With more than 20 mice reviewed this year by the PC Gamer team, only three stand head and shoulders above the rest.
Check out more of the year’s best tech in our PC Gamer Hardware Awards 2024 coverage.
You don’t tend to buy a gaming mouse every year (unless you’re particularly clumsy) so it can be easy to ignore the miasma of tech coming out. Yet this year has produced some of the best gaming mice on the market, and unpredictably, two of those are from Turtle Beach and none are from Logitech (last year’s big winner). Not being nominated in the last two years, this is already a win in spirit for Turtle Beach.
There are plenty of good mice from many different brands every year, but in 2024, three particular mice stand out for many reasons. It’s worth noting that raw performance isn’t everything here. We don’t just pick the mouse with the highest DPI or lightest weight, we get hands-on and really test how it functions on real gaming rigs in real games. We all want a mouse that accurately reflects exactly what we’re doing on the mousepad (or table if you’re a hardware goblin like myself).
A mainstay of the best gaming mice every year, Razer has pulled through with its DeathAdder V3 HyperSpeed, a super responsive and budget-friendly beast. Though the plastic top is conducive to grease, this is one of the very few criticisms we can point at a mouse that swings well above its price tag.
As well as this, Turtle Beach’s Kone II Air and Burst II Air get a nom for their excellent design. Though they all deserve recognition, only one can be named the best gaming mouse of 2024.
Best gaming mouse 2024: the nominees
Razer DeathAdder V3 HyperSpeed
This little rodent has almost everything you’d ever need out of a mouse. You might mistake this for the Razer Viper V3 Pro thanks to the near-identical shape and feel but, where the Pro is a good mouse, this one is truly phenomenal.
Despite not boasting the best stats of the year, this mouse and its Focus X sensor blew us away with its consistency and quality. We even compared the HyperSpeed’s tracking in MouseTester to the Pro’s 8,000 Hz tracking and found them to be nearly identical.
It is also very comfortable to hold and has that classic Razer shape. To add to this design, the side buttons are nice and light too. This pairs with the 55 g this thing weighs well.
This stands out not just because it’s an excellent mouse that performs well and is comfortable in the hand but also because, at just $100, it’s hard to beat that price.
Read our full Razer DeathAdder V3 Hyperspeed review.
Turtle Beach Kone II Air
It’s rare that a gaming mouse manufacturer puts real effort into the scroll wheel but you notice it almost instantly here, and the Kone II Air follows this up with a super comfortable shape and excellent feel. Despite flashy RGB, this thing also gets up to 350 hours of battery.
If you are a hardcore twitch shooter fan, you may become a little frustrated by minor hiccups in the polling rate but the sensor itself is accurate and you may not notice inconsistencies if you aren’t a big professional gamer.
Despite this, the Kone II Air is super sturdy, with great ergonomics and a lovely groove to put your hand on. It’s satisfyingly clicky and even has the ability to switch buttons on the fly. There were grounds to be cautious when Roccat was assimilated into Turtle Beach but the outcome, from a design perspective, seems to be surprisingly good.
Read our full Turtle Beach Kone II Air review.
Turtle Beach Burst II Air
A little cheaper than our previous choice, the Turtle Beach Burst II Air is more dull in design but incredibly consistent. If you want something practical and safe, with a nice feel and good battery life, the Burst II Air has you covered.
At just 47 g, this is the lightest mouse on our list yet the design is well compensated. Unfortunately, the plastic shell can attract fingerprints, but this seems like one of the places Turtle Beach had to cut back for the reasonable cost of $100.
Though the polling rate of 1,000 Hz isn’t super impressive, this is a very consistent mouse in our testing, holding up nicely with even very swift movements. A more casual gamer may look for something prettier or something with some flashy software tricks but the Turtle Beach Burst II Air pulls ahead of many others this year partially thanks to how uninspired its physical shape is. No muss, no fuss.
Read our full Turtle Beach Burst II Air review.
The best gaming mouse of 2024 will be officially crowned on New Year’s Eve so jot the date down in your calendar and make sure to come back for the big moment.
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