Best mouse: Get speed, comfort and precision for all your computer activities | Expert Reviews UK

The other key issues are connectivity and sensitivity or resolution. Going for a wireless mouse means less cable clutter, which is useful if you’re using it with a laptop that you might be using at home, in the office and elsewhere. Some connect via Bluetooth while others connect via a plug-in USB dongle, which might be essential if you’re using a desktop PC, as many still ship without Bluetooth built-in.

Wired mice are generally less popular these days, but they still have some big advantages. You don’t need to worry about batteries or charging the mouse, and wired mice just work on nearly every PC or laptop, which can’t always be said about wireless mice. Wired mice are also often slightly cheaper, and there’s barely any delay between you moving the mouse or clicking a button and that being registered with your PC. Even in the worst-case scenarios, we’re talking milliseconds with a wireless mouse, but that can be enough to mean the difference between victory and defeat in online games.

What sensitivity or resolution do I need?

The sensitivity or resolution of a mouse is expressed in dots per inch (dpi), meaning the number of individual points within an inch of movement that the mouse is able to pick up. Modern mice tend to start at 800dpi and go up to an average 1,200 to 1,600dpi, with gaming and high-end productivity mice taking that further to 4,000 or even 8,000dpi. Take the numbers with a pinch of salt; a 4,000dpi mouse isn’t necessarily any better than a 1,600dpi rodent and, for many of us, such a mouse would actually be too sensitive if used at full resolution.

Most people have the sensitivity dialled down – the high resolution just makes movement smoother and more accurate. Even professional gamers often won’t have the sensitivity maxed out; it’s just there if they need it for activities where pixel-perfect precision matters.

Is there anything else worth looking out for?

It’s worth thinking about battery life with wireless mice or about features that allow you to use the same mouse on several PCs, tablets or laptops and switch between them with a button press. What’s more, mice of all kinds can benefit from extra buttons or wheels that give them extra programmable functions for, say, zooming the view in and out in design applications or skipping backwards and forwards in your Web browser.

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