8 best wireless and wired mouse models for all your devices
Choosing the best mouse is easily as much of a minefield as choosing the best keyboard – more so, probably, as the population of pointing devices on the market seems to increase at the same rate as their small, furry namesakes.
Happen upon one that suits you, however, and it’s nothing short of revolutionary. Computer use becomes so much easier, as if a barrier has come crashing down. The mouse pointer on the screen becomes an extension of your arm instead of a hard-to-fathom abstraction. Whether you’re selecting paragraphs of text for editing, creating a digital painting, touching up photos, scoring headshot after headshot in Halo, or just choosing what to watch next in a streaming TV marathon, having the right mouse just makes things better.
Since its inception in the Sixities, the mouse has been a simple enough thing. A ball, a plastic body, some sort of electronics to capture the movement, some buttons and a cable. This all changed in 1991 with the Logitech mouseman cordless, which did away with the cable, and after that, all bets were off. Microsoft introduced the optical mouse in 1999, and since then we’ve seen the humble pointing device evolve in all sorts of ways.
They now boast lasers, RGB lighting, adjustable weights, scroll wheels, more buttons than you have fingers, and even come in ambidextrous and ergonomic forms. In truth, there is no best mouse, but there are excellent candidates for particular use categories. Here are some of them.
How we tested
Put simply, we used each mouse for a variety of tasks, from office work to photo editing to a few games, putting them through their paces with a workload that tried to simulate how most people use their PCs.
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The best mice for 2021 are:
Best overall – Logitech MX master 3: £69.80, Amazon.co.uk
Best gaming mouse – Corsair M65 RGB ultra wireless: £109.99, Corsair.com
Best wireless mouse – Razer pro click: £77, Amazon.co.uk
Best iPad mouse – Satechi aluminum M1: £35.12, Satechi.net
Best vertical mouse – Anker vertical ergonomic: £22.99, Amazon.co.uk
Best trackball – Logitech ergo M575: £44.99, Logitech.com
Best ambidextrous mouse – Razer viper 8K: £50.99, Amazon.co.uk
Best ergonomic mouse – Microsoft Bluetooth ergonomic mouse: £25, Amazon.co.uk
Logitech MX master 3
Best: Overall
Rating: 9/10
DPI: Up to 4,000
Interface: Bluetooth/2.4GHz
Buttons: 7
Right or left handed: Right
Features: Rehargable
Weight: 140G
The price of the master 3 may cause prospective purchasers to consider buying something cheaper, but trust us: this is the absolute tops for doing anything with a computer that’s not shooting machine guns or flying spaceships. And it’s not bad at those either. With eight buttons within easy reach, and the ability to tune their uses depending on which application you’re using via the reliable options software (Photoshop and Office are supported, though annoyingly not Lightroom), the master 3 is a noteworthy refinement of a line of mice that’s been going since 2015.
The master 3 keeps the same general humped shape and button positions that have been the mouse’s hallmarks since the first version, but coats the entire thing in a rubberised finish for better grip. The metal scroll wheel and side roller have been updated, and the hump is, if anything, now higher under your palm. It’s very comfortable to use. Moving the side buttons below the side roller – they’ve been beside it in previous versions – makes them even easier to find by touch alone, and the unit has lost a bit of weight for this iteration too, now at around 140g.
Charging masters in the past was a case of guessing which way the micro USB cable went in, but the master 3 finally gets an upgrade to USB-C, which doesn’t mind which way up it is. Connectivity comes via Bluetooth or a USB 2.4GHz dongle, and the Logitech flow software does clever things if you have multiple computers – you can move the pointer between machines, even across PCs and Macs, and copy and paste files too.
Buy now £69.80, Amazon.co.uk
Corsair M65 RGB ultra wireless
Best: Gaming mouse
Rating: 8/10
DPI: Up to 26,000
Interface: Bluetooth, Slipstream wireless
Buttons: 8
Right or left handed: Right
Features: Rechargable
Weight: 110g
If the MX master 3 was in a terrible accident, but was rebuilt by a futuristic mega-corporation with 50 per cent robot parts, then it might end up looking something like the M65. There’s a similarity in the humped back and the way the buttons extend beyond the scroll wheel. The metal frame is exposed at the front, where the USB-C charging port sits between what look like the air intakes on the front of a sports car. Despite a superficial aesthetic similarity, though, the M65 is very much its own creature.
And it’s a bit of a monster. It’s beautifully shaped, and has an adjustable weighting system that allows you to pack it with small metal doughnuts in three places underneath. If you prefer a lighter mouse, leave them in the box. Change the balance by only putting them at the back. Or screw them all in for a heavier experience.
Elsewhere, Corsair’s iCue software allows button reprogramming and lighting control. There are quite a lot of lights on the M65: the logo under your palm lights up, as does the area around the scroll wheel. Light spills out from just about every crack in the casing, and pours from the back of the mouse onto the desktop beneath your wrist. It’s all controllable, and lighting effects can be stacked and set to react to events. Or they can be switched completely off.
At the side, a large red “sniper” button lowers the mouse’s sensitivity when you’re trying to line up a tricky shot in-game, making it less likely that small movements of your hand will ruin your aim. Connectivity comes via Bluetooth, a USB dongle, and even a cable if you need it. Battery life is excellent, providing up to 120 hours of Bluetooth use with the lights off.
Buy now £98.20, Corsair.com
Razer pro click
Best: Wireless mouse
Rating: 8/10
DPI: Up to 16,000
Interface: USB, Bluetooth, 2.4GHz
Buttons: 8
Right or left handed: Right
Features: Rechargable
Weight: 106G
Razer is the kind of company you’d expect to festoon its mice with lighting and its own livid green branding – and for the most part it is – but its pro range, including the pro click and the pro type keyboard (£159, Razer.com) we liked in our round-up of the best planks, bring out the best in the company.
This is another phenomenally comfortable humped design with a few programmable buttons, but mostly keeps itself clean and clear so you don’t have to think too much about using it. Capable of remembering three Bluetooth connections (there’s a USB dongle too), it can easily be switched between devices, and a battery life of up to 400 hours when using Bluetooth means you won’t be charging it too often.
Which is a good thing, because the pro click has a downside: its charging port is micro USB rather than USB-C, and the port is recessed into the front of the mouse body in such a way that not all cables will fit. By now, we’ve all got enough micro USB cables that we don’t bother taking new ones out of the packaging, but you’ll need to if you want to charge the pro click. This is annoying, but not a complete dealbreaker, as the pro click is such a pleasure to use that you’ll soon forget about the cable. Just don’t forget about it too much.
Buy now £77.00, Amazon.co.uk
Satechi aluminum M1
Best: iPad mouse
Rating: 8/10
DPI: Up to 1,200
Interface: Bluetooth
Buttons: 2
Right or left handed: Both
Features: Rechargable
Weight: 176G
Apple’s magic nouse 2 works with iPads (though note that the original magic mouse will provide a pointer but loses its scrolling functionality), but is expensive and a bit flat and smooth for those with larger hands. Satechi’s M1 is a much more comfortable alternative, with a proper scroll wheel, and is compatible with just about any mobile device out there, as long as it’s using a Bluetooth version newer than 2.1.
It’s reasonably priced as well, charges over the same USB-C cable as most newer tablets and laptops, and fits nicely in the hand despite being on the small side. This last quality means it’s perfect for sticking in a bag at the end of the day.
While the argument could be made that you don’t need a mouse with a tablet as it already has a touchscreen, the distance you sit from a screen while typing is different to the distance you hold it while reading or consuming media. Raising your whole arm to make a small selection in a word processing document, for example, is a cumbersome gesture that the comforting presence of a mouse renders unnecessary.
Buy now £35.12, Satechi.net
Anker vertical ergonomic
Best: Vertical mouse
Rating: 7/10
DPI: Up to 1,600
Interface: 2.4 GHz
Buttons: Five
Right or left handed: Right
Features: Needs AAA batteries
Weight: 95G
This vertical mouse looks like a pecialised torture device from the future, but is designed to have the opposite effect. Its upright stance and easy-to-reach buttons caress your tender tendons and soothe muscles left aching by the unnatural position a normal mouse forces your wrist and hand to take.
It may take a little getting used to, but all you’re really doing is allowing your hand to lay in a more natural, relaxed position than the flat one we all use, which involves rotating your wrist. Logitech also makes a similar vertical mouse as part of its MX range, but we like the Anker because, like a lot of its products, it’s well made and cheap.
You don’t get much in the way of customisation options, however, just three sensitivity settings that see the DPI boosted to 1600, which is enough for anyone who’s not trying to win League of Legends tournaments. The only connection is through a USB dongle, and the mouse takes AAA batteries instead of recharging. This sounds bad, but this is a cheap mouse aimed at a small proportion of people who need it, and for them the simple fact that it makes mouse use bearable again outweighs all the RGB lighting in the world.
Buy now £22.99, Amazon.co.uk
Logitech ergo M575
Best: Trackball
Rating: 7/10
DPI: 400
Interface: 2.4GHz, Bluetooth
Buttons: Five
Right or left handed: Right
Features: Needs an AA battery
Weight: 145G
A trackball is more than a mouse that’s been turned upside down. Its ergonomic design is better for your wrists, for one thing, and as long as you’re right-handed (or use a mouse in your right hand) it can offer a level of comfort other pointing devices cannot.
If you’ve been using a traditional mouse for 20 years, however, it can take some time for the shock of moving the pointer with your thumb to wear off. You’ll push it across the desk at first, the grippy rubber feet protesting, unable to override the muscle memory that insists that’s going to work. Eventually, it will click in your head and you’ll become accustomed to a slightly slower but more precise way of working, your thumb now an important part of the experience rather than something occasionally used to click a side button.
In addition to the ball, there are the usual two mouse buttons and scroll wheel, plus an extra pair of buttons right where they can be reached with a fingertip moved across from the left button. The body of the mouse slopes heavily to one side, though not as violently as that of the vertical mouse, keeping your hand in a relaxed, natural position.
Buy now £44.99, Logitech.com
Razer viper 8K
Best: Ambidextrous mouse
Rating: 8/10
DPI: Up to 20,000
Interface: USB
Buttons: Eight
Right or left handed: Both
Features: Wired connection only
Weight: 71G
A gaming mouse by description, the viper 8K’s comfortable, simple form factor means it’s a great choice for anyone who uses their pointing device in the left hand, and is fed up with the lack of choice. It’s completely ambidextrous, so right-handers who share the computer will be right at home too.
The Razer is designed for rapid response in games, and you can see this from its polling rate. Most mice are happy to tootle around your desktop polling at 1,000Hz – that is, checking their position and updating the pointer a thousand times a second. The viper 8K laughs at such slow polling, and is capable of a rate of 8,000Hz. The only people who really need this are those running high-resolution, high-frame-rate screens and who play games in which responsiveness is the key to success.
Ordinary mortals, however, can tone it down a bit, and enjoy a well-crafted mouse that’s light and feels good in the hand. It’s a wired design, as apparently wirelessness cuts down the responsiveness, but the 6ft captive cable is nicely braided and flexible. There are extra programmable buttons, and the Synapse software that facilitates this allows you to swap the functions of the two primary buttons, for left-handers who like everything to be mirrored.
Buy now £50.99, Amazon.co.uk
Microsoft Bluetooth ergonomic mouse
Best: Ergonomic mouse
Rating: 8/10
DPI: Up to 2,400
Interface: Bluetooth
Buttons: Four
Right or left handed: Right
Features: Takes AAA batteries
Weight: 91G
Compared to some of the outlandish shapes on this page, the Microsoft ergonomic mouse seems almost conservative. It’s a good looking mouse though, with the design language of the old intellimouse showing through even after 20 years of improvements. It could almost be ambidextrous if it weren’t for the shelf on the left-hand side and position of the extra buttons, but it remains extremely comfortable in your right hand.
The curvy, humped top of the mouse is seamless, the main buttons and the scroll wheel are accommodated by a simple slit cut through the front of the casing. There are seams at the sides, but they’re positioned in such a way as to blend into the background. It’s a pleasingly minimal approach, and the silvery solid scroll wheel adds sophistication.
There are two side buttons, and an extra one underneath to choose between the three Bluetooth pairings. It’s not rechargeable, relying instead on AAA batteries (MS claims you’ll get six months of use from a pair). The additional buttons are customisable, and you can set application-specific button assignments from the mouse’s Windows app. It’s not an expensive mouse by any means, and what it lacks in features it makes up for by feeling great in the hand and doing a great job of just being a mouse.
Buy now £25.00, Amazon.co.uk
Mouse FAQs
Sensors
You won’t find a mouse with a traditional ball underneath any more – the days of picking dirt off it with an unfolded paperclip while bored at your desk are well and truly over. Instead, you’ll find an optical sensor. The simplest use a red LED that bounces light off the desktop (they can work on almost any surface) and back to a small light-sensitive chip that reads how far the mouse has moved and in which direction. A laser mouse works in the same way, but uses a different light source.
Buttons
Two buttons are useful, add a wheel for scrolling, then some more you can reach with your thumb – maybe another wheel on the side too. Then there are two fingers on the other side of the mouse that can reach buttons placed over there. Before long you’ve got something that looks like a cross between a hedgehog and a calculator. Gaming mice tend to have lots of buttons, and there’s a special class designed for massively multiplayer online games that have a complete numerical keypad on their side, but we find two or four buttons is best, plus a wheel. If you’re not playing games, you soon run out of actions to program the customisable buttons with, but using extra switches to go back and forward in a web browser is a good use of the extra functionality.
Wireless
Wireless mice come in two flavours: those that use Bluetooth, and those that use a 2.4GHz connection with a dongle you push into one of your PC’s USB ports. It’s still possible to get a wired mouse, just as it is to get a wired keyboard, but many of the best ones are wireless, and the freedom of a wireless mouse to rove around your desktop without tripping over its own cable, or just be thrown in a bag at the end of the day, cannot be underestimated.
Macs and mobile devices
Apple users can rest easy – just about any mouse will work with a Mac. Apple’s magic mouse 2 is excellent, but very flat and not to everyone’s taste, but you don’t have to use it. You may not get the full experience, as there’s a chance any software used to customise the buttons will be Windows-only, but you’ll be able to plug it in and move it around. Mobile devices aren’t so lucky – some Bluetooth mice work with both iOS and Android devices, some only work with one or the other, and some don’t work at all. You can use a USB adapter to plug a dongle into your device’s charging port, but it’s a gamble whether it will work. Using a mouse with a larger tablet screen is a very laptop-like experience, but it’s not often worth bothering with on a phone.
The verdict: Mice
The computer mice of today are strikingly different to those of just 10 years ago. They come in a huge variety of shapes and sizes, and the number of buttons – as well as what you can do with them – continues to rise. Logitech’s MX master series has been a hit since the first iteration was launched, and the MX master 3 builds on that to create a truly sublime pointing experience. If you use a mouse all day, at least give it a try – it’s fairly likely you’ll be won over.
Gaming peripheral makers such as Corsair and Razer shouldn’t be overlooked, however. These companies know a lot about what makes a good mouse, and have poured all their knowledge and experience into their latest models. We’re especially pleased to see Razer, often guilty of making its products garish, has toned things down with its pro range and is producing some excellent products.
Finally, using a mouse with an iPad is still a minefield – some work, others don’t, there doesn’t seem to be much explanation why – despite advances in iPad OS 15. Thanks to Satechi, then, for producing something that’s simple, compact and works.
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