Hey GB, I made a couple of purchases lately that I've been enjoying so I figured I'd tell you about them!

You may have heard some of my grousing about Logitech mice on the last UPFs. I don't hate them or anything; I've just always felt them to be a bit slight in build and I've never liked the placement of the side buttons. I was always an Intellimouse Explorer person, then shifted to Razer Deathadders, and recently flipped over to the Steelseries Senseis for my last few gaming mice. I splurged a bit a couple of years ago on a Sensei 700, which was well over 100 bucks at the time and had some real dumb inclusions like an LCD screen that you basically could never see during gameplay, but was a solid-ass mouse for the time that I've had it. Unfortunately it comes with two cords with different lengths and the proprietary connector on the bottom of the mouse (it might be USB-micro but it had a weird situation with pegs that locked into the mouse to keep it in place) started to screw up requiring me to fiddle with the cable a bunch to get it to resume working after the computer went to sleep.

So I started hunting around for a new mouse and decided that NOW was the time to invest in a cordless mouse. I've always had a bit of an aversion to wireless accessories, just because I'm super sensitive to lag and have had some bad experiences with wireless stuff in the past, but my desk at home is such a mess that it felt like time to experiment a bit. So even though I was a bit mad about the 700 fucking up in less than two years, I still really like the Sensei's handfeel or whatever you call it, so I decided to go back to the well and get one of their 650 wireless mouses.

I think it's pretty dope! I haven't used a wireless gaming mouse in a long time, but I dig the form factor as I have with all the other Steelseries stuff that I've bought. (I also really recommend their QcK thin mousepads; they're cheap and a good size for a crowded desktop). I usually use my mouse with my fingers on the right and left buttons, shifting the middle finger over to the scrollwheel only when I use it, so I like a nice broad mouse that I can rest my hand on when I'm scrolling. So far this fits the bill; it's real comfortable to use.

I also kind of dig the third side button, which is placed pretty forward on the side of the mouse. It's not super convenient to hit if you're going to use it for something game-critical (most games I usually use the side mouse buttons for melee/grenade, or autorun in MMOs), but with the macro editor I just threw a quick Alt-F4 macro on there for closing stuff down quick. I used to have this macroed up on my old keyboard, but the DAS keyboard I'm running doesn't have a macro button bar, so it's good to have it back. Also it's got a weight system hidden behind a couple of magnetically-held side panels, which is kind of neat. I've never been a big fooler-around-er with weights in mice, but I did insert a couple of the weights closer to the front of the mouse, leaving the back two slots empty, which made the whole thing feel a bit snappier when aiming in shooters. Neat!

I think my big complaint here is the lack of a dock; I've always liked the look of mice you could just drop in a charging dock at the end of the day and let the thing charge overnight. The 650 has a micro-USB port on the front of it, so you do have to track down the cable and plug it in for it to charge, but it works fine in wired mode too, and they claim that 15 minutes of charging will get you ten hours of use, so that's nice.

So far I really like it, so if you're in the mood for a new mouse, maybe give it a whirl?

Just so this doesn't all read like some Steelseries ad (I ain't getting paid), I should also mention that I bought a new mouse for my laptop at work. I usually have defaulted to wireless mice at work only because I move my laptop around a bunch, but I've been sitting at my desk more lately, and the cheap-ass mice that I usually use seem to be having trouble connecting when my bluetooth headphones are on, so I figured I'd get something wired to use while I'm actually sitting at my desk. Apparently Anker just put out a dirt-cheap gaming mouse just called the Anker Gaming Mouse. It seems pretty decent for the price! One of the weird default things is that the DPI switcher goes through five separate DPI settings instead of the normal two, so if you hit it by accident it can take some clicking to get it back to where you want it. I can probably change that in the drivers but I haven't bothered to install those yet. But for 15 bucks or whatever, it's a perfectly usable mouse that might be a good option if you're tired of whatever you're using now.

Enjoy your mice! Thanks for reading!