Cougar 500M review

👤by Tony Le Bourne Comments 📅24-08-15
Performance Testing

The construction of the 500M feels solid, with well aligned lines and curves in the right places. The general feel and quality is great, giving a sense of value and good design. Setting up without the drivers is as simple as plugging in the USB connector, though to get the most out of is you will need to install the UIX driver.



Ergonomically speaking, the 500M feels very cool and natural in the hand while the textured grip at the sides gives an increased sense of control. The shape lends itself to a claw grip well, but those who use a palm grip won't feel any discomfort either. The only considerations is that it is quite slender and there is no rest for the ring finger or for those that prefer a larger, wider feeling mouse; there is however, a curve which allows your ring finger to find a comfortable position regardless. Though the side buttons are large, they are placed fairly high up, making them more convenient to hit in a palm grip, where as in a claw grip I would have preferred them to be a little lower.

The left and right mouse clicks are strong, and give a solid click feeling. These properties are shared with the excellent mouse wheel that gives smooth/tactile scrolling with perfect force needed to click, not too light and not too stiff. Finally moving to the Trigger Button, there is a large finger grove which allows you to easily pull back the trigger which by default changes DPI/mode for whichever profile you are using. It does feel like a little effort to use, especially over simple DPI buttons but its an interesting solution that works.

Testing the performance was quite interesting in regards to tracking, on standard black fabric mouse mats, the tracking was flawless, but varied greatly with different surfaces. On plain white paper there was a tendency to drift which was even worse on printed paper, creating visible jumps in the tracking as the sensor moved over writing and images. As a rule, glossy/coloured and textured surfaces tended to be worse over plain, dull surfaces and it is highly recommended that this mouse is used with plain black mouse mats which have no printed design.

In Battlefield 4, the 500M was a reliable weapon of choice, giving great performance for sniping, spraying and fragging away at your enemies. However, in DOTA 2 I felt that the mouse clicks actuation force was too high and after long 30 minute match of frantic clicking, the strain became a little uncomfortable as I could feel the muscles in my fingers and wrist fatiguing. This could be a minor factor as the switches may wear in over time but this was something that directly impacted my game play.


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