The best gaming mice

Every PC gamer owns a mouse, but not every PC gamer owns a mouse that’s ideally suited to gaming. Gaming mice differ in some key ways from the average wireless Logitech mouse: they’re often lower latency, come with better software for custom tweaking, support higher CPI settings, and use sensors that can keep up with faster movements. Most importantly, the best gaming mice will perfectly translate hand movements into cursor movements without wrecking your aim with issues like acceleration, angle snapping, or jitter (more on what those mean below).
If you play any games more intense than Solitaire, you should be doing it with a gaming mouse. But which gaming mouse?
Based on my own research, hands-on testing, gaming with a couple dozen gaming mice, and talking to professional gamers, the  Razer Deathadder 2013 is the best gaming mouse. It uses an accurate 6400 CPI optical sensor and has a body shape no other gaming mouse has matched. It’s fantastic for both palm and claw grips, has two perfectly positioned buttons on its left side, a matte plastic surface that keeps hand sweat at a minimum, and grippy rubber pads on the left and right sides that help with mouse control.
The Deathadder 2013 isn’t the lightest gaming mouse around, but it is still pretty light at 105 grams, and that’s important. It helps the mouse glide well and allows you to make quick, precise movements without slinging around extra weight. The Deathadder typically sells for about $50 on Amazon, cheaper than most other gaming mice, which makes it a great buy.
Of course, gaming mice aren’t like processors or graphics cards—performance and price aren’t everything. It’s important for a gaming mice to perform well, but it’s just as important for it to fit your hand, to be comfortable and right for your grip and the way you play games. While the experts I’ve talked to believe that lighter, simpler gaming mice are better than heavier, more complicated ones, the same mouse isn’t going to work well for everyone. With that in mind, I also have recommendations for gamers who want an ambidextrous mouse, gamers who want a smaller mouse suited to a smaller hand, and gamers who want to spend a bit more money for the best mouse sensor currently available.

Logitech G502 Proteus Core disassembled. Photo credit: Overclock.net user blackmesatech

Testing gaming mice

I’ve used enough gaming mice to have a good feel for build quality, button placement, and shape. My opinions on those aspects of mouse design are naturally subjective, but they’re also well-informed. The tricky part of testing gaming mice is analyzing the other part of the equation: tracking performance, jitter, angle snapping, acceleration, and perfect control speed, and determining how each of those issues affect the experience of using a mouse.
What do all those terms mean? If you’re deeply interested in the intricacies of gaming mice, you can read this amazingly thorough guide on Overclock.net. But here are some basic definitions that will help you understand why each of these terms are important issues.
Grip refers to how you hold the mouse. The most common grips are palm, claw, and fingertip. Here's a good example of how each grip works.
CPI stands for counts per inch, or how many times the mouse sensor will read its tracking surface, aka your mousepad, for every inch it’s moved. This is commonly referred to as DPI, but CPI is a more accurate term. The lower the CPI, the further you have to move the mouse to move the cursor on screen.
Jitter refers to an inaccuracy in a mouse sensor reading the surface it’s tracking. Jitter often occurs at higher mouse movement speeds or higher CPIs. Jitter can make your cursor jump erratically, and even slight jitter could wreck a shot in an FPS or make you misclick on a unit in an RTS.
Angle snapping, also called prediction, takes data from a mouse sensor and modifies the output with the goal of creating smoother movements. For example, if you try to draw a horizontal line with your mouse, it won’t be perfect—you’ll make some subtle curves in the line, especially at higher sensitivities. Angle snapping smooths out those curves and gives you a straight line instead. This is generally bad because it means your cursor movements won’t match your hand’s movements 1:1, and angle snapping isn’t going to be useful in most games. Thankfully, almost all gaming mice have angle snapping disabled by default.
Acceleration is probably the most reviled, most scrutinized issue with gaming mouse sensors. When a mouse sensor exhibits acceleration, that means that your cursor will move faster the faster you move the mouse; this is often considered bad, because it means moving the mouse slowly six inches across a mousepad will move the cursor a different distance than moving the mouse rapidly the same distance. This introduces variability that can be hard to predict.
Perfect control speed, or malfunction rate, refers to the speed at which the mouse can be moved while still tracking accurately. Most gaming mice will track extremely accurately when moved at slow speeds, but low CPI players will often move their mice large distances across the mousepads at very high speeds. At high speeds, and especially at high CPIs, not all mouse sensors are able to retain their tracking accuracy. The point at which the sensors stops tracking accurately will differ between CPI levels.

Lift-off distance is still a popular metric in mouse enthusiast circles, though it's not one that affects most gamers. LOD refers to the height a mouse has to be raised before the sensor stops tracking its surface. Some gamers prefer a mouse with a very low lift-off distance because they play at a very low sensitivity, and often have to lift their mouse off the pad to "reset" it in a position where they can continue swiping. With a low LOD, the cursor isn't going to be moved erratically when the mouse is lifted up.
I used a piece of software called MouseTester to see if I could spot any glaring issues with the mice I used. In every gaming mouse I tested, though, angle snapping and acceleration were disabled in the mouse drivers by default (though a mouse can still exhibit acceleration that comes from issues with the sensor itself) and I never encountered any glaring performance issues.
Like in audiophile circles, there’s a small group of people who can notice and care deeply about the most minute differences in mouse sensors. But for most gamers, including myself, the differences are hard to pick up on in everyday gaming. I’m more concerned with the design of the mouse, the placement and quality of its buttons and its driver software, as long as jitter and acceleration don’t crop up in my FPS and MOBA matches.