The first aspect of the Zowie FK which will likely strike you is the colour-scheme: yellow and black, although cool, are fairly rare as an off-the shelf combination right now. The black is a matte black, which will tend to be a little more resistant to fingerprints than the glossy alternative, whilst the yellow is fairly bright. Nothing wrong with that.
The shape of the FK is deliberately ambidextrous, and brings to mind classic shapes such as the old Intellimouse designs. In this instance however Zowie curved the sides inwards*, allowing you to grip and lift the mouse without the danger of pushing side buttons, increasing overall control. When lifting the weight is evenly distributed, i.e. the mouse will remain horizontal when lifting from just below the rear-most side buttons. Without additional weights Zowie had to make sure that they didn't unbalance the mouse, causing it (or more precisely the mouse cursor) to become erratic when performing mundane tasks; in this they have been eminently successful.
Mouse side-walls aren't the only feature to see a few tweaks from a traditional design. The two main buttons are slightly concave, contoured to the shape of your finger when resting on the top. The central wheel has a heavily ratcheted movement whilst also having a ridged cucumference such that it’s tactile and easy to grip. Middle-button presses are gentle and there’s no give in the wheel axis, which combined with the notched movement should make it relatively easy to use in comparison to mice with smaller wheels and more resistive clicks.
Moving to the side-buttons, all four have a very consistent actuation that’s light without being too springy. A quite shallow actuation point means that reaction times should be good, and they don’t press inwards too far either so fast repeated clicking isn’t problematic. As side buttons go they're very satisfying, and some of the best we have felt in any price bracket.
The floor is a separate piece of durable yellow plastic which is dominated by two large skates with low-friction coating. Centrally located is the sensor, with technical information such as serial number and model ID also present on the label below. To the right of the sensor is a black button, which serves as the DPI selector; a three-colour indicator LED is located slightly above.
Finally, rather than choosing a braided sheathe Zowie have chosen a soft rubber cable for the USB connection. The cable itself is therefore less stiff, exerting less force on the mouse both when resting and during gameplay for optimum stability. The trade-off may be one of durability – we would anticipate that the cable would degrade more quickly than a high quality braided design, but that shouldn’t be much of an issue for most usage patterns.
*if that's hard to envision, imagine the difference between how easy it is to lift an upturned bucket vs one that right-side up
