DPI Gaming Mouse is often talked about as one of the big factors of online gaming. If you’re playing a fast shooter like counter-strike or overwatch a high DPI technically lets you react faster by requiring less mouse movement. For on-screen movement to occur but is that the full story here we tell you everything you need to know about mouse DPI. If it’s as important as you think it is hi this is Phil from make tech easier and this is the mouse DPI explained does higher dpi matter for gaming.
There are two types of dpi in tech deep packet inspection
- Network security zone
- Dots per inch.
In this guide, we’ll be talking to you about why the latter dpi matters in gaming. The best dpi and polling rates to start helps to know how optical mouse translate the movement of your hand into the movement to the mouse hole and screen.
Every optical mouse comes with two critical pieces in the bottom
- A light-emitting diode
- A camera, the camera records
How the light reflects off surface hundreds of times a second, then turns that into the movement on the screen polling rate refers to how often this camera takes a picture of this movement.
For example:
A mouse with a polling rate of 500 megahertz reports its position to your computer every 2 milliseconds. Higher polling rates are generally preferred for intense gaming, but can also take more resources for your computer to read every signal coming through DPI refers to the sensitivity of your mouse and how far it moves across the screen depending on the movement of your hand.
The High DPI Gaming Mouse
A high DPI will require very little hand movement to make the mouse sit from one side of the screen to the other.
Low DPI Gaming Mouse
A low dpi however needs much more movement to get the cursor to go even a couple of inches in any direction so why would you want to lower your dpi beyond. What’s generally considered comfortable dpi and gaming the DPI you use can vary pretty significantly depending on the type of game, You’re playing and how you prefer to play for example, in, a Mo Ba like a League of Legends you may want to maintain a higher dpi.
Because you need to click on many different areas of the screen quickly and with pinpoint accuracy conversely. Many FPS gamers like to keep their dpi at nearly the lowest setting possible generally around 200 to 500 dpi. This means they have to make giant swipes with their hands to get the reticle of their gun to move even the slightest bit which can be good. If you’re sniping someone from miles away and double the optics to sway too much.
Once you get a lock on them running a higher dpi in FPS games takes a lot of practice to get used to though which is why the many gaming mouse like the Logitech g502 comes with features like on-the-fly dpi adjustment to ease you in on the fly dpi. Let’s you Pre-programmed three to five different dpi settings that can be triggered by a set of buttons on your mouse by cycling.
Through these, in a game, you can swap from a pistol high DPI to a sniper low dpi in an instant. Never worry about having to reset your DPI on the mouse software. Every time you get another kill conclusion for anyone serious about upping their game. The next time they jump into a match online a mouse with a high polling rate on the fly.
Dpi adjustment is a must-have with that in mind if you plan on playing a lot of FPS titles with low dpi. You’re going to need a large enough Mouse better match. generally, we recommend going with a mousepad that spans the entirety of your desk like the HyperX fury s. just to make sure that you’re always on target and don’t accidentally slip off in the middle of a heated fight.
What is a good DPI for a Gaming Mouse?
You’re looking to buy a new gaming mouse. Maybe this is your first time buying one for yourself or just the first time. You’ve decided to look at the specs instead of letting the price and the good-looks guide your decision. There’s no shame in this we’ve all been there but now that you’re taking a closer look at the specs.
There’s the one that just demands your attention over all the others the DPI and face value this is a very confusing Mouse specification to grasp. You’ve got a gaming mouse that has a DPI of 5000 or even less, and then you’ve got some models with a DPI of 16,000, So what’s a gamer to do in this situation? It’s confusing that’s why in today’s article we’ll be unraveling exactly what dpi is? How does it function? How important it is for gaming?
What DPI mean Gaming Mouse?
Dpi is an acronym that stands for dots per inch. In this context, each dot correlates to one pixel on the screen.
The Mouse with a DPI of a Thousand
Let’s say you’ve got a 1080p monitor and mouse with a dpi of a thousand. If you were to move the mouse vertically by exactly one inch the cursor would move up by a thousand pixels. Which is pretty much the height of the display.
Mouse had a DPI of MM
If the mouse had a dpi of mm then you’d only have to move it up by half an inch for the cursor to travel the same distance.
With the DPI of 10000
With the DPI of 10000, you would need to move the mouse by a mere 1/10 of an inch to have the cursor. Fly across the screen you get the picture.
Why it’s not called pixels per inch instead of dots per inch?
It is something we can’t answer it would have likely made the speck more understandable perhaps it’s not a good thing in the eyes of the manufacturers. We digress though it is what it is and now we all understand it, in any case, we can conclude that the DPI determines how sensitive the mouse sensor is the higher the DPI the more sensitive the mouse.
However, it’s paramount that you did not mistake sensitivity for accuracy a high sensitivity Mouse is not necessarily an accurate one or even a quality one. So don’t get fooled into thinking you’ve accidentally struck gold. If you come across a cheap mouse with a ridiculously high DPI manufacturers love to flaunt this back exactly because it’s quantifiable.
They might have an objectively unimpressive Mouse, but if it costs the same as a competition and it has a higher dpi and the unsuspecting customer. It could easily mistake the higher dpi as an assurance of quality and purchase that mouse over a better model that costs roughly the same speaking.
What kind of DPI you should be aiming for?
Let’s take a look at what kind of dpi you should be aiming for? For all gaming mouse is produced with fairly high DPI ratings nowadays, but there are definitely some discrepancies here and just because this isn’t the be-all-end-all speck that it’s made out to look like doesn’t mean you should ignore it either.
This begs the question of how high is high enough and what’s the minimum dpi you shouldn’t go below will answer the second question first just because it’s way more straightforward. The minimum dpi of your mouth should roughly correlate with the horizontal resolution of your display this isn’t an immutable law by any means but it is a generally agreed upon rule of thumb.
So if you still haven’t discovered your dpi preferences this is a great place to start even the cheapest gaming mouse nowadays comes with a minimum dpi somewhere between 2400 and 3200 so this really shouldn’t be an issue considering. Most of us use 1080p or 1440p monitors for gaming by this logic. However, even at 8,000, dpi Mouse could be seen as overkill for a 4k monitor.
Is there any point to these insanely high DPI specs of the certain mouse like 14,000, or 16,000?
Well, yes, but also know it certainly serves as a marketing tool five-digit specs tend to have jaw-dropping effects on people who realize that they’ve been using a 2000 or 3000 dpi mouse all their life but at the same time it’s not false advertising these mice genuinely do pack that kind of heat so if you think you can make good use of the higher dpi go for it.
Extra Sensitivity of Mouse
Like we’ve said dpi isn’t something to judge a mouse by but extra sensitivity can’t hurt. Just remember that sensitivity does not mean accurate and even if the mouse is accurate, there’s such a thing as being too sensitive although this will vary from individual to individual.
Let’s just say that we haven’t been able to aim with any semblance of accuracy using a mouse with a DPI of over 12,000 and this is by no means an understatement everything over 10,000 makes every kill feel like a lucky accident but then again none of us here are professional gamers.
What’s great about the Gaming Mouse?
What’s great about gaming mouse is that they all feature a button usually above the scroll wheel that can be used to adjust the DPI at any time affordable models usually have just the single buttons that can be used to cycle between a set number of sensitivity settings, but the more expensive mouse generally tend to have dedicated buttons for increasing and lowering the sensitivity which is super handy in certain games.
Example: If you’re playing an online shooter for example, you can switch between high sensitivity and low sensitivity settings depending on what type of what then you use. You can keep the sensitivity high if you’re blasting away with a rifle and lower it when you switch to a sniper which requires a steadier and more accurate aim. So even if you get that new Mouse with a dpi of 16,000, and you find this sensitivity impossible for the human hand to properly navigate.
You can still use the mouse at your preferred sensitivity setting more expensive models often even come with their pieces of software that you can use to customize the DPI used in increments of a hundred. If you’re not happy with the preset values so really there’s no such thing as the highest recommended dpi. This will always come down to the games you play in your overall preferences. So reiterate sensitivity does not equal accuracy or quality.
