Review of the Gigabyte M6980X Gaming Mouse

[Killervolt]

After owning this mouse for a bit more than a year, I decided to do a review on it. Gigabyte as a company selling gaming peripherals are often overshadowed by larger companies such as Razer, Steelseries, corsair, etc. This mouse is relatively cheap- I bought mine for about $25 US, but on newegg it's listed as $40 . . . Not sure why. In any case, it's cheaper than most other gaming mice out there.

Ergonomics:

This mouse is designed for right-handed users and fits comfortably in my hand. I use a palm grip and have long-ish fingers- around 19cm (or 7.5 inches) from wrist to fingertip. This mouse can be used with both palm and claw grips. The top of the mouse is made of rubber, which gigabyte advertises is anti-slick, and I have to say that they are true to their word. I've never had an issue with slippery hands, even when my hand is covered with sweat. The thumb buttons are large, but the forward thumb button is more accessible than the rear. To reach the rear buttom, my thumb needs to bend in an unnatural position, but I understand their logic, as my thumb normally rests on the forward button, allowing me to quickly hit it in games.

Features

This mouse comes with a 1.8m gold-plated cable. It boasts a 6000DPI laser sensor, but that's just a ridiculous advertising strategy. It comes with a 4-way scroll wheel that you can tilt, but unfortunately you cannot bind controls to the tilt wheels. It features 3 DPI settings that can be changed on the fly, thanks to the dpi button in the middle of the mouse. Unfortunately, it is hard to reach without looking down, which could be a hassle if you use different sensitivities in one game. It is also rather close to the "personalization" switch, which allows you to choose between three LED colours- Blue, Red or Green. The onboard memory also allows you to have 3 macro profiles if you're into that kind of thing. As with all good gaming mice, it has a 1000hz polling rate. Full stats can be found here: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4136#ov

General gaming use

Unfortunately I don't have anything to test this against, so here are my opinions on performance. The bottom of the mouse is very smooth, and tracks very well on my Razer Goliathus. The click is smooth and responsive and I don't really notice any delays with this mouse, even though I use a 5ms IPS panel. Actually, now I mention it, once or twice in CSGO I swear that I clicked the trigger just before I get killed . . . But maybe that's my bad internet or sluggish responses. The mouse is quite heavy, and requires some effort to lift up, which could be a problem if you play at a low DPI.

Software

I found the Ghost software not as good as the rest of the mouse, and in particular the DPI settings. Since this is the only gaming mouse I own, I'm not sure if this is standard for all mice, but I found this quite annoying. The slider for adjusting DPI does not allow you to enter a manual DPI, there are only a couple of settings for DPI. e.g, the closest to 600DPI is 620DPI. Everything else in the software is pretty good.

Conclusion

This is a good mouse for the price, especially if you can get it cheap (that just contradicts what I just said but ok). If you you have a small mousepad or play at extremely low sensitivities, you might have some issues with the weight. The thumb buttons could be placed somewhere more accessible and it won't suit your colour scheme if your build isn't blue, red or green. The DPI settings in the drivers are annoying and the customization and DPI buttons are hard to tell apart without looking down. This mouse suits most size hands with support for both claw and palm grips. Overall it is a good mouse and I would recommend it to casual gamers on a budget. Rating:4/5