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Update December 1: As of Cyber Monday, PCG news lead Andy Chalk's second-favorite gaming mouse can still be had for more than half off.
My favorite mouse of all time is the Logitech MX518, which sadly has gone the way of the dodo. My favorite mouse to replace the MX518 is also a Logitech, the G502 Hero, and if you're looking for a new mouse this Black Friday the good news is that not only are they still extant, you can pick one up from Amazon right now for just $34.99, less than half the regular price.
The Logitech G502 Hero is built around a 25,600 DPI sensor with a 1,000 Hz polling rate, which in less technical terms means bang-on precision and accuracy. It's got 11 buttons, which frankly I think is a bit much—I use four of them and that's counting the mouse wheel, but I suppose it never hurts to have more—and they're all programmable, with onboard memory storing up to five unique profiles.
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Do you like lights? Because the G502 Hero has lights—lots of lights, also fully programmable in various shades and patterns through Logitech's G-Hub software. I have the Cycle effect going on mine: It gives me that RGB cool feeling without being annoyingly distracting. If you've got other light-up Logitech gear hooked up to your PC, you can sync 'em all together for a big, smooth flow.
It's a very impressive unit and I have absolutely no complaints on the tech front, but what really makes the G502 great is just the way it feels. It's right in the sweet spot across the board: beefy enough to say hey, you got a mouse in your hand but not so huge that it's unwieldy, and not super-light but not unpleasantly heavy either—and that too can be adjusted using removable internal weights.
The thumb indent is... well, it's a really good place to put your thumb. Which might sound silly, I know, but the point is that it very nicely recaptures the sweet contours of the MX518, which as you'll recall I really liked. My one complaint is that the thumb button is too far forward to reach without having to move my whole hand. If it was pulled back even just a half-inch, I might be using five buttons on this thing.
Note that this is the G502 Hero, not the wireless Lightspeed model, which is also on sale (at Best Buy) but costs more than twice the price. That's a great deal if you're after a wireless mouse, but if you, like me, believe that some things in this world are meant to have wires (or if you just don't have any strong feelings about it either way), the G502 Hero for $35 is really the way to go.
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