This gaming mouse weighs just 16 grams – but you’ll need a sacrifice

Optimum Tech has revealed its final Zeromouse mod kit, V35, and it weighs just 16 grams. In the announcement video, Ali Sayed, the creator of the mouse, compares it to a “Formula 1 car”. 

However, you’ll need to bring your own mouse. The Zeromouse V35 mod kit requires you to sacrifice a Razer Viper V2 Pro. 

Optimum’s hardware then houses it in a ludicrously barebones shell, with no scroll wheel or secondary mouse buttons. This creates a mouse that “feels like almost nothing”, according to Sayed. 

As the mouse is only 16 grams, it has better “inertia and momentum”. This lends itself well to the esports first-person shooter scene, where mice need to be light and highly responsive.

Major players in games like Counter-Strike or Overwatch will play on incredibly low sensitivity, or DPI (dots per inch). In Optimum’s video, he is playing Overwatch 2 similar to how esports players will. 

With a low DPI, it allows you to make small motions to line up a shot. You’re less likely to miss if the slightest twitch doesn’t disrupt your aim. 

It also works in reverse, where you can sweep your arm across the mouse mat, to better trail a moving target. Or, make a quick motion to take down an enemy rapidly.

This is why Optimum requires you to break open a Viper V2 Pro. Before the V3 Pro’s release, it was one of the top mice in the game.

Currently, Logitech and Final hold the records for the lightest mice on the market. However, these medium-sized peripherals are still double the V35’s weight. Sayed does mention that he believes that medium-sized mice have probably reached the lowest, and optimal design, they can. 

Sayed says that he is done trying to make it even lighter or smaller. If it shed any more grams off its svelte size, it’d begin to become a detriment.

3D printing with nylon to make an ultra-lightweight mouse

To achieve its weight, the Zeromouse had to change materials. The V34 had complaints it was too flexible, so for the V35, Optimum swapped over to 3D printing with Nylon PA 12, and used SLS (selective laser sintering). 

This differs from usual 3D printing, which usually uses filament. Instead, PA 12 is poured into a printer, and the SLS then beams into each layer of the print. 

Rather than printing scaffolds, it beams the print into the nylon, solidifying it and supporting it (the footage shown produced a massive cube).

Printing with this material requires you to then excavate it from its tomb, which is why Optimum has outsourced this part to Singapore. 

However, the results allow the Zeromouse to be designed without considering the usual physical restraints.

Zeromouse shows off new roadmap

Despite selling it, the mod kit isn’t the end of the journey. This might be the final mod kit, but Optimum is gearing up to launch a fully realized Zeromouse. 

Zeromouse/Optimum

In a brief glimpse at the roadmap for Zeromouse, the final models appear to be a heavier wireless model (25 grams) and a 15-gram wired model. Presumably, removing the battery from the Zeromouse’s current V35 model would remove weight.

There’s no launch date for the Zeromouse’s final models, but the V35 is available now. It costs $65. A Razer Viper V2 Pro will run you around $80.