Advise Gaming Mouse for iMac 27"

[Vortor]

Hi all,

I already spent a few hours browsing the internet in search of a suitable gaming mouse. Most of the threads I checked were several years old, so I decided to create a new one.

I own a 27" Quad-core iMac (v10.6.4) where I play Starcraft 2 (and hopefully Diablo III). The Magic Mouse simply doesn't cut it and my Logitech MX310 stopped working.

I'm having a hard time deciding which mouse to buy. For now, these are the candidates:

- Razer DeathAdder
- Logitech MX 518

The Razer DeathAdder seems a good choice but one comment in the Amazon page left me worried:

This mouse performs very poorly, skips, even with the latest drivers on the Apple computer products with OS version 10.5.xx and above. HIGHLY recommend you skip this product for a while. Razor does not make it easy to contact them. The usually "bet you can't find how to e-mail me...so use my knowledge base" approach.

On the other hand, some users complained that some buttons on Logitech MX518 weren't working properly. And Logitech doesn't offer support for Mac OSX.

At first, this doesn't really bother me because I only use two buttons (previous/next page on the browser).

Ideally, I just want a mouse that I can plug in the USB port and works flawlessly.

With the Logitech MX310 I never needed to install software or update firmware. It truly was plug-and-play. That's what I want.

What are your thoughts? Feel free to advise other gaming mice.

Thanks.

Edit: I'm a leftie by the way but I have no problem buying a right-handed mouse.

 

[TMRaven]

I think the most important thing of all to consider is just how the mouse feels in your hand while gaming. There are plenty of big, bulky ergonomic mice that feel great when doing everyday tasks, but tend to feel-- well, bulky-- when gaming. When I game, I personally like using the tips of my fingers to move the mouse, so I prefer smaller ones. I think the cheap 20 dollar usb optical ones preform the best.

The most recent mouse I bought was the logitech m500. It's a bit on the bulky, ergonomic side, but it works flawlessly without any setup.

 

[sentros]

Hello there Vortor. I've had a lot of different Razer mice on my macs as well as Steelseries Xai. I'm kind of a mouse junkie and thus far I can without a doubt say that the Deathadder Respawn is the best one yet. I too play SC2 on my mac and it's very important to me to have a mouse that is a) accurate b) responsive. I've always preferred playing on Windows side because of Apples poor support and selection for mice and for the fact that there is no way of removing mouse acceleration. Up until I got the Deathadder I would be tempted to boot to my bootcamp partition and blast away but I have to say that this mouse is performing up to my standards on Mac OS X side as well.

The Razer DeathAdder seems a good choice but one comment in the Amazon page left me worried:

There is an explanation for this. I've had the skipping problems on several of my mice and I've pinpointed the problem to the polling rate. For some reason in Mac OS X you cannot have a high polling rate. Now I think this problem is universal to all mice. The reason why you don't hear about this problem on Logitech or some other brand mice is the fact that they do not support higher polling rates than 125Hz (the lowest setting on Razer mice). You can however change the polling rate on the Razer preferences panel (that recently got updated to 3.0.0 version on Mac OS X) thus removing the skipping problem.

I struggled with this problem for a while myself and after lengthy and fruitless e-mail exchange with Razer I got frustrated and had to go googling for hours and finally found some guy that said to try lowering the polling rate. Now back at that time the Razer configuration utility was very unstable on OS X and I actually had to boot to window side to change it and then it would save the configuration on the chip on the mouse. With the new config util you won't have a problem like this tho since now it works very well. A fun fact also is that if you updated the Imperator mouse firmware [that was only available for Windows (like all of them are)] it would stop working with the OS X configuration utility. I had to send Razer a lot of e-mails to get the 1.0 firmware back, because they didn't have it available on their internet site.

Now what does the polling rate have an affect on, you might ask. Well it has to do with how often the mouse sends data to the computer. Back in the day you had to somehow toy around with the USB port channel protocol or something like that to "overclock" the USB to be able to get higher speed polling rates to your mouse even on Windows side. I know this because I've been a mouse addict for a while now. But now days I think you don't have to do stuff like that on Windows. But anyway I think that's the reason higher polling rates work in Windows but not on OS X (OS X doesn't have support for it and thus when it gets more data than it's expecting, you get lot's of problems resulting in skipping).

TL;DR version: Deathadder is the best mouse for OS X if you remember to put polling rate to 125Hz.

 

[sentros]

Also as a side note I prefer IR mice well over Laser ones.

 

[MacAndMic]

Sentros is right on about the polling rate. I have struggled with my Logitech G7 since I bought my iMac as the G7 has a fixed polling rate of 500.

There are a couple of solutions out there that attempt to fix the mouse jumping and button mapping issues but at the end of the day, you cannot adjust the polling rate and it never feels quite right.

I did try the Razer Mamba and it was awesome in windows and windows games but even with setting the polling rate at 125 on my iMac it still just did not feel right though I have to admit it was better than the G7. The maturity of the drivers however is disappointing and leaves much to be desired.

Ironically, more and more games are coming out for Mac which is great but now we are still forced to run windows because of a mouse, ugh! Why can't Apple just allow for an adjustable polling rate!

troutspinner

 

[Vortor]

Thanks for the replies. I just ordered a Logitech MX518.

 

[DustinT]

I'm resurrecting this thread because its a very relevant topic that took me way too long to find. I just installed a Razer Mamba and its a wonderful mouse but it still doesn't have the polling rate issue fixed. So, leave it at 125 and its fine. Crank it up and all sorts of problems come about.

Apple, this is fixed in Lion, right?

 

[xkmxkmxlmx]

I am not a huge gamer (on the Mac anyway), but my friend AND my uncle both swear by the Razer Naga.

 

[trip1ex]

MX 518 is great. I haven't used it in OSX though.

 

[QCassidy352]

I've used the mx518 on os x for years. It's an awesome gaming mouse and awesome in general. I highly recommend it with steermouse for total control of its many buttons.