Angry Miao is known for ridiculous, over-the-top mechanical keyboard designs, but now it’s made a gaming mouse that’s, you guessed it: ridiculous and over-the-top. It’s also cool as all hell, starts at $125 on a Kickstarter preorder special ending March 17th, and may be my new favorite mouse.
The AM Infinity Mouse has a skeletonized magnesium-alloy shell that weighs just 49 grams, making it one of the lightest full-size mice on the market. Within its hollowed-out, super lightweight black chassis is a magnetic battery that can be popped out and swapped in seconds. A spare is kept charged and at the ready on the mouse’s 2.4GHz receiver. This functionality gives the mouse its name, as Angry Miao claims hot-swapping equals “infinite” battery. Just like how my fridge has infinite ice cubes, obviously.
The Infinity Mouse’s more conventional features include an 8,000Hz polling rate for minimal input latency, even with high-refresh monitors. Its PixArt PAW3950 optical sensor is capable of 30,000 DPI so you can make the mouse as ridiculously sensitive as you want. And its new TTC Orange Dot Optical V2 micro switches have a nice tactile click, sensitive enough to confidently register when pressing anywhere on the left and right mouse buttons (even up near the mouse’s center). Its forward and back buttons on the left side are see-through blue in this pre-production model, but Angry Miao says they’ll be black on final units expected to ship in June.
In addition to the 2.4GHz connectivity enabled through its RGB-illuminated dongle / battery charger, the mouse also supports Bluetooth and wired USB-C. (In wired mode without a battery, it’s just 39 grams). Angry Miao claims that when using 8,000Hz polling over 2.4GHz wireless you can get up to 17 hours of continuous use before having to swap its 340mAh battery. That’s ample time for it to recharge on the receiver. And if you bump the mouse down to 1,000Hz the estimated battery life extends to 43 hours.
I expect the most polarizing aspects of the AM Infinity Mouse to be the aesthetics and the ergonomics of its open design. The open look may not be to everyone’s liking, especially if you don’t want to deal with dust buildup on your mouse’s circuitry. While plenty of other mice have had cutouts for the sake of weight savings, they’re usually much more conservative honeycomb patterns. The Infinity Mouse leaves just the bare-minimum of metal. Angry Miao claims it pursued this design upon inspiration from the Lotus Evanora concept and late-1970s Lotus Type 79 F1 car, and it does look like a small sampling of automotive art on your desk.
But like a race car, the Infinity Mouse and its massive cutouts may not comfortably accommodate everyone. My average hands feel perfectly fine gripping the Infinity Mouse, but none of my fingers or palm touch points fall directly on an edge. If you have small hands and rest your palm harder on the base of your mouse, you may feel differently about this one’s comfort.
I love this thing. Like Angry Miao’s keyboards, it’s a striking design piece to have on your desk. But unlike its boutique mechs, the Infinity Mouse is priced much more logically. I’m no esports competitor, but I’ve used my share of quality gaming mice from the likes of Logitech, Razer, and SteelSeries — and I regularly use an older Logitech G Pro Wireless.
The Infinity Mouse has great tactile click sounds, it feels snappy and solid, and its movements on a desk mat are nice and smooth. It makes my 80g Logitech feel a little hefty by comparison, and its swappable batteries are a treat. I never have to worry about pulling a cable out to clutter up my desk while the mouse charges.
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I know you can free yourself of mouse charging woes with something like a Logitech G Powerplay (of which my mouse is actually compatible). But that Qi-based charging pad alone costs over $100 and still requires a cable stretching across your desk. The Infinity Mouse’s receiver can just discreetly hang out at the perimeter of your desk (even more so if you turn off its RGB lights) and have your fresh charge ready for you in a snap. A mouse that uses AA or AAA batteries is arguably just as hot-swappable as the Infinity Mouse and costs as little as $30. But any old mouse like that is not going to look this cool or feel this smooth. And dealing with disposable batteries is a wasteful nuisance that I personally, strongly dislike.
There’s a lot of marketing hype around high-performance mice being tuned for esports-level performance and giving you a competitive edge. The reality is, most people are not able to take full advantage of a mouse or other peripheral to make much of a difference in their KDR or how often they land the dub. But let’s be honest, it’s fun to pretend our tools enable us to perform our best, even when we know it’s overkill. The Infinity Mouse has those fancy specs like a lot of other mice out there, but it’s also got a truly unique design and some handy functionality benefits.
Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto
