Page 6: Use, Conclusion
Use
All of this extra functionality and adjustability is nice, but it would all be useless if the mouse itself wasn't a quality piece. After all, what reason would someone have to use these extra features if the mouse itself was garbage?
One shouldn't worry about that, though, as the mouse itself is quite good. The "general" mouse features all work well, and everything feels top quality. The big scroll wheel has a good surface and perfect resistance. Each scroll tick corresponds perfectly to a single scroll. The wheel is also quite capable of being "thrown," so you can quickly scroll a page. While these seem like trivial things to specifically state, you would be surprised how often mice can get the basics like this wrong.
As far the buttons go, they feel solid enough to withstand a good amount of use. Particularly notable are the Rapid Fire and MacroPro buttons. Their location makes it seem like they would be susceptible to accident pressings, but their raised design and relatively high resistance keeps it from being a problem. They all generally feel like quality buttons that will last a good while.
There are a few quirks with some of the buttons, however. The wheel click is solid and sturdy feeling, but it is somewhat prone to accidental pressings because it sometimes registers as a click when pushed to the right. Also, a couple of the buttons have a somewhat mushy feel compared to the rest of them. Specifically, the Storm Tactics key (where the mushy feeling may be intentional) and the Back button (where it probably isn't). This isn't a huge detractor, as both buttons are still responsive, but they still stuck out compared to the rest.
Testing on the mouse was done over the course of two weeks under a variety of uses ranging from gaming to some photograph editing. It was also done on a variety of surfaces, including two different types of mousepads, a couple of wooden computer desks and on a sheet of high-gloss photo paper. We were curious about the system requirements mentioned on the box, which specified that it required Windows 2000 and up for functionality. Therefore, our usage testing specifically included a laptop computer using Windows 7 Professional, a desktop computer running Windows XP Professional and Ubuntu 10.4, and a CECHAxx Sony PlayStation 3 in order to get an idea of what features would potentially be missing when the mouse wasn't connected to Windows.
Our testing found that the actual limitation doesn't seem to be related to the mouse itself. All of the mouse features seemed to work without fail on all of the systems tested on. The DPI adjustment and rapid fire functions even worked on the PS3, which was quite surprising. We weren't able to test the macro settings on the PS3, mostly due to a lack of any software to really try them with, but it shouldn't be a problem using them with the system. The conclusion that can be drawn from this is that the Windows-only limitation actually seems to stem from the software rather than the mouse, so as long as you have some Windows computer to set up the mouse the first time you use it you shouldn't have a problem using the mouse with whatever you want.
The actual testing itself made the mouse out to be quite good. The laser system was precise and it worked on all of the surfaces that it was tested on without any tracking problems. The mouse does lack weight adjustability, but as it possesses a decent mass by itself this didn't cause any problems.
That isn't to say that things went perfectly, though. First of all, testing on the laptop system put some gremlins on display. Specifically, on occasion when the mouse was plugged in (and everytime the mouse software was started), it would do something to the touchpad driver that would make the touchpad completely useless, completely decimating the scroll speed on the touchpad. The touchpad would then stay gimped until the laptop was restarted.
The other problem noticed involved the lift-off height of the mouse. While it seemed to be near as no difference to the 2mm height advertised on the packaging, when the mouse was lifted off when stationary there was a noticeable drifting of a few pixels (though how much depended on the current DPI settings) towards the bottom right. This doesn't seem to be a problem when the mouse is in motion and lifted, and it wasn't actually even noticed until the very end of our testing, but it could really be a dealbreaker for those that intended to use this mouse for really precise work. Hopefully both of these issues are ones that can be fixed in a future firmware revision.
Conclusion
The Cooler Master Storm Inferno is quite a fantastic mouse. The build quality is great, the design is clearly well thought out, the plentiful hardware features are largely OS independent and the $60 price tag is well in line with the rest of the market. Even without the included mouse software, this mouse would still be good enough for it to be recommended by ASE Labs. The power of the included software and how many facets of the mouse can be customized with it just pushes it up that much further. While it has some drawbacks of varying consequence (a few of which may be repairable with a future firmware update), and it lacks some of the features of top end gaming mice (like adjustable weights), we at ASE Labs can easily recommend the Cooler Master Storm Inferno laser gaming mouse.
ASE Labs would like to thank Cooler Master for making this review possible.
All of this extra functionality and adjustability is nice, but it would all be useless if the mouse itself wasn't a quality piece. After all, what reason would someone have to use these extra features if the mouse itself was garbage?
One shouldn't worry about that, though, as the mouse itself is quite good. The "general" mouse features all work well, and everything feels top quality. The big scroll wheel has a good surface and perfect resistance. Each scroll tick corresponds perfectly to a single scroll. The wheel is also quite capable of being "thrown," so you can quickly scroll a page. While these seem like trivial things to specifically state, you would be surprised how often mice can get the basics like this wrong.
As far the buttons go, they feel solid enough to withstand a good amount of use. Particularly notable are the Rapid Fire and MacroPro buttons. Their location makes it seem like they would be susceptible to accident pressings, but their raised design and relatively high resistance keeps it from being a problem. They all generally feel like quality buttons that will last a good while.
There are a few quirks with some of the buttons, however. The wheel click is solid and sturdy feeling, but it is somewhat prone to accidental pressings because it sometimes registers as a click when pushed to the right. Also, a couple of the buttons have a somewhat mushy feel compared to the rest of them. Specifically, the Storm Tactics key (where the mushy feeling may be intentional) and the Back button (where it probably isn't). This isn't a huge detractor, as both buttons are still responsive, but they still stuck out compared to the rest.
Testing on the mouse was done over the course of two weeks under a variety of uses ranging from gaming to some photograph editing. It was also done on a variety of surfaces, including two different types of mousepads, a couple of wooden computer desks and on a sheet of high-gloss photo paper. We were curious about the system requirements mentioned on the box, which specified that it required Windows 2000 and up for functionality. Therefore, our usage testing specifically included a laptop computer using Windows 7 Professional, a desktop computer running Windows XP Professional and Ubuntu 10.4, and a CECHAxx Sony PlayStation 3 in order to get an idea of what features would potentially be missing when the mouse wasn't connected to Windows.
Our testing found that the actual limitation doesn't seem to be related to the mouse itself. All of the mouse features seemed to work without fail on all of the systems tested on. The DPI adjustment and rapid fire functions even worked on the PS3, which was quite surprising. We weren't able to test the macro settings on the PS3, mostly due to a lack of any software to really try them with, but it shouldn't be a problem using them with the system. The conclusion that can be drawn from this is that the Windows-only limitation actually seems to stem from the software rather than the mouse, so as long as you have some Windows computer to set up the mouse the first time you use it you shouldn't have a problem using the mouse with whatever you want.
The actual testing itself made the mouse out to be quite good. The laser system was precise and it worked on all of the surfaces that it was tested on without any tracking problems. The mouse does lack weight adjustability, but as it possesses a decent mass by itself this didn't cause any problems.
That isn't to say that things went perfectly, though. First of all, testing on the laptop system put some gremlins on display. Specifically, on occasion when the mouse was plugged in (and everytime the mouse software was started), it would do something to the touchpad driver that would make the touchpad completely useless, completely decimating the scroll speed on the touchpad. The touchpad would then stay gimped until the laptop was restarted.
The other problem noticed involved the lift-off height of the mouse. While it seemed to be near as no difference to the 2mm height advertised on the packaging, when the mouse was lifted off when stationary there was a noticeable drifting of a few pixels (though how much depended on the current DPI settings) towards the bottom right. This doesn't seem to be a problem when the mouse is in motion and lifted, and it wasn't actually even noticed until the very end of our testing, but it could really be a dealbreaker for those that intended to use this mouse for really precise work. Hopefully both of these issues are ones that can be fixed in a future firmware revision.
Conclusion
The Cooler Master Storm Inferno is quite a fantastic mouse. The build quality is great, the design is clearly well thought out, the plentiful hardware features are largely OS independent and the $60 price tag is well in line with the rest of the market. Even without the included mouse software, this mouse would still be good enough for it to be recommended by ASE Labs. The power of the included software and how many facets of the mouse can be customized with it just pushes it up that much further. While it has some drawbacks of varying consequence (a few of which may be repairable with a future firmware update), and it lacks some of the features of top end gaming mice (like adjustable weights), we at ASE Labs can easily recommend the Cooler Master Storm Inferno laser gaming mouse.
ASE Labs would like to thank Cooler Master for making this review possible.