Performance

Judging the performance of a mouse is base almost purely on subjective opinion. Some gamers like a fast, small and light mouse. Others want to use bigger movements and mice that fill the entire palm, while feeling the weight during movement. The Saitek GM3200 can be configured to be very light or loaded with the metal weights to make it heavy. The DPI range between 800 and 3200 DPI makes this mouse great for basically any gamer out there. The GM3200 has the highest DPI setting out there. To put the number in perspective: the Sharkoon Rush features 2000 DPI while the Razer DeathAdder packs 1800 DPI.

I fired up my favorite game - Half-Life 2 and played through the first few levels. The game requires relatively fast and accurate movement. It may not be as speedy as Counter-Strike, but faster than games like El Matador, Condemned or Far Cry.

As there are a lot of aspects of the mouse that can be customized for best gaming comfort, I started with the most obvious - DPI setting. Let's just say that 3200 DPI is way to much for my taste, but the very low setting of 800 was too little. I was most comfortable using the 1600 DPI setting. The overall size of the mouse did take some getting used to, especially as I usually use the Logitech MX Revolution, which is much thinner than the Saitek GM3200.

The pressure point of the the buttons was perfect, not to hard and not too soft either - simply said the golden middle.

After finding the right DPI setting for my gaming style, I added three weights in the back of the mouse, which gave me the perfect weight for the mouse. I also used the large skid pads on the covers, so that the mouse moved across the surface even better. The only downside of the large pad is dirt. If small pieces of dirt get stuck between the mouse and skid pads, it becomes noticeable, so if you game on a hard surface you may want to use the small skid pads instead.

The mouse works on all surfaces tested: plastic and cloth pads as well as different kinds of table surfaces.