What is the best gaming mouse? Well that depends very much on your needs, but buying a top quality gaming PC rodent can revolutionise how it feels to interact with your favorite games. A high-quality mouse with the features you need can make the difference between winning or losing in your favorite competitive games or allow you to interact with your PC more effortlessly, all while possibly reducing strain on your hands and wrist.
For many, a generally lower cost wired gaming mouse will do the job, but the freedom of a wireless gaming mouse isn’t to be underestimated. We’ve got a wide range of both types in this guide, or you can head over to our best wireless gaming mouse guide to focus in on just on those options? Meanwhile, on this list we’ve also got a selection of ultra lightweight choices for competitive gamers as well as options focused more on extra features and a relaxed feel. These are our tried and tested picks for the best gaming mouse.
Even an amazing mouse can let you down without the right mouse pad, though, so check out our guide to the best mouse pad for a full suite of recommendations.
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Best gaming mouse in 2025:
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How to choose the best gaming mouse
A lot goes into picking the best gaming mouse for your needs. Price is of course a huge factor, with many of the top gaming mice demanding upwards of $150, but you can spend far less and still get great results. We’d advise staying over $30, as mice much below this do start to compromise quite heavily on build quality and performance.
Another crucial question is do you want a wired or wireless mouse? Most wireless mice can be used with a wire too but others are exclusively one or the other. With a wired connection, you’ll typically get the lowest possible latency, an uninterrupted connectivity, and a lower price. Modern wireless options, though, can offer equally good performance, long battery life, surprisingly low weight, and of course the versatility of wireless, including that some wireless mice offer Bluetooth connections too.
The number of buttons and overall features of a mouse should be next on your list. Some mice focus on stripped back performance, with ultra low weights, few buttons, and high-end switches and sensor specs. These are our top choice for playing competitive games where high precision is your top priority – they’re great for fingertip grip.
On the other end of the spectrum are mice like the Logitech G502 X Plus. These still offer great sensors and switches but also include loads of extra buttons and other features. The downside to these mice is all the extras can get in the way in the heat of battle, plus they tend to add weight. They’re great options for a single mouse to flip between everyday working and more casual gaming, though, and tend to favor a more relaxed palm grip.
Finally, we come to the ergonomics and shape of a mouse. For those seeking an agile, lightweight mouse for competitive gaming, smaller, slimmer, simpler symmetrical designs tend to be the best choice, with most optimized for a fingertip grip, though many can lend their hand to a range of grip styles. Some take this specialization to extremes, such as with the Cherry Xtrfy MZ1 that’s only useable with a fingertip grip.
For a more relaxed or palm grip style, you’ll generally want a larger mouse with an ergonomic shape that allows your wrist to sit in a more natural position, such as with the Razer Deathadder V3.
Design is of course also a factor, with the sleek styling of Razer mice often making them many gamer’s favorites. But, there are plenty of shapes, RGB designs, and color options for all manner of mice, so you can fir your rodent in with your gaming PC color scheme.
We’ve listed the maximum DPI (dots per inch) in this guide, as it is something of a useful indicator of how advanced a mouse’s sensor is at tracking movement quickly and precisely. The higher the DPI, the better-performance the mouse, generally. However, ultra high DPI settings are completely useless to actually use – moving 1mm can cause you to spin 360° or more – and most reasonable quality gaming mice have essentially flawless tracking these days anyway. As such, it’s relatively low on our list of priorities for how to choose a gaming mouse.
Frequently asked questions
What are palm, claw, and fingertip mouse grips?
Gaming mice are much like the shoes you wear in that there’s no real one-size-fits-all. You’ll want to pay attention to how you move your rodent around your mouse pad before you choose the right one for you. Here are the three main grip styles:
- Palm grip: your palm sits on the back of the mouse. This is the least fatiguing for your hand but it’s not quite as versatile or precise as other grips, relying more on full arm movements for precision.
- Fingertip grip: you use your fingers to control the mouse movements, typically gripping the sides of the mouse with your thumb and little finger (or sometimes little finger and ring finger) without the aid of your palm. Your wrist then rests on your choice of best gaming desk behind the mouse. This tends to be the most precise but can be more fatiguing and RSI-inducing for your wrist and fingers.
- Claw grip: a combination of the previous two, this style is where you rest the base of your palm on the back of the mouse but unlike a palm grip you bend your fingers upwards in a claw shape to hit the buttons and help move the mouse. This can allow for better precision than palm grip and better access to the sometimes many buttons on a mouse than fingertrip grip but is even more fatiguing.
Wired vs. wireless gaming mouse
This debate has existed since the first wireless gaming mice arrived on the scene, with early wireless options clearly still having a delayed response compared to wired options. However, modern, quality wireless gaming mice no longer have the latency issues they used to, so you can buy a wireless mouse with confidence, knowing if won’t be affecting your aim.
Gaming mice that also include Bluetooth are becoming more common too, and switching to this connection generally makes your battery last significantly longer, and opens up the option of easily using your mouse with a wider range of devices. However, Bluetooth comes with a noticeable amount of lag, which isn’t so bad when you’re working but can mean the difference between a win and a loss in FPS games.
What DPI is good for gaming?
That depends on what type of game you’re playing, the desk/mouse pad space you have to work with, and the in-game sensitivity you’ve chosen.
In terms of game type, if you’re playing an FPS where precise aim is crucial, you’re going to struggle to be accurate enough playing at anything about 400-800DPI – that’s the range we’d recommend for games such as CS2 and Valorant. For slightly faster-paced titles where aim and accuracy are still important, but so is being able to spin round and move quickly, you might want to go as high as 1,200-1,600DPI, though your aim will generally suffer. Other genres where you need to flick your mouse across the whole screen really quickly, such as in real time strategies, you might want to play a little higher than this.
As for how desk space factors into the equation, quite simply, if you only have a tiny amount of space to work with, you may need to up your DPI in order to move quickly enough in-game. Pro FPS gamers will often have huge mouse mats and desk areas to enable them to spin round 180° with one long arm movement while still maintaining a low DPI and high accuracy for fining aiming.
Finally, DPI always works in conjunction with your game and Windows mouse sensitivity. You should always set Windows sensitivity to 10 so that it doesn’t affect your mouse’s raw DPI input and always turn off “enhance pointer precision.” Then, in game, you should generally start with the game’s sensitivity set to 1 or lower, so that the game is only ever taking the raw input of your mouse or reducing it, never multiplying it. If it’s multiplying it, you’re losing accuracy – up your DPI instead.
Which mouse do pro gamers use?
Manufacturers like Logitech, Razer, and SteelSeries often sponsor pro gamers. However, most pro gamers are allowed to choose whatever mouse they like. For many years, BenQ Zowie was the go-to choice for pros, thanks to having superb raw performance and great shape options. However, many mice now offer equally great performance.
In general, though, for most esports types of games – FPS and RTS – the mantra is the lighter a mouse is, the better, as it allows for swifter arm movements with higher precision and minimal fatigue. Only as many buttons as are absolutely needed is important too, which is why many high-end, performance-oriented mice only have five or size buttons these days.
For more ways to optimize your gaming setup, why not check out our guides to the best gaming keyboard and the best mouse pad or get yourself an audio upgrade via our best gaming headset guide.
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