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Another example is the scroll wheel. Instead of having a heavy wheel, the inertia of which enables you to flick the wheel and have it spin multiple times and thus scroll a long way, or as is common nowadays, a completely free-wheeling one that doesn't click as you rotate it, the Ikari uses an old fashioned lightweight wheel that has a very pronounced click. The reason for this is that in games the scroll wheel is often used to switch between weapons, or other inventory items, so competitive gamers need to know that when they've stopped moving the scroll wheel, it's actually stopped rotating. Having a wheel move just one click more than it's supposed to could mean the difference between selecting your assault rifle or a knife, and I know which I'd rather have in a fire fight!

I must admit this was one feature that I did miss from the G9 when it came to everyday desktop work. Having a heavy wheel that you can give a good flick and it will scroll a whole page makes writing these articles and scrolling long web pages so much easier. With the Ikari the process is rather more laborious. That said, I wouldn't go back.

While I'm on the subject, the scroll wheel doesn't tilt left and right, either. Again, this is a conscious decision to omit what is for most gamers a fairly useless feature as you can't bind tilt wheel buttons to perform in-game actions, so all they really do is get in the way. As it happens I think they're completely pointless anyway because you already have backwards and forwards buttons on mice so why would you need another two?

The final omission is that of any flashy lights either on, under, or in the mouse. Obviously you have the laser underneath and there is a couple of lights on the side that indicate which CPI setting you're using - something I'll come back to later - but there's no glowing logos or scroll wheels like you get on Razer mice. Again, if it's not needed, it's not used.

Moving on from what the Ikari doesn't have and looking at was it does, the most obvious place to start is with the sensor. When some representatives from Steel Series visited our offices a few weeks ago, they were at pains to point out how revolutionary the new laser sensor was on their upcoming mouse. I won't bore you with the details but its ability to sample at up to 40,000 times a second means it's fast enough to cope with even the most twitchy of gamers and, being a laser it can track on just about any surface you can think of. Certainly in my experience it performed flawlessly both during gaming sessions and doing desktop work.

However, interestingly Steel Series actually recommend the optical version of the Ikari, rather than the laser, for FPS gaming as it can cope with extremely fast mouse movement slightly better. They recommend the laser for MMO/RTS gamers who use the mouse with a high sensitivity setting but still require a high degree of accuracy. Personally I didn't notice any problems with the laser version while playing FPS games but then I'm not a pro and I'll have to take their word on that. As for the laser being recommended for MMO/RTS gamers, I think that's more a case of finding a problem to fit the solution. In actual fact, the overwhelming reason for getting a laser mouse, and indeed the main reason why they were invented, is because they are much better at tracking on shiny surfaces that normal optical mouse can't cope with. Suffice to say though, if you use a proper mouse mat, either the laser or standard optical Ikari's will serve you fine.

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