by 
When I first saw this wild mouse I knew I had to have it. Styled like an old Nintendo controller, the mouse features an arresting design that will definitely turn heads at the cybercafe.
I headed over to the 8BitDo product page, paid my $25, and waited.
It arrived.
But I doubt I’ll ever use it.
This thing is pretty bad. It’s a super-light mouse with an optical sensor, two top buttons, and a cross-style set of buttons on the left side. It’s about as big as a traditional gaming mouse but the hard edges on both sides and the top are ergonomically horrible while you’ll find yourself hunting for the left and right buttons because they are so small. A tiny scroll-spot – basically a point in the top edge that senses your finger – lets you scroll, albeit poorly.
From there you get stuttering performance, poor scrolling, and really annoying button placement. They could have added touch-sensitive spots and left the actual buttons as decoration but instead, you get something that neither works well or pleasant to use.
Finally, you have to use a dongle to connect it to your laptop or PC, leaving many USB-C users in a lurch. Don’t you dare leave your adapter at home if you depend on this mouse as a daily driver.
The mouse itself is a cute little bugger and if you can get over the performance problems then, by all means, plug it in for a while. Otherwise, like so much stuff on the Internet, I recommend you muse at buying this and imagine a product that actually works without ever putting down your credit card for this particular model. No matter how much you want it to be a good mouse, it isn’t.
