Zowie nailed a couple of important bits with the AM mouse, however, some of the gambles give unwanted results. The scroll wheel setup with its optical encoder is by all means inferior to that featured on many mice today. The design of the mouse is relatively simple and quite small which will be great for most people, but for people with big hands it might be too small to handle well. The fact that mouse is completely driverless is very nice for anyone into competitive gaming or people who simply wants to use the same mouse on a couple of different machines. Sensor wise this mouse is simply superb! It handles perfectly, has enough DPI to suit even high sensitivity gamers, and works on pretty much any gaming surface you can throw at it.

The only thing that derails the Zowie AM's mouse quest for a great score in our system is the ill performing scroll wheel and the size of the mouse. With a large hand it takes some time getting used to, and for some it will undoubtedly be impossible. The bar for small yet totally comfortable mice for me is the IME 1.1 and the Zowie AM mouse is just a tad smaller, and while my hands could wrap around it to get a comfortable gaming experience your mileage might vary.