Microsoft Sidewinder Gaming Mouse

A good gaming mouse goes a long way in winning your online gaming battles! Microsoft has been making very good keyboards and mice for quite some time now and they are giving serious competition to Logitech,Razer and other brands who have loads of experience behind their back in this industry.Sidewinder Gaming Mouse packs in a lot of features to become an instant hit with gamers.

Microsoft Sidewinder Gaming Mouse specifications:

• Dimensions: 3″ x 5.1″ (w x d)
• Connectivity: USB
• Laser based movement detection
• Resolution: 2000 dpi
• LCD screen
• Custom resolution
• Approximate price: 80$

LCD have not even made way to all gaming keyboards and for Microsoft has already integrated one on a gaming mouse.The mouse connects via a USB 2.0 port.The weight of the mouse can be controlled via the 4 weights which include one 5 gram and three 10 gram weights which are stored in a separate box provided with the mouse.The box also acts as a cable anchor so that you don’t have to meddle around with extra cable length.

The design of the mouse is a bit peculiar but that adds a lot of ergonomics into the mouse.The extended right side of the mouse offers support for extra digit.Buttons have been placed strategically which makes them easily accessible.The thumb buttons are a bit of a let down though.Otherwise the mouse offers great feel.

The sensitivity of the mouse can be set from 200 dpi upto 2000dpi using the bundled Microsoft’s Intellipoint software.Coming to the feet of the mouse, Microsoft has done a great job by offering a set of three different sets of feet to give you complete control over the movement of the mouse. The three different sets have different surfaces and offer different glide on different types of surfaces you use the mouse on.

The mouse has a total of 10 buttons  of which 5 are programmable buttons.The other five include the two main buttons,scroll button and the two side thumb buttons.There is also a Quick Launch button which takes you to games explorer in Windows Vista so that you can easily access games on your PC. The macro button helps you change various commands on the fly when into a game.

The built-in LCD is still in premature stages and hence does not offer much functionality.The LCD displays the current mouse resolution and has also prompts which hands out steps involved in making a macro which although can be found in the manual itself. The LCD has a lot of room for improvement and in future versions we can hope to see it performing more useful tasks.

Pros:

• Loads of customisation options
• LCD screen
• Great ergonomics
• Good software bundle
• Box which acts as cable anchor
• Complete control on resolution

Cons:

• Premature LCD
• Bit expensive
• Rigid design

Final Thoughts

The Microsoft Sidewinder Gaming Mouse offers you every feature you can think of in a mouse.It has loads of customisation options available on both hardware and software front.The cons are not of negligible concern.Microsoft has put a lot of thought into making this mouse and it clearly shows in the final result.This mouse gets a thumbs up from me!

Rating: 4/5