When I first saw a picture of the Zalman FG1000 FPSGun I really didn’t know what to make of it. Could you really take a traditional mouse, add a pistol grip and transform it into a useable gaming controller?

Zalman FG1000 FPSGun

Zalman have attempted to do just that. The FG1000 FPSGun is their first venture into the gaming peripherals market, they’re normally known for super-quiet cooling accessories for PC cases.

To look at, you might be mistaken for thinking that the Zalman FG1000 FPSGun is a lightgun, allowing you to shoot at the screen as if it were a real gun. However, it isn’t, underneath the plastic that resembles an inverted gun is a traditional mouse that you keep firmly on your desk and slide around on the surface.

The Zalman FG1000 FPSGun is essentially a 2000dpi mouse with five programmable buttons, a scroll wheel and on-the-fly adjustment for the dpi. On it’s own that would be considered a reasonable specification for a gaming mouse, but the pistol grip really does make it stand out from the crowd.

The two primary buttons are mounted on the trigger, so what would be your main fire button in a FPS is right where the trigger would be on a gun. The second mouse button is placed right underneath for easy access.

The two extra buttons and mousewheel are situated at the base of the grip, so fall into easy reach of your thumb. The button for switching dpi profiles is situated on the base to stop you accidentally triggering it.

One clever feature on the Zalman FG1000 is the scroll wheel, which glows a different colour depending on your current dpi setting, from violet on the lowest settings, through blue to red for the highest dpi. The dpi can be adjusted in eight steps – 100dpi, 600, 800, 100, 1200, 1400, 1600 and 2000dpi.

Now this is obviously aimed at the FPS crowd, and reviews suggest that it’s not hugely successful as a standard Windows pointer, so you should really consider this is an additional gaming accessory rather than a replacement mouse. However, when it comes to gaming it sounds like it’s pretty good once you’ve adjusted to how it works.

At £40/$70 it’s reasonably priced when compared to other gaming mice, but is probably a little expensive when you consider it as an additional controller just for gaming. But it is unique and should certainly give you a bit more satisfaction when blasting CTs in Counter-Strike.