If you’re a long-time PC user, you’ve probably laid your hand on some truly awful mice. None of these, surely, but maybe you touched some boxy '80s model designed for a robot, not a human hand. A ball mouse that pulled in so much hair it no longer scrolled across your mousepad. An early Bluetooth mouse that lost signal more than six inches from your PC. A gaming mouse that makes your hand sweat like you’re trying to no-scope in a Turkish bath. Hell, I once used a gaming mouse with such poorly designed sharp edges that it actually cut me. But every single one of those horrible mice is royalty next to this, the Easterntimes Tech X-08.
I have touched the worst mouse in the world, and I’m warning you so you never make the same mistake.
It doesn’t look so bad, does it? The shape seems okay, at a glance. It looks more or less like other gaming mice. I should know—I’ve used 30 or 40 of them in my life, playing PC games and testing to find the best wired gaming mouse. For the past couple months I’ve been testing wireless gaming mice, which involved buying some dirt cheap models from Amazon. This one says Easterntimes Tech X-08 on the bottom, but it's listed on Amazon as the "ZhiZhu® New USB 7 Buttons Wireless Professional Game Gaming Optical Mouse Mice 500/1000/1500/2000 DPI Adjustable for PC Laptop Desktop Notebook." Most of these cheapo mice turned out to be mediocre, or decent. And the X-08 looks like the rest of them. Can’t be too bad, right? That’s what I thought, too. Then I touched it.
It’s hard to describe the existential horror you’ll feel when you press the mushy buttons of the worst mouse ever made. Pressing the X-08’s rubbery buttons is like stepping into the Swamp of Sadness from The Neverending Story. Like Artax, your soul will sink deeper and deeper into the mush until you’re consumed by nothingness.
I didn’t know a mouse could feel like this—I’m not sure you can even call these “buttons,” although they do shockingly register as mouse clicks when the X-08 is plugged into a computer. But there’s no “click,” no feedback, no sense that this is a device ever meant to be touched by human fingers. The Amazon page claims the switches are rated for a life of “5 million cycles,” but even if the mouse really could function for that long, no man or woman alive could click this mouse five million times without being driven insane.
Turn the sound on in the embedded video below, and first you'll hear what a decent mouse sounds like when you click it. Then you'll hear what the X-08 sounds like when you press its buttons down.
If you want to be secure in the knowledge that you’ve touched the worst gaming mouse ever made, you can buy one on Amazon for $14. I don’t recommend it. You’ll lose an innocence that you’ll never get back. Everyone in the PC Gamer US office touched the mouse to experience it for themselves, perhaps not believing that it was as bad as I said. I asked them to try to describe the sensation.
“It was like pressing silly putty into a pile of mashed potatoes. It's like bubble wrap that never pops. It's a snap button made of wet sponge.” - Tyler Wilde
“It's about as satisfying to click as threading wet spaghetti down a straw.” - Tim Clark
“It felt like a younger brother trying to fit in with his older sibling's friends. It tried hard to fit in with the other mice while completely missing the point.” - Tom Marks
“The click was so terrible it made my hand jump.” - Max Barbanell
"It's like seeing a bowl of Cap'n Crunch, plunging your spoon into your mouth only to discover that the bowl was filled not with crisp, organic milk, but warm tap water." - Evan Lahti
I hope this gives you appreciation for your current gaming mouse. Maybe it’s not quite perfect. Maybe you miss a headshot from time to time. But no matter its flaws, it will never be as bad as the worst mouse in the world.
