Since the release of the Razer Boomslang back in 1999, gaming mice have become nearly the only mouse you can buy. No longer are we forced to remove the ball and clear fluff off the rollers, even the most basic mouse has an optical sensor and you'd be hard pressed to find one that doesn't come with a scroll wheel or a back button.Of course that doesn't mean that all mice have incredibly high quality sensors and parts though. Many companies have attempted to leave their stamp upon the Gaming Mouse market with only a few doing so successfully.Nonetheless though it's such a lucrative marketplace that companies will continually try and create the next must have mouse. The great benefit of not having the latest and greatest is that you can always justify your average performance by blaming your tools. It's the "if I could afford a Stratocaster I'd be Hendrix" argument.Enter Zowie and the EC1 Gaming Mouse. Zowie are a small California-based company founded in 2008 that have enlisted some of the best gamers around to help design their products and so ensure that they genuinely provide what the end-user needs, rather than merely what a huge faceless corporation thinks they need.Discounting a re-release of an early Microsoft Intellimouse this is Zowies first foray into the world of Gaming Mice. Of course following the good quality of their previous products we had to take a look.