Video: Sidewinder Mouse
The scroll wheel was aluminum and definitely stood out in the design quite stylishly. Two smooth rings and a textured center gave an ease of use and a nice solid wheel. The divots were maybe a bit too big for normal desktop use, but perfect for gaming which is why this mouse exists.


DPI switching has become a mainstay in modern gaming mice. This has been shunned by more traditional players and praised by others. Either way, I have always felt that the manufacturers hadn’t quite got it right yet. With other mice, I was always assuming where the DPI was in the three-setting cycle I had set up. What’s nice about the Sidewinder mouse is that they have made three discrete buttons for each DPI setting right up the spine. You can set each of these three buttons to different DPI settings. The fantastic part about this is that it removes all the guess work. They are in a location that is not easily pressed by accident, but at the same time are quite easy to access quickly so you can still switch “on-the-fly.” DPI switching has been around for a while and Microsoft has taken it and done it so much better. Accompany this feature with the LCD screen - the first of its kind - and you can see the true value. Not only has MS removed the guess work by creating three separate buttons, but they have included an LCD right on the mouse. When you press one of your three DPI buttons, the LCD tells you in clear, easy to read numbers what your DPI is currently set to. This is backlit by a red LED so you can read it in the dark of your nerd den. This brings me to the next feature…

Macros
Programmable buttons is another feature that has been around for some time, but how many mice have allowed you to program these macros while in-game? To be fair, I have never been one to use mouse macros, but perhaps I will with this new ease of use. In front of the two silver side buttons, you will see a subtle button on the side of the mouse towards the front. This button is your “macro record” button. That’s right. Hit this baby, hit the button you want to assign the macro to, perform the actions you want macro'ed, then hit the “macro record” button again to finish. What’s more? The LCD actually guides you through this process via icons. The drivers add more functionality to this feature.