The UPS guy was kind enough to drop my G3 off at my house a day early. Since I have Thursdays off and Fridays I'm almost always hanging out with friends I was simply delighted.

Recently I had switched to an allsop raindrop xl as opposed to my icemat v2 because someone suggested I give it a shot because I seemed a little inconsistent in my aim. So after 3-4 days of use I definitely noticed my aim getting significantly more consistent and decided to give the G3 a shot. Well after two games I can say I'm really happy with it.

The shape is actually a little smaller than I expected as well as the weight which is good. The lighter the better imo. The shiny slippery plastic is nice and out of the way and the more textured plastic is nice and gripy. The side buttons are out of the way enough to not really be bothersome at all, yet not difficult at all to hit if you needed to. The dpi button is in a nice and hard to reach spot so you dont accidentallly go changing how your mouse feels mid game. The two primary buttons have a good feel to them as well as the wheel and 3rd button. The wheel has a nice solid set of detents and while the 3rd button is slightly harder to press down than I thought it was going to be, it's not bad at all.

Now, on to the tracking. This mouse tracks beautifully UNLESS YOU USE A REALLY REALLY REALLY LOW SENSITIVITY. And by low, I'm thinking you would have to use like 30-35 or more cm/360 to cause this thing to skip regularly. Users who use the mouse at 20-25cm/360 I would imagine should be fine, but then again I use 14cm/360, so I can't say with too much certainty. The 500hz polling out of the box is really nice. Something I've missed since I sold my G5 to a buddy of mine cause of several other issues with that mouse. Changing sensitivities is kinda dumb though. After you plug the mouse in the first time it's set at 800dpi. Hit it once and it goes to 2000. Hit it again and it goes back down to 800. Again yeilds a change to 400. After that it goes back up to 800 then 2000, rinse and repeat and you get the picture.

The feet are pretty slick if I do say so myself. It reminds me almost of hyperglide quality. Close, but not quite. The cord is light weight and needs to be straightened out after you first open it. But this is true for every brand new mouse.

And yes, this thing really does skip pretty bad on an icemat. Even at 14cm/360 a simple flick yeilds skipping and muddled tracking. I would definitely recommend a good cloth pad for use with all lasers until someone updates the technology a bit.

So there you have it. For $52 USD (I got mine at newegg.com) you get a really solid, small, lightweight, and smooth mouse. I would recommend this mouse to medium to high sens users. Low sensers will have to look at the resurrected IE3.0 or MX518 (depending upon your shape preference of course).

EDIT: Just uploaded my newest CPMA config for use with my G3.