Cooler Master Storm Inferno Mouse Review - PAGE 2

The package comes with little more than the mouse and its software utilities on an installation DVD.

The Cooler Master Storm has a killer look! It's all black, with different tones. The glossy and reflective surface where the palm of the hand rests does attract fingerprints very easily, however the main button surfaces don't. The mouse wheel is quite large; one's finger can't miss it. Just below it are three buttons. One is hexagonal whereas the other two have trapezoïdal shapes. There are also two additional buttons to the left and right of the main left and right mouse buttons.

There are another three buttons at thumb's position, for a grand total of eleven. The surfaces of the sides are rubbery, including the buttons. There are some channels below the latter meant to route sweat and let air circulate.

The rodent reminds me of a hamster; it has a pretty large behind. It should be very stable, even with the roughest handling. Its feet are made of teflon so they should glide very well. The ones to the rear are pretty large and reach up to the mouse's largest width. The one up at the front is much smaller, but covers the surface from one side to another. The 4000 DPI tracking laser is right in the middle.

The USB port is gold-plated to ensure the most stable connection. The wire is sleeved in synthetic fiber for maximum robustness. There is also an interference filter, which can prevent data corruption that could potentially occur on that 2.1m long mouse cord.

Once that USB port gets plugged in, the mouse lights up. The color fits nicely with its name. On these two pictures, all LEDs are lit to their full potential, however there are three other lighting settings. The second is called "Breathing", where the front LEDs and the logo fade in and out. The third style simply disables these two. The last one is called "Rapid Fire", in which the front LEDs respond to a button push, but the logo is disabled. In every case, the mouse wheel is lit.

By default, the hexagonal button is set to switch user profiles. The onboard 128KiB of memory can store up to four profiles, each of which is assigned a color. All profiles can be customized in the utility described on next page, except the default one, which corresponds to a non-lit button.