Razer DeathAdder Essential Gaming Mouse:

I was just about to buy another mouse when I decided to check the reviews for this and found out about the scrollwheel dust problem. Sure enough, after blowing air into the scrollwheel to remove the dust from the sensor as another reviewer mentioned, the broken scrolling fixed itself. Saved me a lot of money and frustration. Problems began about 6 or 7 months after purchasing. By the 8th month, scrolling was so bad that entire web articles would jump back to the top if I accidently tried to scroll down a bit. It was making the mouse unusable. I like the ergonomics well enough, except I can't get used to the rear thumb button for gaming. If you use your last 2 digits a lot when pointing and tend to rotate the mouse inwards like I do, the rear thumb button can end up a bit out of reach for quick responses. Overall it is actually more comfortable than the mouse this replaced. However, I strongly dislike the software package. The way it runs in the background and seems to pop up randomly just gives strong bloatware vibes. I'm used to being able to change DPI on-the-fly with a button (feature of my old mouse), and I just can't seem to get used to software's DPI settings for it--it never seems right. If one game ends up needing a different DPI setting than another, there's no other way than to boot the software up to change it. For someone who doesn't like using in-game settings changes, this is annoying. I'd much rather be able to stay in game, change with a button click, test, and then repeat until I get what I want. I dislike going into menus between every DPI test, it just doesn't feel intuitive (it makes me wonder why games don't have a DPI testing mode so that I can changes more real-time). I really wish it had 2 more buttons than it has, but I knew that was going to bother me going into this purchase. The lighting is wildly annoying until you change it in the settings. I have no idea why anyone would set "high-speed rainbow" to be the default lighting. I had to unplug it to sleep the first night. With my old Corsair mouse, I could use the software to tweak the mouse, and then store profiles inside the mouse. I could then transfer the mouse to another computer or uninstall the software and nothing would be affected. I'm sure I'll go back to Corsair whenever this mouse dies. There's just nothing other than overall shape where this mouse wins out over my old (sadly retired model) mouse. Update: Scroll problem got worse and worse until I had to go back to Corsair. I really can't understate how annoying it is to have to blow air as hard as I can every time I want to use the mouse, and the scroll hasn't even fully fixable with that for last couple of months. I also feel like I wasn't harsh enough on Razr's software. Registering an account to change your mouse's settings is awful. The only thing this mouse has going for it is that it's comfortable in the hand and doesn't cost a lot. But I think there's very little value in not spending another $20 or so on an object you interact so much with. The scrollwheel issue is 100% a problem caused by using budget components.