FinalMouse 2016 – Classic Ergo

Intro

Today the video game industry alone is worth US $115 billion and the numbers are rising, every year more and more people get involved in gaming and therefore new brands on the markets appear who produce gaming peripherals for e-sport athletes. Marketing researches showed that performance seekers are looking for a new gaming peripheral, with high performance and customizability options. But there is always something that lacks perfection, that’s why it’s really hard to rely purely on one gaming gear while playing multiplayer games. More often people focus on design and customizability options and don’t pay attention to the performance which mice can actually deliver. That’s why I want to show you brand new gaming mouse which is loved by most gamers, and their passion drive me to write this full in-depth review on FinalMouse 2016 - Classic Ergo.

FinalMouse is a hardware company dedicated to building one thing alone and it is the best e-sport gaming mouse. They are not making any other products like mouse pads, keyboard or headphone peripherals just the gaming mouse, which if you think about it is a daring attempt to get into the peripheral industry with only one single product, but I have to say this is a pretty amazing product and I will get into why.

FinalMouse - First Impressions

First thing that you are going to notice, is the simple and elegant design on the packing. No much is written on box just the logo, either inside the box. You only get minimal instructions about DPI settings, which is pretty much the entire instruction manual for this whole mouse. To be honest you don’t need anything beyond that, you just need to know what the DPI switch set your mouse to and you are pretty much ready to start using the mice. It also comes with an industry leading three year warranty, which is really nice considering how many clickers I have gone through in my day. Other than that, Finalmouse 2016 is completely driverless as FinalMouse 2015 and only thing that you are going to need for up and running the system is USB port on your computer. Just That Simple!

FinalMouse - Design and Build Quality

At first sight FinalMouse reminds me Razer Mamba, because it has same curves and even same button layout. On both mice DPI switch is placed beneath the scroll wheel and the primary left and right buttons are slightly moved from the body. The thumb buttons are incredibly well placed, they are a tiny bit stiff for my personal preference, but then again they might be perfect for you. It all really comes down to your own preference. Left and the right click buttons not only have very low resistance, but also very low click distance, which is perfect for accurate clicks. The shape of the mouse is incredibly ergonomic, I would say it is somewhere between a Razer DeathAdder and the ROCCAT Kone Pure, but it’s even managed to shave off some weight compared other gaming mice in this category. FinalMouse Classic Ergo has two thumb buttons which are very ergonomically placed and as a Battlefield gamer, I am definitely going to be taking advantage of those. This mouse has soft-touch coating for the main body, glossy plastic right side and the textured plastic on the left. The DPI switch button which cycles through 400, 800, 1600 and 3200 DPI.

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The bottom part is also really simple, only 4 Teflon feet for smooth tracking and the Pixart 3310 IR sensor. Another great feature is an illumination options on two areas, one is located inside the scroll wheel and other one lights up the logo at the top of the mouse. The logo lighting is kind of annoying, because you can't change the colors or even the brightness, because mice is driverless and you don't have that extra customizability option.

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The FinalMouse has a thin manageable 1.8m fine-braided cable, which is surprisingly light and provides smooth tracking on any table, great for people who don’t have any cable management systems.

FinalMouse - Features and Specifications

In spite of the generic appearance the inside judges do get more interesting, the sensors is actually the acceleration free Flawless Pixart 3310 IR Led Esports Sensor, that can also be found in other well-regarded mice including the SteelSeries Rival and Roccat Kone Pure, but there’s a one big difference. The FinalMouse offer no customizability options, because they have designed the mice genuinely driverless. FinalMouse has put quite a bit of work to perfecting the sensor controller and firmware of this mouse. They have put more power into the design of the circuitry to be as low latency as possible and show settings that their team found to be the most stable and accurate, rather than simply shooting the biggest, most marketable number which is why they went with a 500hz polling rate instead of 1000 and maximum 3200 DPI. Another great feature about 3310 sensor is that it’s got zero acceleration, zero prediction and no angle snapping, with high tracking speeds and pretty darn good lift-off distance. At 74 g they have crafted an incredible light industry leading mouse, which feels less like you are moving an object and more like it’s just part of your hand. The lift-off distance is 1 to 1.5 cd depending on your mouse pad color and while the DPI settings seem limiting its all you really need for most games and more than enough for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, where higher ranked players often stick to DPI zone 400 to 800.

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Mouse tester and in-game tests confirmed that there is no acceleration and it just feels responsive, that is really amazing for such a simple gaming mouse. It’s using Japanese Omron switches and I really like the sensitivity level for left and right click, they hold up for a long time and even if they didn’t hold up you still have that three year warranty. The scroll wheel is bit more stiff and requires slight force to actuate, which is good if you want to avoid accidental click while playing the game.

Finalmouse - User Experience and Performance

From average user point, it’s is a big issue that mouse comes pre tuned and does not require any drivers. At first thought this was going to be a negative aspect to the mouse, because I am used to playing with big name brand mice like Razer or Logitech that come with extensive driver sweets that have tons and tons of functionality from customizing the illumination colour, lift-off distance and etc. however there is always that possibility, that bloated software or drivers can get no way above the performance of the mouse. I was not really sure if this was true or not how much this could actually affect the performance, but I went online and downloaded a few programs and I did a few basically response time test comparing the FinalMouse to my previous mice, which is Logitech G502 and I found some interesting results. Click response time is something you don’t generally hear lot about, when mice are being compared or reviewed, apparently there can be a difference between the milliseconds it takes from left clicking on a mouse, between the time computer actually recognizes that click. I thought it was pretty much identical on all mice but after doing some research online, I found that it can actually be a pretty significant difference up to 37.6 milliseconds in some cases. So after installing some software and running some tests where I was comparing my ROCCAT Kone Pure to FinalMouse in on average settings, I was getting a 37.6 milliseconds faster response time on the FinalMouse compared to ROCCAT Kone Pure which is pretty substantial if you think about it.

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People are willing to pay hundreds of dollars to get monitors that literally shave off a few milliseconds in response time, and here I have managed to improve my response time by about 40 milliseconds simply by switching to a different mouse. This is pretty darn substantial in the bigger picture and especially when it comes to playing competitive game, where every single millisecond counts and if you can get a few up on your opponent, you at the same skill level you are going to win the firefight versus them winning the firefight.

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Now let’s talk about the ergonomics. The Classic Ergo feels like ambidextrous mice with soft rubber coating on the sides, which I found really comfortable. I am also big fan how lightweight mice is, I think you should shave off as much weight as possible to get best out of any mice you own. As I mentioned before the thumb buttons are incredibly well placed, they are a tiny bit stiff for my personal preference, but then again they might be perfect for you. Left and the right click buttons not only have very low resistance, but also very low click distance this allows you to spam fire, all you want with pistols and that is perfect for battlefield and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, which relies heavily on your quick reaction. Also having something like a very lightweight left and right click is really great for accurate shots. In many way it’s similar to pulling the trigger on Firearm, if you have that smooth trigger action it’s not going to make your hand jerk at all before pressing the button, it’s basically gonna allow to press it nice and fluidly and still follow through on your target.

Conclusion

As I have used quite a lot of mice over the past several years testing in different game situations, I found some excellent mice I am truly proud of. Some has been innovative, others have come up with a better grip, better button placement, but none of them have taken all the features that I really like and put them into one single mouse. It’s always been some sort of compromise with me when trying to pick the gaming mice, I feel like the FinalMouse has exact ergonomics which I want from mouse, but it also feels just so much more precise and accurate than any mice I have used before. And now that I know things about click delay, and extremely fast response time when it comes to left and right click, it just kinda makes me like this mouse even more.

So in summary beside the high quality sensor and tournament level performance, there are some disadvantages to. The light is kind of annoyingly bright especially when the computer goes to sleep, mouse still continues to shine which is not good for Professional and Tournament Grade gaming mouse. The reason why this happens is that there is no software driver to control the lighting system, so the light keeps shining until the computer is turned on. The build quality is suspect at times and price seems a bit too high, but the three year warranty is impressive. The retail price for this mouse is around $67 dollars, which certainly puts it in competition with lot of other big name mice out there, but honestly I think this is the superior option. The tracking performance is amazing also it is the lightest mice in the category. So if you want something that simply performs, the FinalMouse might be your final mouse after all this search for perfect gaming mice. Overall it is a pretty minimalistic which is a growing trend in the e-sports arena these days, so if you want to know more about this gaming mouse then you definitely have to buy and try it yourself.