I've found a nifty gaming mouse comparison tool that's the next best thing for communicating hand-feel, beyond sticking my mitts straight through the monitor
They say comparison is the thief of joy—but I bet you anything 'they' just haven't seen a really nicely laid out comparison website.
Case in point is EloShapes.com, a website for comparing mice and mousepads in terms of pricing, features, and—you guessed it—shapes. It's not always easy to get the best sense of hand-feel before buying PC peripherals (beyond reading PC Gamer's own exquisite hardware reviews, of course), so Elo Shapes takes a visual approach to getting that across.
It's a not completely dissimilar approach to SizeAll.com, another comparison website that lets you properly compare the physical size of different gadgets to scale. But right below Elo Shapes' effective visual comparison is the really good stuff: an easy-to-parse list of key features for each mouse, comparing polling rates, sensors, switches, and more.
By way of a quick demonstration, here's a comparison of the two gaming mice I use every week, the Razer DeathAdder V3 HyperSpeed versus the Glorious O 2 Pro. The silhouette outline of each gaming mouse is laid out, one on top of the other, alongside each one's dimensions to communicate their most obvious differences effectively at a glance.
I'm hardly surprised to see in black and white that the Razer squeaker is the smaller and lighter mouse of the two I use regularly.
What's more, if my beloved Hyperspeed were to ever warp out of existence, Elo Shapes offers a 'Find Similar' feature that lists gaming mice with both comparable profiles and specs. Better yet, it's all ranked from 'Same shape,' and 'Very similar,' all the way down to 'Slightly Similar'. That said, beyond the really obvious inclusions of the Razer Viper Pro SE and the Viper V3 HyperSpeed, I can't say a whole lot of recognisable names were jumping out at me.
As for the mousepad side of things, I noticed there's no comparison entry for the SteelSeries QCK Performance. When it comes to the best mouse pads for gaming, this is our top pick overall, so it's definitely a notable omission. While this isn't yet the most robust comparison tool for mousepads, I'll definitely be scrolling back for Elo Shapes' slick visual comparisons for gaming mice.