A gaming mouse box prints maybe eight nouns — sensitivity, max speed, max acceleration, resolution accuracy, report rate, lift-off distance, switch type, weight — and most of them arrive with no definition attached. The number is the whole argument; the conditions it was measured under are not printed. So this piece takes two current spec sheets, the Razer Viper V3 Pro and the Logitech G PRO X SUPERLIGHT 2 SE, and reads them against the documents that actually define the units: the USB-IF HID class definition for the polling interval, plus reference material on CPI, optical-sensor tracking limits and contact bounce.
What it does not do is re-measure the input chain. End-to-End Input Lag: Monitor Outweighs Mouse Polling already walks the eight stages from click to photon with measured numbers. This is the other half of that question: what each printed figure is, what it controls, and which ones cannot be checked from the box at all.
What this covers: the vocabulary on a gaming mouse spec sheet — CPI and DPI, report rate, lift-off distance, IPS, the G figure, debounce — each traced to the page that defines it, with two real spec sheets as the working comparison. Why it matters: every one of these numbers is a purchasing argument, and only about half of them are defined well enough to argue about. Knowing which half is the difference between buying a sensor and buying a slogan. Who should care: anyone choosing between two mice on paper, and anyone who has moved a lift-off slider in the vendor software without knowing what it changes.
The box, term by term
| Term on the box | What it measures | Where the definition actually lives | What it changes in play |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sensitivity / CPI / DPI | Steps the mouse reports per inch of physical travel | Reference definition for CPI; both vendors print “DPI” | How far the cursor or camera moves per inch of hand travel |
| Report rate / polling rate | How often the host asks the mouse for a new report | HID 1.11 endpoint descriptor, expressed in milliseconds | The wait between two consecutive reports |
| Lift-off distance (LOD) | Height at which tracking stops, and the height at which it resumes | Reference definition; both vendors expose it as a setting | Lift-and-reposition behaviour with a low-sensitivity grip |
| Max speed (IPS) | Surface speed the sensor still tracks | Vendor spec sheets only | A ceiling on the sensor, not a description of your aim |
| Max acceleration (G) | Acceleration the sensor tolerates before tracking degrades | Vendor spec sheets only | Same — a ceiling, with no stated distance or error tolerance |
| Resolution accuracy | Undefined on the page that prints it | Vendor only | Unconfirmed |
| Debounce | The wait a switch needs before a press counts as one press | Contact-bounce definition; one vendor prints “no debounce delay” | Whether a click registers once, twice, or late |
CPI and DPI are the same dial
This is the least mysterious term on the box and the most mislabelled. Reference material states the industry convention plainly: mouse sensitivity is “often measured in terms of counts per inch (CPI), commonly expressed as dots per inch (DPI) — the number of steps the mouse will report when it moves one inch.” The same source is blunt about the name: “DPI and CPI are the same values that refer to the mouse’s sensitivity. DPI is a misnomer used in the gaming world, and many manufacturers use it to refer to CPI, counts per inch.”
Both vendors fetched here print DPI, which fits that description. Razer’s spec table reads “Sensitivity (DPI): 35,000”. Logitech’s feature copy reads “up to 44,000 DPI” alongside a HERO 2 sensor. Neither page uses the string CPI, so on a spec sheet the two names are not interchangeable in practice — CPI is the precise term, DPI is the term you will actually see.
Two details on those pages matter more than the headline figure. First, the factory steps: Razer lists them as “400, 800, 1600 (default), 3200, and 6400”, which is a range most players never leave. Second, granularity below the preset — Razer advertises “single DPI step increments”, and a “Sensitivity Matcher” that lets you “precisely port over the DPI settings of your current mouse”. Logitech’s calibration copy says the same job can be done with sensitivity settings synced from another mouse through G HUB.
The part the box cannot tell you: the operating system multiplies whatever the sensor reports. As the reference material puts it, “operating system and application software can adjust the mouse sensitivity, making the cursor move faster or slower than its CPI.” That is why two players on identical 1,600 DPI settings can have completely different aim, and why a sensitivity port between mice is worth doing rather than eyeballing.
Report rate: the one number with a formal definition
Polling rate, report rate and polling interval all describe the same thing, and unlike most of this page it has a written definition — in the HID class definition’s endpoint descriptor, where the bInterval field is described as “Interval for polling endpoint for data transfers. Expressed in milliseconds.” The same document notes that “input type reports are also sent at the polling rate via the Interrupt In pipe.”
So the rate and the interval are reciprocals, and the arithmetic is ordinary: 1,000 Hz is a report every 1 ms, and 8,000 Hz is a report every 0.125 ms.
| Printed rate | Interval between reports | How the two pages reached it |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 Hz (1 kHz) | 1 ms | Logitech’s default: “LIGHTSPEED wireless at 1 kHz report rate” |
| 8,000 Hz (8 kHz) | 0.125 ms | Razer: “RAZER HYPERPOLLING 8000 HZ TECHNOLOGY”, made possible with the HyperPolling Wireless Dongle |
| 8,000 Hz (8 kHz) | 0.125 ms | Logitech: “upgrade to the PRO LIGHTSPEED receiver (sold separately) to get up to 8 kHz report rate” |
The two pages describe the receiver differently. Razer’s spec table prints “Up to 8000 Hz with the included HyperPolling Wireless Dongle”, so its top rate ships in the box. Logitech’s is the one that is not the out-of-box state: “upgrade to the PRO LIGHTSPEED receiver (sold separately) to get up to 8 kHz report rate”, on a mouse whose own description quotes 1 kHz. Razer’s support answer for verifying the number adds a condition of its own — plug “the HyperPolling Wireless Dongle directly to an available USB port on your PC, close background programs and move your mouse in a circular motion” while the test runs.
What is genuinely unconfirmed here: the HID document words the endpoint interval in whole milliseconds, and neither vendor page explains how a 0.125 ms rate is expressed beneath that wording. Treat the sub-millisecond mechanism as vendor-specific and undocumented in either source. What is documented is the vendor’s own framing of the benefit — Razer describes HyperPolling as “further boosting responsiveness and ensuring better signal integrity”, and its separate Motion Sync feature as something that “syncs the mouse signals to your PC intervals for the most consistent tracking.” That is a claim about consistency, not about a measured reduction in click-to-photon time. The measured version of that argument belongs to the input-lag piece linked above, and it lands somewhere other than the mouse.
Lift-off distance: the setting that changes how you play
Lift-off distance — LOD, in the reference literature’s own abbreviation, where high-performance sensors are described as having “configurable lift-off distance (LOD) settings” — is the height at which the sensor stops reporting movement as you raise the mouse, and the counterpart height at which it resumes when you set it back down.
The two pages approach it differently, and the difference is instructive. Razer frames it as a range: “Individually set a lift-off and landing distance from up to 26 levels,” under a feature it calls Asymmetric Cut-off. It also lists Smart Tracking, which “auto-calibrates to maintain a consistent lift-off distance on all surfaces.” Logitech frames it as calibration: “Precise sensor calibration enables independent, precise adjustment for X and Y axes, adjustable lift off tolerance to match your grip and movement.”
Razer’s wording is the more useful model even if you never buy the mouse, because it names both halves. Lift-off is only half the setting; the landing height is the other half, and on a low-sensitivity player who re-centres the mouse several times per engagement, the landing height is the one that shows up as the camera twitching when the mouse touches down.
What neither page gives you is a lift-off distance in millimetres, and neither describes the surface used to measure it. If a review quotes LOD in millimetres, that number came from the reviewer’s own measurement, not the manufacturer’s spec sheet.
IPS, the G figure, and the ceiling problem
These two are printed side by side on both pages and they behave identically: they describe what the sensor can survive, not what your hand does.
Razer’s table reads “Max Speed (IPS): 750” and “Max Acceleration (G): 70”. Logitech’s copy reads “tracking over 888+ IPS, 80 G, and up to 44,000 DPI”, while the spec table on the same page reads “>88 G (Tested on Logitech G640 Gaming Mouse Pad)” — two G figures on one page, 80 in the copy and 88 in the table. The reference material on optical sensors puts high-performance parts at “tracking speeds exceeding 650 in/s (17 m/s)” with “accelerations of up to 50G” — a useful reference point, because it shows both shipping mice are quoting figures above that band and that the band itself is measured in the same units.
The problem is what the numbers do not carry. Razer states neither surface nor tolerance; Logitech names the G640 pad it tested both maxima on, and still omits a distance and an error tolerance, so a 750 IPS figure and an 888+ IPS figure are not strictly comparable to each other even though they sit in the same table. And no fetched page claims a play consequence for either figure, so neither is worth a purchase decision on its own.
The word “acceleration” is where spec sheets quietly mislead, because it names two unrelated things. The G figure is a limit on how hard the sensor can be accelerated before it stops tracking correctly. Pointer acceleration is a software behaviour in the OS or game layer, where — in the reference description — “acceleration software detects fast movement, and moves the pointer significantly faster in proportion than for slow mouse motion.” Razer’s own answer on how to improve accuracy points at the second one: disable “Enhance pointer precision” in Windows mouse settings, because “this feature can affect mouse sensitivity.”
Debounce, and why an optical switch page mentions it
Debounce is the term on the box that does not belong to the sensor at all. Contact bounce — “also called chatter” — is “a common problem with mechanical switches, relays and battery contacts”, where “when the contacts strike together, their momentum and elasticity act together to cause them to bounce apart one or more times before making steady contact.” A bouncing contact reads as a burst of presses rather than one clean transition, and the standard fix is sampling: “multiple samples of the contact state can be taken at a low rate and examined for a steady sequence, so that contacts can settle before the contact level is considered reliable and acted upon.” That sampling window is the debounce delay.
That is exactly why switch type and debounce appear together on a mouse spec sheet. Razer’s Gen-3 optical switch line reads “90-million click lifecycle with 0.2 ms actuation and no debounce delay.” Read it carefully: the 0.2 ms is an actuation figure for the switch, and “no debounce delay” is a claim about the absence of the sampling wait, not a click-to-report latency measurement. The Logitech page fetched for this piece prints LIGHTFORCE switches but no debounce figure at all, so a like-for-like comparison between the two cannot be made from the sources — that stays unconfirmed.
Which numbers are marketing
Sorting the two spec sheets by how much definition backs each figure is the whole exercise, and it produces three tiers.
| Tier | Figures | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Defined well enough to compare | Report rate / interval, CPI-DPI steps and presets, lift-off and landing settings | Units and behaviour are stated in a spec or on the page; the setting is visible in software |
| Defined in principle, unverifiable from the box | Max speed (IPS), max acceleration (G) | Sensor ceilings. Logitech prints both against a named test pad; neither page gives a distance or an error tolerance |
| Not defined on the page | “Resolution accuracy: 99.8%” | Razer prints the figure with no test description; no fetched source explains what is being measured against what |
The 99.8% line is the clearest example of the third tier. It sits in the same four-line spec block as sensitivity, speed and acceleration, formatted identically, and it is the one number on the page with no stated meaning. The same caution applies to comparing 35,000 DPI with 44,000 DPI, or 750 IPS with 888+ IPS: those are maximums from two manufacturers, printed without a distance or an error tolerance, and the reference material’s own figure for high-performance sensors sits below both.
A practical reading order for any mouse spec sheet: check the report rate at the state you will actually run it in — including whether the top rate needs a receiver the page lists separately — then the CPI steps and whether your current sensitivity can be matched, then whether lift-off is adjustable at all and whether lift-off and landing can be set apart, then switch type. The IPS and G figures and the resolution-accuracy percentage can be read last, because nothing on the pages that print them tells you what they cost you in play.