Microsoft redesigned its IntelliMouse for gaming

Those of you who are old enough to remember PC gaming in the '80s and early '90s might remember when mice didn't have a scroll wheel. Or side buttons. Or an optical sensor. They had one or two buttons and a mouse ball that eventually stopped rolling because of all the gunk it picked up from your mousepad. But Microsoft's IntelliMouse series added a scroll wheel in 1996 and kept picking up new features in the years that followed, like an optical sensor and dedicated auxiliary side buttons—all of which are now modern mice mainstays.

With the advent of the internet and online gaming, the PC mouse-of-old wasn't going to cut it for much longer. PC users and gamers alike needed a more versatile, faster, and precise mouse for the ever increasing number of complex tasks they were using their computers for everyday. Microsoft has brought back a piece of its own history with its new Pro IntelliMouse.

The Pro IntelliMouse has an upgraded tracking sensor and improved key actuation from the 2017 Classic IntelliMouse, which makes it more suitable for gaming than previous generations. Its color scheme is more of a nod to the Xbox, as Microsoft points out, and yet it also nods to its traditional design over the years by being almost RGB-free, though you can customize the taillight to whatever color you'd like to match any of your other RGB peripherals.

Spec-wise, the Pro IntelliMouse is USB 2.0 compatible, wired, and comes with five total buttons, of which three are customizable. (However, button customization isn't supported on Windows 10 S, and it's strange that it's not USB 3.0/3.1 considering most USB peripherals are.) The optical senor is a PixArt PAW3389PRO-MS, which has a base DPI of 200 that goes up to 16,000, a tracking speed up to 400'' (10,160 mm) per second, and a report rate of 1,000 reports per second. It weighs roughly 140g, which is heavier than all the mice in our best gaming mouse roundup.

The Pro IntelliMouse is currently available via the Microsoft store in Canada and the United States for $59.99 and will be available sometime in July in Europe and Asia.

When Joanna's not writing about gaming desktops, cloud gaming, or other hardware-related things, she's doing terrible stuff in The Sims 4, roleplaying as a Malkavian, or playing horror games that would give normal people nightmares. She also likes narrative adventures.