What began as an idle afternoon distraction on Amazon has turned into what one PC Gamer writer is now calling the most scientifically rigorous evaluation of gaming mice ever attempted. Armed with little more than a spreadsheet, a calculator and a self-described obsession with rodents, our colleague Dave stumbled across a bizarre price-to-ounce metric in an Amazon listing and could not stop thinking about it. The result is a sprawling, entirely unofficial ranking that attempts to answer the question nobody had asked before: which gaming mouse gives you the most grams for your money?
The whole thing started when Dave noticed an Amazon product page calculating price relative to weight rather than full cost, a trick commonly used in supermarkets to compare pack sizes. It raised an obvious if slightly absurd question about whether that same logic could be applied to gaming mice. Rather than simply shrugging it off, the writer decided to run with it and build out a proper methodology around what they have now named the PC Gamer price-to-weight-to-value-to-quality score, affectionately dubbed the “James score” after its creator.
A method built on pure overkill
The writer was quick to acknowledge that valuing mice by weight relative to cost is inherently flawed. It naturally favours cheap but heavy mice while punishing ultralight designs, and it arguably tells you less about whether a mouse is actually worth buying than the price tag alone. But rather than let those caveats stop the research, they doubled down with what they openly described as “unadulterated overkill for science.”
The resulting rubric combines two separate scores that are then averaged together. The first is a straightforward price-to-weight ratio: the weight of each mouse paired against its MSRP to produce a grams-per-dollar figure. Where mice came in slightly different weights, such as the one-gram difference between the SteelSeries Rival Pro white and black models, the lowest available figure was used. Every pick was then plotted on a scale, with the bottom-ranked mouse earning 100% and the top of the opposite end receiving zero.
The combination of these two gets you what I am tentatively calling the PC Gamer price-to-weight-to-value-to-quality score, or the James score for short. Catchy name, I know.
PC Gamer writer
To complete the scoring process, the difference between the highest- and lowest-value mouse was divided by 100 to establish a single percent value of 0.034, which was then used as the unit for measuring every other entry against each end of the scale. The second half of the equation pulled in PC Gamer’s own review score to account for quality, meaning the study could only include mice that had already been personally tested and reviewed by the team.
The budget mice win after all
Acknowledging that holding the data back to reviewed mice alone is a limitation, the writer pressed on with the final numbers. The outcome placed one particular mouse at the very top of the James score table, earning it the title of best value according to this peculiar metric. In a twist of good timing, that same mouse had recently been recommended by the publication as an outstanding pick for its category.
Second place went to another solidly built budget option, which also happens to be recognised as one of the best gaming mice overall, while joint third was shared between two different Mchose mice. The writer noted that the ranking ran counter to a broader industry trend in which many gamers now chase the lightest possible mouse and are happy to pay extra for it.
Rather than proving how silly the weight-to-gram ratio is, as originally hoped, the analysis instead confirmed that solidly built budget mice offer the best value. The writer concluded with a tongue-in-cheek nod to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, thanking him before noting that most people would likely agree with the conclusion anyway.
Looking ahead
The James score remains an unofficial and deliberately overengineered exercise rather than a formal buying guide, but it has already generated plenty of amusement across the community. Whether readers take its conclusions seriously or simply enjoy the sheer effort behind them, one thing is clear: once you start ranking gaming mice by grams per dollar, there is no going back.
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