements you make physically are nicely tied to what your character does in game. When playing with this mouse, that connection felt a little off. A little inconsistent, maybe. It’s perfectly adequate, but it definitely could be better. That also goes for the build quality – the side buttons are a great example here. Look at the flex inside the switch PCB has in here. Now again this isn’t a deal-breaker type problem, but it isn’t perfect (not that you’d expect perfection at this price).
Compare that to the OP1 8K, and you’ll find truly premium, well, everything. The shell is a lot nicer to hold – the plastic is a nicer feel, and this one even comes with optional rubber side grips if you want – and more importantly, it’s lighter. This comes in at around 50g, versus 84g for the G203. That’s 41% lighter, or put it the other way, the G203 is 83% heavier. That makes a difference in quick reactions, accuracy and stamina. Less weight means less strain on your wrists, less mass to accelerate, and less mass to stop. Now is this the difference between you being a noob and a pro? Hell no – but it’s an undeniable factor. Another factor is that the sensor here, a PixArt PAW3395, is undeniably better. DPI range doesn’t really matter – what does is the accuracy, the maximum speed it can keep tracking, the lack of acceleration, and even things like consistency with the lift-off distance. All that makes a big difference to how this feels to use, and how easy it is to be consistently good with it.
There’s also a special feature literally in the name – “8K” – as in, an 8,000 hertz polling rate. That is – you guessed it – eight times higher than the G203, and there are a few advantages there too. First is the tracking. Polling eight times faster means your system gets updates on where your mouse has moved to eight times faster. That means when your game actually refreshes, it gets the most up to date position. You also get much, much faster click latency – as in how long it takes from you clicking to that event being registered by your system. The G203 is surprisingly pretty good for this – one of the benefits of buying a name-brand mouse over the endless supply of e-waste on Amazon – where it took an average of 2.8 milliseconds from physically clicking to the system registering the mouse down event. By comparison, the OP1 8K took an average of 0.023 milliseconds. Ok, technically that isn’t right. See when testing with my very own open source latency testing tool – which you can buy a unit from me over at OSRTT.com if you’re interested – when using the microphone to listen for the sound of the mouse click, the OP1 8K actually sends that click to the system faster than it takes for you to bottom out the mouse button itself, so these results effectively read as 0. In reality it’s more like 0.125 to 0.25 milliseconds, but that is still 10x faster than the G203.
That means the OP1 8K is a frankly incredible gaming experience. Playing with it was a night and day difference compared to the G203. It felt like a legit bit of pro gear, with perfectly smooth and responsive tracking, instant clicks and just a perfect connection between me and where the in-game gun was pointing. Its shape makes it remarkably comfortable, and the light weight makes it really easy to play for long sessions and still snap to heads with no problems – skill permitting anyway.
It’s also worth noting that as you go higher in price, you tend to get more features thrown at you. If I’m honest, most of those features aren’t worth jack, but some are pretty handy. The OP1 8K actually comes with three different click modes, Off, SPDT Safe and SPDT Speed – that changes how the microcontroller onboard handles click events. I’d recommend Safe or Speed personally here. Other mice might be wireless instead of wired – some are almost as light even with a battery! Some are ambidextrous, some have more buttons for different genres, and hell some just come with extra stuff. Some have moveable weights – something I’ve never quite understood – or like this OP1 8K, you actually get a different set of PTFE glide pads. The set that comes on the mouse is pretty minimal, which actually worked pretty well for me, but if you’d rather have more surface area covered, you get this set included in the box. Hell, Endgame will sell you different left and right click switches to match whatever feel you prefer. With the G203, you get what you get.
In the end, what works best for you is dependent on your situation and preferences. If you are just starting out and don’t have much cash to spare, the G203 is an excellent choice. It games well, fits more hand sizes fairly well, and for that sort of price it is really hard to beat. But, if you are a bit more seasoned, you have more cash to spare, and are looking for a mouse that gets out your way as much as possible, something like the OP1 8K is a perfect choice. The more competitive you play, the more having a good mouse matters – and conversely if you are just getting something so your kid can bumble around minecraft, why waste the cash on something they won’t make use of? Hopefully this rundown has been a useful point of comparison – and I’d love to hear what mouse you’re rocking in the comments down below, and what made you go for it!
