What you're choosing
Your sensitivity in CS2 is not one number; it is a conversion rate. Every mouse count, one tick of movement your mouse reports, rotates your view by exactly 0.022°, Valve's m_yaw. That constant has survived from GoldSrc to CS2, which is why a setting from 1.6 still produces the same feel today: 360 ÷ 0.022 = 16 364 counts for a full turn, every time, in every Counter-Strike.
What that means in physical terms is the number everything else is derived from: cm/360, the distance your mouse must travel for one full turn. It combines sensitivity, DPI and the yaw constant in one line:
cm/360 = 2.54 × 360 ÷ (DPI × sensitivity × 0.022)
At 800 DPI and sensitivity 1.00 that is 51.95 cm, about 20.5 inches, roughly one confident arm swipe. Once a sensitivity is expressed as cm/360, the mystique drains out of it: you are just choosing how many centimeters of mousepad buy you how many degrees.
A sensitivity is a trade, not a verdict: low cm/360 buys fast turns and costs precision; high cm/360 buys precision and costs speed. Every setting is somewhere on that line.
The same feel, written four ways
Because DPI and sensitivity multiply into the same physical outcome, very different-looking settings can be identical in game. All of these are 51.95 cm/360 in CS2:
| DPI | Sensitivity | eDPI | cm/360 | Who |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 400 | 2.00 | 800 | 52.0 | - |
| 800 | 1.00 | 800 | 52.0 | - |
| 1600 | 0.50 | 800 | 52.0 | - |
| 400 | 1.90 | 760 | 54.7 | ZywOo |
| 400 | 3.09 | 1236 | 33.6 | s1mple |
Two things worth noticing. First, the top three rows feel identical in CS2 despite writing "sensitivity" as 2.00, 1.00 and 0.50, because the DPI cancels out. Second, the two pros (settings as listed on ProSettings in October 2026) both run 400 DPI but sit 470 eDPI apart: ZywOo at roughly 55 cm per turn, s1mple at roughly 34. Same game, same class of mouse and same role, and yet opposite ends of the trade. There is no "pro sensitivity". There is their sensitivity and your sensitivity.
eDPI, and the lie it tells across games
eDPI = DPI × sensitivity. 800 DPI at 1.00 is 800 eDPI, and within one game, equal eDPI means equal feel, since it is just cm/360 with the constants divided out. The problem starts when people compare eDPI across games. Valorant's yaw is 0.07, not 0.022, so 800 eDPI in Valorant is a wildly different physical speed than 800 eDPI in CS2.
To cross games you need the yaw-to-yaw ratio: sens_to = sens_from × yaw_from ÷ yaw_to. Going CS2 → Valorant: 1.00 × 0.022 ÷ 0.07 = 0.314. That's it. The full table of yaw values we use lives on the CS2 sensitivity converter, which does the arithmetic for Valorant, Apex, Overwatch 2, R6 Siege, Quake/Source and Fortnite, and shows the resulting cm/360 either way.
The converter page hands your CS2-equivalent sensitivity straight to the trainer. The range applies the same yaw 0.022 formula, so a 360° turn here is a 360° turn in CS2, with your actual settings entered in the settings drawer.
Why 400 and 800 DPI both work
DPI decides how finely your mouse samples movement: 400 DPI reports one count per 0.06 mm of travel, 1600 DPI four counts per 0.06 mm. Finer sampling sounds better, and it slightly is, but the effect is invisible next to the noise in your own hand. This is why the pro range sits at 400-800 DPI despite gaming mice running to 26,000: once eDPI is compensated, DPI is a footnote.
The one practical rule: don't crank DPI to nonsense values and don't let your DPI be 200 (some entry-level mice default low, and 200 DPI hands you pixel-thick mouse steps you can feel on small corrections). Somewhere between 400 and 1600, with your in-game sens adjusted to keep the same cm/360, is fine. If you want to change DPI and keep the feel, use the converter above to re-derive the sens.
How to pick your number
Aim training doesn't care which number you picked; it cares that you stop changing it. Muscle memory is built by repetition against a fixed input, so the goal is not finding the magic sensitivity. It is picking a defensible one and freezing it for at least a month. A defensible one, for a CS2 rifle/AWP player, usually lands somewhere around 600-1400 eDPI (39-90 cm/360). That is a wide band, deliberately. Most people who ask "what sens should I use" are already inside it.
If your current setting truly feels wrong, use symptoms instead of vibes:
- Wide flicks consistently overshoot, and you're late to close angles: you want more cm/360, so lower the sensitivity.
- You can't clear a corner without lifting, or track a strafing enemy past your mousepad edge: you want less cm/360, so raise it.
- Everything is fine, you just saw someone's config: change nothing. You were about to pay a month of adaptation for a fantasy.
Move in one step of about ten percent, keep DPI fixed while you do it, then freeze the number and run the Benchmark with it for a few weeks before judging. If a sensitivity change hasn't had a month to settle, you haven't tested it; you have just enjoyed the novelty.
Worth saying plainly: a sensitivity that feels "fast and responsive" in the first session is often just one you haven't done the work on yet. The honeymoon is not data.