There is no single "correct" sensitivity — only the one your hand can repeat. This mouse sensitivity guide shows you how to measure your aim in cm/360, weigh the trade-offs, and lock in a value that feels right in every game you play.
A "7" in one game and a "7" in another can feel completely different, because every game scales its sensitivity slider differently. The number that actually describes your aim is cm/360: how many centimetres you have to move the mouse to spin a full 360 degrees in-game.
cm/360 combines your DPI and your in-game sensitivity into one hardware-agnostic figure. Once you know yours, you can compare yourself to other players, reproduce your feel after a mouse swap, and carry the exact same aim between titles. A lower cm/360 number means a faster, twitchier setup; a higher number means slower and more deliberate.
You'll also see the term eDPI — effective DPI — which is simply your DPI multiplied by your in-game sensitivity. It's the quickest way to compare two players' setups at a glance and moves in the opposite direction to cm/360: a higher eDPI is a faster setup. The two numbers describe the same thing from different angles, and it's worth understanding both. Our explainer on what eDPI is and why it matters goes deeper if the relationship isn't clicking yet.
Quick definition: cm/360 is the distance your mouse travels for one full in-game turn. Lower = faster aim, less desk space. Higher = slower aim, more precision room.
Low sensitivity (high cm/360) spreads each rotation over more physical distance, so tiny tracking corrections and micro-adjustments become easier. The cost is desk space and slower flick turns. High sensitivity (low cm/360) lets you whip around instantly and play in a small area, but small targets demand a steadier hand because every millimetre counts.
Most competitive FPS players land on the lower-sensitivity side because precision tends to win duels more often than raw turn speed. That said, hero shooters and movement-heavy games sometimes reward a faster setup so you can keep pace with the action. The genre you play matters: a tactical shooter that rewards patient, precise flicks favours a slower setup, while a fast arena or hero shooter with constant repositioning can justify something quicker. If you split your time across both, it's fine to run different cm/360 values per game — just keep each one consistent.
Your grip and aiming style should drive the choice. Arm aimers anchor the wrist and move from the elbow and shoulder; they have plenty of range, so a lower sensitivity (roughly 35–50 cm/360) suits them. Wrist aimers pivot mostly from the wrist with a smaller motion envelope and usually prefer a faster setup (around 20–30 cm/360) so a full turn doesn't run off the edge of the pad. Most players blend both — use arm for big sweeps and wrist for fine adjustments — and settle somewhere in the middle.
Your desk and pad set practical limits here. If you play arm-heavy at a low sensitivity, you need a large pad and enough clear space to complete a full turn without lifting; a cramped desk will force lifts mid-flick and wreck consistency. Grip style feeds into this too — palm grips tend to favour arm movement and lower sens, while claw and fingertip grips lend themselves to quicker wrist-led aiming. Match the number to how you physically move, not to what a pro you watched happens to run.
Pro players cluster in a fairly tight band — very roughly 25–45 cm/360 for many tactical shooters — which is a useful sanity check, not a rule. If you're wildly outside it, it's worth asking why.
The biggest mistake here is impatience. Muscle memory takes days, not minutes, to adapt, so hopping between values every match guarantees you never build any. Resist the urge to copy a new number the moment you lose. A helpful discipline: only change your sensitivity between sessions, never mid-session, and keep the step small — a 10–15% adjustment is plenty. If you take nothing else from this guide, take this: a mediocre sensitivity you've mastered beats a "perfect" one you keep resetting.
Ready to dial it in? Open the free Sensitivity Calculator → Convert your cm/360 between games and lock the exact same feel everywhere you play.
Once you've found a cm/360 that works, the goal is to reproduce it everywhere so your muscle memory transfers intact. Because each game scales its slider differently, the same "sensitivity 2.0" won't give the same feel across titles — you have to convert. Enter your DPI and in-game sensitivity from the game you've dialled in, then solve for the slider value that reproduces the identical cm/360 in the new game. Our Sensitivity Calculator does the maths for you, and the walkthrough on how to convert sensitivity between games covers the edge cases, such as titles that use different measurement units or apply a scaling coefficient.
Keep your DPI fixed while you do this. DPI and in-game sensitivity multiply together, so there's no need to touch both — pick a steady DPI (800 and 1600 are popular, reliable choices) and adjust only the in-game slider to hit your target. Leaving DPI alone also keeps your Windows pointer speed and desktop feel consistent, and makes every future conversion a single-variable problem. If you're gaming at the sharp end, it's worth pairing this with the right hardware settings too — our notes on the best DPI for FPS games explain why lower, stable DPI values tend to track more cleanly.
Not sure your mouse is reporting DPI accurately? Run the DPI Analyser → to measure your true DPI first — every cm/360 calculation depends on that number being correct.