Roughly a year ago, Sharkoon made some waves with the Light² 200: Essentially a lightweight Zowie EC2 clone, it improved on the original in pretty much every aspect, and for an affordable price. The same is now true for the Light² 180, although this time, it's based on the Zowie S2. However, the Light² 180 isn't an exact recreation as it's a bit bigger and bulkier than the original, unlike the HK Gaming Naos-M, which is almost an exact copy. What's more, Sharkoon managed to achieve a weight of just 66 g almost without any external holes. By default, a honeycomb back cover is installed, but can be swapped for a solid back cover which only weighs 2 g more. By comparison, the Naos-M had to resort to the hole treatment to get its weight this low, while having noticeably worse build quality.

On top of the solid build quality, the Light² 180 also has very nice buttons. In fact, the main buttons are highly reminiscent of older Zowie mice. Stiff, yet very tactile, those fond of the clicks of the older FK or ZA series from Zowie will feel right at home—by comparison, the clicks of the Zowie S1/S2 are lighter than those of the Light² 180. Zowie fans will also appreciate the two large and nicely gliding feet, and it's always nice to see a manufacturer include a replacement set in the box. The scroll wheel, on the other hand, is a bit lacking in terms of tactility, albeit still decent, whereas the side buttons provide a very firm and satisfying button response. To complement the nice buttons, click latency is also appreciably low when using the lowest debounce time setting within the software. Speaking of which, the software is lightweight and easy to use, while having all the relevant options, including for the rich RGB lighting. Those less fond of software get the option to adjust the polling rate directly on the mouse. Lastly, PixArt's PMW3360 performing as well as ever almost goes without mention.

The only thing I can really criticize is the cable. The Light² S had a cable that was much improved over the Light² 100/200, but for whatever reason, Sharkoon decided to go back to the old one for the Light² 180. To be fair, I've only reviewed the white variant, so the black one may come with the Light² S cable. Either way, while the cable isn't bad, it's average at best in terms of flexibility.

Still, for $39.99, the Light² 180 simply provides really good value for money. This becomes even more apparent when looking at the competition. The HK Gaming Naos-M is an even more "faithful" recreation of the Zowie S2, but doesn't do anything noticeably better than the Light² 180, yet costs $69.99. The Endgame Gear XM1r has slightly better performance, build quality, and, most importantly, a more flexible cable, for $59.99. The Xtrfy M42 too comes with an exchangeable back cover, but allows one to modify the shape that way, and has similar performance as well as build quality, for $59.00. The ROCCAT Burst Pro comes with optical main button switches, better build quality, similar performance, and a much more flexible cable, for $59.99. Finally, the Burst Core retains the optical switches, but has worse performance and a stiff cable, for $29.99. All in all, the Sharkoon Light² 180 gets our Editor's Choice and Budget awards from me.