I still remember that one meeting at the cable company which was
going to do the assembly for the cable of the Zaunkoenig M2K. The
cable company CEO took the M2K cable, held it up in the air and
said: «Mr. Schmalzried, do not get me wrong. This is a nice cable
and it is a tricky cable. But it is not exactly space-grade. We will
be able to work with this no problem.»
Once upon a time all the birds of the world decided to find out who
among them should be their king. After intensely debating the matter
they finally decided for a flying contest (big surprise, I know).
Whichever bird could fly the highest, would be king.
For the Zaunkoenig M2K we infamously used a STM32F7 microcontroller
unit (MCU) so powerful that it could be used for military drones, in
order to pull off 8,000 hertz. For our two upcoming gaming mice, the
Zaunkoenig M2S as well as the Zaunkoenig M3K, this military drone
MCU was no longer an option. In 2023 the world market for this MCU
is even more dried up than it was back in 2021. And the prices are
even higher. Back in 2021 we paid $10 for one of these MCUs. Today
that price is at a staggering $120 per MCU.
StarCraft is a simple game. You harvest resources and then use those
resources to build an army and defeat your opponent. The bigger your
army, the more supply depots (as a Terran), pylons (as a Protoss) or
overlords (as a Zerg) you need. Increasing supply in StarCraft is
easy to do; every supply depot/pylon/overlord only takes a few
seconds to finish and costs only a hundred minerals. When you forget
to increase your supply in time you cannot increase the size of your
army: you are caught in a supply block.
Easily my favorite review of the Zaunkoenig M2K thus far happened by
total chance. After coming across the M2K in a gaming setup review,
Ali from Optimum Tech showed no hesitation and bought the M2K right
there on the spot. About six weeks later he then posted his review:
«World's Lightest Gaming Mouse (insane)»
I was reading through the comment section of the TechPowerUp test
for the Zaunkoenig M2K and got stuck on the following post:
On August the 20th of 1980 Reinhold Messner climbed Mount Everest
with just 60 kilograms of equipment. By himself.
We strongly believe that it should be the goal of every gaming mouse
to vanish when playing a game. What we mean by that is the
following: when you are using a gaming mouse it should not feel like
you are using a tool with your hand. It should instead feel like
your gaming mouse is your hand. Only when you do not feel like you
are using a tool can you achieve complete connectedness with your
game of choice.
I recently got an email from someone using the Zaunkoenig M2K
primarily for work instead of gaming. He made an interesting
observation:
Equipping the M2K with driverless 8,000 hertz almost did not
happen, courtesy of the 2020–2021 global chip shortage. You are
probably wondering what military drones have to do with all of this,
but I will get to that later.
Design and manufacturing of carbon fiber parts is tightly
integrated at Zaunkoenig, which comes hardly as a surprise since it
is essentially one and the same person. Although I have manufactured
a fair bit of carbon fiber parts in the last two to three years, for
this new production process I had to consult a few people that I
consider to be among the very best Germany has to offer when it
comes to carbon fiber knowhow.
After many years of development, the Zaunkoenig M1K got revealed in
June of 2019. Almost two years later, in March of 2021, we revealed
the Zaunkoenig M2K, the successor of the M1K. Much has changed. The
following is an overview over both the M1K as well as the M2K.
Two days ago, on March 29, we were in the German version of «Shark
Tank». The shows name in Germany is «Die Höhle der Löwen» and the
concept is very simple: entrepreneurs pitch their business to a
small group of investors. As you maybe know «Zaunkoenig» is the name
of a very tiny bird that likes running through the undergrowth as if
it were a mouse. Neither, small birds or mice, are particularly fond
of cats. And lions basically are big cats. Sow how did that all work
out for us?
The last Zaunkoenig M1K batch sold out in February of 2021. After
having made five hundred M1Ks (the highest serial number out there
is 516, by the way) we decided to stop M1K production. So – what is
next for Zaunkoenig?
Back in July of 2020 we wrote a Blog article about feedback from
actual Zaunkoenig M1K buyers. The general theme of the article was
that the M1K was really good for aiming, but since it was so
puristic it was not for everyone. In fact, we ended the article with
a quote claiming that the M1K, with its lack of a scroll wheel, was
so puristic that it only made sense for five percent of gamers.
When we launched our Kickstarter back in 2019 we were not quite
sure what to expect. The Zaunkoenig M1K not only was the most
spartanic gaming mouse ever made, it also was not exactly cheap.
What if only ten people backed our Kickstarter? Luckily that fear
quickly evaporated when we reached our Kickstarter funding goal of
$10,000 in just two minutes. Our Kickstarter barely had started and
our goal already had shifted from «proving demand for the M1K» to
«actually making hundreds of M1Ks». This was the start of our very
own production hell.
Logitech is not exactly a niche gaming mouse brand. They are the
worlds biggest gaming mouse producer and about as mainstream as it
can get. That is why when Logitech announces a new flagship gaming
mouse it has significant repercussions for the gaming mouse industry
as a whole. And just two weeks ago Logitech announced the «Pro X
Superlight» in which the RGB LEDs were removed in order to save
weight. Is this the beginning of the end of RGB LED gaming mice?
It finally has happened: The Zaunkoenig M1K no longer is the only
dedicated Fingertip Grip gaming mouse in town. Chinese gaming mouse
company G-Wolves has announced the «HSK», which already is being
called «The poor man’s Zaunkoenig». We have gotten a bunch of emails
asking as whether we would be mad at G-Wolves for «being inspired»
by the M1K. We are not.
Traditional gaming mouse marketing is all about «moar CPI is
better». For a while however it seemed that the CPI craze was
cooling down and actually important gaming mouse attributes
like low weight and low input lag would be replacing it. But then,
in October of 2019, Razer announced a 20,000 CPI sensor and in
September of 2020 Logitech upped the ante and announced a 25,600 CPI
sensor. Enough already?
In June of 2019, when the first Zaunkoenig M1K prototype was
revealed, its weight on the scale showed 23 grams. Henceforth, the
M1K became known as «the 23 g mouse». Little did we know at that
time if we would actually be able to reliably reproduce the weight
of the M1K precisely to 23 grams. Especially the carbon fiber
production was a big unknown. We also weren’t sure if we needed to
do some minor design changes or not. Today, a couple hundred M1Ks
into production, we have a better idea of how things come (weigh)
together. For those who are curious as to what weighs what in the
M1K, here we go.
While the Zaunkoenig M1K has been well received by professional
Youtube mouse reviewers Beardedbob, BT and Menismyforte all the way
back in September 2019, we were anticipating the feedback of our
Kickstarter and Indiegogo backers just as much.
Our Kickstarter went live on September 19, 2019. We offered 333 M1K
and today, on June 24, 2020, the last of these 333 M1K was bought on
Indiegogo. So – whats next for Zaunkoenig?
The first time I glanced through the printed out Kickstarter
shipping labels and came accross «Åland Islands» as well as
«Bouvet Island» I thought to myself: «Awesome, even people
on islands want the M1K.»
I still remember the day when I decided to play StarCraft
competitively. The year was 2001 and I attended my first big LAN
party called «Dimensions». Competing for the first prize in the
StarCraft tournament were three legendary players: [pG]Korn from
Germany, NTT from the Netherlands and ElkY from France.
Back in February I boldly posted an update on Kickstarter stating
that Corona could not affect M1K production. Back then I thought
that Corona was limited to China. And because at Zaunkoenig we do
not produce in China, but in Germany, Corona could not affect M1K
production. Right?
We are currently in the midst of putting together lots of M1K for
our Kickstarter and Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign. So this is a
good opportunity to talk about quality control at Zaunkoenig.
The printed circuit board (PCB) of a gaming mouse is what makes a
gaming mouse tick. You can compare it to the motherboard of your
gaming PC. Our goal for the PCB of the Zaunkoenig M1K was to make
the lightest gaming mouse PCB ever, because when you want to make
the worlds lightest gaming mouse you have to look at every single
component of the mouse.
The word «design» is among the most misused words in the English
language. Most use it to describe how something looks. Design is
about more than just looks however: it is about the substance of
things. The Tesla Cybertruck drives this point home very clearly.
Ever since Tt eSPORTS first released a gaming mouse with speed
holes all the way back in 2014 (who do you think pioneered speed
holes in gaming mice?), followed by Mad Catz in 2015, many other
copy catz have followed suit. Why though?
Long before we designed and produced our own printed circuit boards
(PCBs), we were 3D printing custom designed mouse shells. Back in
the day, we ripped apart existing gaming mice, discarded the plastic
shell but put the PCBs into our own shells. That is an easier and
cheaper way to mod a mouse as compared to starting off by
manufacturing a custom designed PCB. In the past seven years I have
printed hundreds upon hundreds of mouse shells. This article is the
distillation of what I learned along the way.
On September 25 our Kickstarter campaign for the Zaunkoenig M1K
went live. Our funding goal was $10,000. We achieved this goal in
two minutes.
We received a lot of mails asking us about carbon fiber. So, let’s
talk carbon fiber. What’s the process, how do you do it and why is
it so difficult and time consuming to produce?
The firmware for our gaming mice firmly stands on three pillars:
self-sufficiency, open-source and ultra low latency. Read on to find
out why we decided on these three pillars.
The above meme is what a Reddit user posted as a reaction to the
first public picture of a Zaunkoenig M1K prototype in the wild. I
think it sums up the M1K pretty well.
Back in 1998 I was fifteen years old and obsessed with two things:
StarCraft and mice. StarCraft is an insanely demanding game when it
comes to mechanics. Just moving your army across the map is harder
than most eSports, as Artosis likes to say. I quickly realized: the
mouse was the most important piece of equipment for StarCraft. This
realization pretty quickly developed into my second obsession: mice.
And it ultimately resulted in the founding of Zaunkoenig, together
with my brother Dominik, over a decade later.
A good gaming mouse cable has to be good at a couple of things. The
four most important areas in my opinion are: flexibility, slickness,
low weight and durability. Spoiler alert: a gaming mouse cable
should not be braided.
In our blog post about the optimal weight of a gaming mouse we
formulated the hypothesis that the ideal weight of a gaming mouse is
«zero grams». Actually engineering a zero gram mouse though
is heavy going for anyone not named Tony Stark or Elon Musk. However
we can get pretty close to zero by using a material some might
consider overkill for a gaming mouse: carbon fiber.
The majority of current gaming mice are made for Palm Grip first,
Claw Grip second and sometimes Fingertip Grip third. It is
unsurprising that these mice are not optimal for Fingertip Grip. The
optimal Fingertip Grip mouse needs to be developed only for
Fingertip Grip. The following are our thoughts on such a dedicated
Fingertip Grip design.
As of 2019 Palm Grip and Claw Grip are the two most commonly
utilized gripping techniques for gaming mice. Hence the following
hypothesis will step on a lot of toes: Fingertip Grip is far
superior to Palm Grip and Claw Grip. What follows is a bunch of
arguments supporting this claim.
When it comes to selecting a gaming mouse too many just look at the
sensor or the number of buttons. One of the most important aspects
of a gaming mouse however is frequently ignored: its
weight. But what is the optimal weight of a gaming
mouse?