All about Keyboards & Mice
 Latest Keyboards & Mice articles
All Keyboards & Mice articles

Newsletters


  • Ask your question about IT issues
  • Post

Partners

The Games selection

violent : Interactive Buddy Unwind on your interactive buddy: Do anything you want to him, it will earn you money, and you can buy other stuff to torture him with.
kids : Bob Throw bubbles so as to make the ones that appear in the game disappear. For this, use the Right / Left arrow keys to duck or move about, and the...
Ads

Sponsored links

Searching For The Lost DPI

Previous Next
1:05 PM - 09/12/2005 by Stéphane Kauffmann

On the performance level, it was even worse. Even at low speed the mouse wasn't very precise, about on a level with a standard no-name mouse. And when we increased the resolution, movement became completely erratic. The mouse was uncontrollable. And what about those 2,400 dpi? You have to wonder where that figure comes from. We wanted to know, so we took the mouse apart to have a look at the sensor.

In fact it's a PixArt PAN301A. We checked its specifications on its manufacturer's site. It's a 16x16-pixel sensor operating at 3,000 images per second with a maximum resolution of 800 dpi. Those are standard values for a basic quality mouse. While the specifications are exact and there's no reason to doubt them, the announced resolution is obtained using interpolation, which explains the obvious lack of preciseness. Moreover, looking inside the mouse we learned a few more things.

The focusing lens is not protected by an opaque cover, which implies losses and could explain why the mouse didn't behave very well even at 400 dpi. And the track wheel's floating mount goes a long way toward explaining its lack of preciseness. By now you've gathered that we can't really recommend this mouse, especially since its $40 price is really excessive given the finish and the sensor used. For the same money, go for a Logitech MX 518 without hesitation.

Talkback
Comments are closed on this page.

Sponsored links