Gigabyte XM300
Cheap but not nasty.
As soon as we picked up this mouse, we could tell there wasn’t quite the quality on offer of the more expensive mice. It’s not that it feels shoddily made, it’s just a tad bit light, and there’s not a lot that it can do.
At the heart of this mouse is an optical sensor that offers 50 DPI adjustments; most other mice only handle 100 DPI adjustments. It’s a right-hander, with no capacity to be used by lefties, and there’s not a lot of buttons. The all-plastic design isn’t quite as comfy as some of the other mice, though there is a small strip of rubber on the left side to rest your thumb. Like most of today’s mice, it uses Omrom switches that are rated to handle 20 million clicks, so should keep you going well into retirement. It’s also got the full 20 gazillion colours offered by RGB (16.7 million to be exact).
Gigabyte has designed this mouse for use by all three types of gamers — palm, claw and finger tip. It’s nice to see they’ve put the DPI adjust buttons in the traditional area, next to the scroll wheel, and a series of four LEDs light up to show which DPI mode you’ve selected. Unfortunately, the software isn’t quite as clever as some of the other mice, but at this price, we’re not complaining.
Gigabyte has delivered an affordable gaming mouse that will do the job, but lacks the key features such as adjustability that come with those twice its price.