For this reason, a higher DPI isn’t necessarily a good thing. An extremely high DPI would cause the mouse cursor to fly across your entire screen when you nudge the mouse. Everyone has an opinion, and even some gaming mouse manufacturers have said that DPI is a fairly irrelevant specification to talk about. Are Higher DPI and Polling Rates Better?ĭPI and polling rates are a subject of great debate. Some mice may have hardware switches to adjust their polling rate on the fly, too. On the other hand, a higher polling rate will use more CPU resources as the CPU has to query the mouse for its position more often.Ī mouse that officially supports a higher polling rate will generally allow you to select a polling rate in its control panel. A 500 Hz rate means that the mouse is reporting its position to the computer every 2 milliseconds.Ī higher polling rate can decrease the lag that occurs between when you move your mouse and when the movement shows up on your screen. If a mouse has a 125 Hz polling rate, it reports its position to the computer 125 times every second-or every 8 milliseconds. Polling Rate ExplainedĪ mouse’s polling rate is how often it reports its position to a computer. On the other hand, if you’re playing a game on a 3840×2160 4K monitor, a higher DPI lets you move your mouse cursor across the screen smoothly without having to drag your mouse across your entire desk. If you’re playing a game on a low-resolution 1366×768 laptop screen, you don’t necessarily need that high DPI. High DPI mice are more useful if you have a higher-resolution monitor. Your operating system just compensates by moving your cursor farther when it does detect a movement, so the movement isn’t as smooth.Ī high DPI mouse can also be paired with a low sensitivity setting, so the cursor won’t fly across the screen when you move it but the movement will stay smooth. The mouse hardware isn’t as sensitive, so it doesn’t detect the smaller movements. If you tried to aim at small targets, you’ll see the mouse cursor jump around as you move it. For example, let’s say you have a very cheap mouse with low DPI and you crank up the sensitivity.
#LOGITECH MOUSE DPI SOFTWARE#
DPI refers to a mouse’s hardware capabilities, while sensitivity is just a software setting. You can also see why more sensitive mice are attractive to designers that need to make minute adjustments in their designs.ĭPI is different from the typical mouse sensitivity setting. This is why many high-end gaming mice have buttons that you can flick to switch between DPI settings on the fly when playing a game. When playing the game normally without a zoomed-in sniper rifle, this high DPI may be too sensitive. When zooming in with a sniper rifle and trying to aim precisely at small targets, a high DPI could be valuable by allowing you to smoothly aim with small mouse movements. For example, let’s say you’re playing a first-person shooter game. On the other hand, a higher DPI setting helps your mouse detect and respond to smaller movements so you can point at things more accurately. You don’t want your mouse cursor to fly all the way across the screen when you move your mouse a little bit. A mouse with a higher DPI setting detects and reacts to smaller movements.Ī higher DPI isn’t always better. The higher a mouse’s DPI, the farther the cursor on your screen will move when you move the mouse. DPI Explainedĭots per inch (DPI) is a measurement of how sensitive a mouse is. Laser mice function similarly but use infrared light instead of visible light. The mouse then sends this movement data to your computer as mouse input, and the computer moves the cursor across your screen. The mouse compares the pictures and determines the direction you’re moving the mouse. As you move the mouse around, the light shines on the surface below the mouse and the camera takes hundreds of pictures per second. Modern optical mice contain a light- usually a red one-and a little camera. Those days are over, and today we have optical and laser mice. The movement of the ball was picked up by mechanical rollers that translated the mouse’s movement into something your computer could understand. There was a time when a computer mouse contained a rubber ball that rolled (and picked up dirt) as you moved it across a mouse pad.