Genius has mostly been an OEM manufacturer of peripherals and has been relatively recently pushing their new line of gaming and enthusiast peripherals. Their new mouse dubbed the Genius Glia Professional was named an International CES Innovations 2013 Design and Engineering Awards Honoree. It has been loaded with all the goodies you’d expect from a quality gaming mouse and at its $72.70 price tag on Amazon suggests you’re going to get a lot. Let’s look at its features:
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On the exterior I found the mouse to be very sharp looking with the overall design to be very aggressive and sleek almost like alien sci-fi helmet or the front end of a Lamborghini Aventador with neon lights. The internal LEDs on the mouse can be adjusted and customized into any color you so choose via Genius software. The braided cable is a nice touch along with the rough textured rubber grip which is comfortable, durable, and it would seem impossible to lose your grip on it or wear it out. I noticed where the cord enters the mouse there is a bit of protrusion from the cable that makes a tiny bit of wobble if you use a hard/firm mouse pad. The removable weights are always a must have for a gaming mouse for those who want to fine tune your feel, and the storage case is a bonus. Genius is using a symmetrical ambidextrous design for the mouse, which works well enough except for the thumb buttons on the left side which a left would need to somehow palm to use it. Otherwise the buttons for a right handed person are easily reachable, and I’m sorry lefties, maybe next time.
In terms of ergonomics it was a love it or hate it for those who tried it out. For myself I really like the overall comfort of it, and gamed all day without any problems. I had a hard time with getting to the sensitivity button quickly at first as it’s quite awkward with the angle to roll back into the button. The buttons M1 through M4 were super easy to reach though and have enough tactile separation to distinguish between the two. Some issues that arose occurred when I had other people to try it out. People had bigger hands found it too small to reach a lot of the extra buttons and had cramping for prolong periods of time. People who had smaller hands tended to grip the mouse too tightly and had some of the sharper edges on the side dig in after a long time. I feel this mouse is good is for people with medium size hands who grip with a claw style grip, but it will take practice to grip it that way and reach all the 12 buttons quickly. Otherwise, I would do yourself a favor and try it out if you can before you order one.
The software was easy to use and has gone though a couple of updates since I’ve had it concerning some issues others have had. I personally didn’t experience any issues with the software and customizing lights and button preferences and I was quite pleased at how the onboard memory saved my settings when switching computers. The sensitivity was excellent and the defaults were evenly spaced, and are customizable. Macro recording was simple and fine tuning sequences are straightforward and are effective. Genius also includes “angle snapping” software, which is supposed to smooth the jerky movements of those late night energy drink FPS marathoners. I found it to be subtle, but it does seem to smooth out mouse movements similar to the smoothing software in games. I’d rather just put the weights in to “dull” my jerky movements. Most people will prefer it turned off, as did I, but it was interesting to see it used nonetheless. Overall, Genius put in solid software for this mouse.
If you find this mouse comfortable I believe it is one of the best claw mice out on the market now for higher end bang for buck. I found its shape and size great for FPS and RTS, even though it was touted as a MMO mouse. I would compare the performance and accuracy to that of the Kone I tested a while back in games, just stripped down. I find the price for the mouse to a decent deal and the 6 months I’ve spent gaming with it to be a pleasant experience. There are few, if any, mice out there that offer this level of performance and features for this low of a price. It will be fun to see Genius rolling out new items in the future and add pressure to the other companies out in the competitive gaming market.
Genius Gila Gaming Mouse – $72.70
