It’s not often Microsoft revives an iconic gaming brand with such a splash. Aiming to offer unparalleled features no other mouse on the market can compete with, is the newest flagship peripheral from Redmond on target?

Microsoft needs no introduction, as one of the leaders in gaming it was only a matter of time before the embers of the legendary Sidewinder brand were revived to set aflame the gaming community once again. We’ve written an extensive back story and covered the mouse in our epic preview months ago. Now that the dust has truly settled we’ve been testing it for months on both the hard fUnc Archetype MBA and soft XTracPads Ripper XL at a variety of sensitivities and DPI settings to see how well it performs.

You’ll notice no pictures of the packaging, and this is because it practically fell apart. If you venture to your local computer retailer, you may notice the box is constructed rather poorly. This has no bearing on the mouse itself, but is rather peculiar since this isn’t Microsoft’s usual quality.

Although specifications state this is a ten button mouse, you’re only going to use the typical five button layout. Three of the extra buttons are for DPI configuration and the extra macro recording button is purposefully-out-of-reach. We’ve seen past manufacturers attempt to relocate these special buttons to areas they wouldn’t normally be pressed on by accident, but at this location it is too cumbersome to press while maintaining a steady hold. This is especially true when using the QuickTurn feature designed to spin you around while playing your typical FPS. Throughout our testing in games such as Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike we found it to be too slow and not very useful. This is the story of the Microsoft Sidewinder, a good mouse that has laid down a solid foundation, but still needs some work.

The dedicated quick launch button with the Sidewinder logo is basically useless. In Windows XP it launches the Intellipoint software and in Windows Vista it launches the Games folder - and that’s it. Microsoft flaunts customization as a key factor in this mouse, but so much more could have been done. The Microsoft Sidewinder Intellipoint software is uninspiring and fails to really be as useful as it could be. Being able to customize any button on the mouse to anything else would have truly placed this mouse in the upper echelon of gaming mice. Leave it to the gamer if he or she wants to reprogram the DPI buttons to quickswitch weapons or allow the Sidewinder button to change the polling rate. Don’t flaunt countless buttons and then seemingly limit gamers choices.

Although some might argue the mini-LCD indicating the current DPI setting might be superfluous especially amongst the elite and hardcore gamer, it does do the job intended. The best aspect of this design is the actual three button layout which allows you to instantly know what you’re switching to instead of having to cycle through one button. We never really needed to look down at our mouse since switching DPI at very different speeds is apparent just by moving the mouse, so I tend to favor the argument that it simply adds cost. The overall implementation though is better than others that choose to display on-screen DPI indicators that could potentially block critical HUD information.

What’s extremely interesting is the vertically oriented two side button layout. In theory it works well, but in practical testing even with hands that can palm a men’s regulation basketball the buttons are just a tiny bit too far away. This is due to the actual large rear end design of the mouse that slopes upward toward the user’s hand. As it stands, having to slightly reach even a little bit to press these buttons is a huge no-no if it means we have to re-adjust our aim in critical gaming situations.

The scroll wheel has an exquisite build quality but the notches seem to be too far apart from each other. In desktop applications this isn’t an issue, but in games where users vary the scroll wheel’s usefulness from weapon switching to jumping for bunny hopping purposes, this can become a problem. Also surprisingly difficult to execute is pressing down on the mouse wheel, since it tended to scroll at the same time. The texture of the wheel lets sweaty fingers slide on it too easily when being pressed down as well.

The right side of the mouse opens up to reveal the adjustable weight system that adds anywhere from 5g to 30g worth of weight. In our discussions with our readers most tend to want the lightest possible mouse with the most effortless glide in the first place, but adding the ability make the mouse heavier is something some users may still look for. The entire weight system is actually very well designed as pressing a button on the underside of the mouse ejects the system easily.

The bottom of the mouse itself is thankfully devoid of any manufacturer labels and is designed to have interchangeable mouse feet. These five mouse feet can be removed extremely easily and Microsoft offers a set of three with different amounts of Teflon coating on the plastic feet for your convenience. The amount of Teflon can fade over time, and we actually wish they were even more slippery, but the design makes sense in that cleaning the mouse feet and eventually replacing them is a very handy feature.

Despite the advancement of laser engine technology, many hardcore gamers still prefer optical technology to that of laser because they believe it to be superior even when shown evidence to the contrary. We leave it to our readers to make their own choice since testing mice is a very subjective process. That being said, not all laser mice are created equal. Obviously calculating the topmost speed at which the sensor is able to continually and accurately track has it’s purposes, but it’s not the end-all be-all way to determine if the mouse is an excellent peripheral. During testing across the aforementioned surfaces, skipping only occurred in extreme situations where low sensitives and extremely quick mouse swipes occurred. Sensitives of .5, 1.5, 4.0, and 8.5 were used in a variety games from Quake 3 Arena, Unreal Tournament 3, and Counter-Strike among others with both mouse-fix enabled and disabled.

The most peculiar thing about the skipping however was that most of the time it was due to the actual laser sensor being impeded by accumulated dust particles and not as a result of engine deficiency itself. The way it seems the sensor hull is designed it allows dust to clump up just enough inside to cause erratic interference, something we thought was long gone with the ball mouse. A rather small annoyance, but potentially infuriating when trying to figure out what’s wrong with the mouse.

The included accessory box doubles as a storage unit for weights and mouse feet currently not in use. Because of the heavy nature of the box, it works perfectly as a cable cord manager and this ingenious approach to cable interference is one of the best ideas we’ve seen in a very long time. You’ll never lose it and it keeps your cord from getting tangled with other crap on your desk. You can tell Microsoft really stuck to the convention of thinking outside the box, since the shape of the mouse itself is very unorthodox and has the potential to alienate many users, especially those with smaller hands. Say what you want about the look of the device, the sharp edges are never really a problem in practical use and the primary mouse buttons and side buttons are perfectly balanced and are in no way shape or form prone to accidental clicking.

The Microsoft Sidewinder is intended to fill the void of a gaming mouse filled with as many features as possible in a shape no one else has ever done before. This isn’t to say this is the best way to approach gaming mice, as many users have stuck with Logitech’s series of gaming mice only to break the streak because of the unorthodox shape of the Logitech G9, which seemingly broke the trend of excellent ergonomics. The same can be said about the Microsoft Sidewinder with it’s overall well intended foundation of features that simply don’t go far enough to appease gamers. If you can get quickly acclimated to the shape, it’s a fun mouse to use, however the little peculiarities that detract from the mouse tend to add up and thus the resulting score you see above. As always we emphasize peripheral reviews are subjective and we always try to relay what users could potentially encounter as problems.

Nowadays with mice approaching Benjamin Franklin territory it’s critical to know what works and what doesn’t. Overall the Microsoft Sidewinder is a solid mouse. However, we can’t help but imagine how fantastic this mouse could have been had it been built in the mold of an old Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer 3.0 with the advanced customization, features and build quality of the Sidewinder we wished for - all without having to install any software. That would truly turn the gaming mouse world upside down.

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