Just like with keyboards, PC gamers demand more for their mice than normal users do. They want crazy high sensitivity and polling rates, so they can nail headshots faster than opponents using lesser mice. But there is one factor that gaming mice manufacturers seem to neglect and that is weight. The more a mouse weighs, the more force you have to exert to overcome inertia and accelerate in a new direction. Therefore, a heavy mouse could be the reason that you can’t rank in Apex Legends! YouTuber Juskim couldn’t accept that, so he built what is probably the world’s smallest wireless gaming mouse.
Juskim has a bit of an obsession with building tiny peripherals. He has built several itty-bitty mice and keyboards and six months ago, he built what might have been the world’s lightest wireless mouse. But you’ll notice that “gaming” wasn’t part of the description of that mouse. While a person certainly could play games with it, that mouse didn’t have the hardware necessary to unleash the kind of performance gamers expect. This new mouse design does have that performance, while being even smaller than that last mouse and almost as light.
As with that lightweight mouse, Juskim’s strategy here was to add a small frame to a small PCB. The frame is designed to be held by pinching between the thumb and ring finger, while resting the index and middle fingers on the two buttons. The frame is 3D-printed and skeletonized, to be light and strong. Some surface texture improves grip.
The new PCB is even smaller than the last one and contains upgraded hardware for that edge in competitive games. It has a PAW3395 sensor, which has an 8KHz sampling rate, up to 26K DPI resolution, up to 650 IPS (Inches Per Second) tracking speed, and handles 50g acceleration. For wireless performance, Juskim paired that with a Nordic nRF54L15 SoC (System-on-Chip).
As an added bonus, that nRF54L15 is very power efficient. Good thing too, because this mouse has just 120mAh of battery capacity from two 60mAh lithium batteries wired in parallel. That capacity is enough for around 11 hours of use.
Of course, this design didn’t come without sacrifices. It forces a claw grip, which is uncomfortable for a lot of people — including Juskim. He designed a much larger frame/enclosure that is more ergonomic, but it won’t win that “world’s smallest” title. This mouse also doesn’t have a scroll wheel, but Juskim plans to add that in his next video.
But even as it is, this mouse is perfectly usable and overcoming inertia definitely isn’t a problem.