Cooler Master Spawn Review

Introduction: 

Have you been looking for a new mouse for your new gaming setup? Maybe you have been using the same mouse for quite some time and you are looking for a change? Maybe the mouse that you have now is not cutting it any more? Whatever your reasoning for a new mouse may be, if you are the type of gamer that likes to hold on to your mouse for dear life when you are getting shot at or you are in a very intense gaming session, you may want to check out the Cooler Master's CM Storm Spawn gaming mouse. Not only is this mouse specifically designed to give you the best support while you are gripping it, it has some pretty nice looking features as well. I know I am pretty interested to see how well this mouse is going to do against the competition, but also to see how it looks, so let's get started.

Closer Look: 

The packaging for the CM Storm Spawn is quite interesting, while also being very informative. The front of the package has a large picture of the mouse itself in the center and the top left hand corner features the CM Storm text and logo. Under the CM Storm logo is the tagline "Arming the Gaming Revolution" — CM Storm is Cooler Master's gaming line of products. Toward the bottom of the package is the Spawn logo, with "3500 DPI Precision Optical Sensor" located above it. A few quick features of the CM Storm Spawn are located under the model name, letting you know that it has an onboard Sentinel-X 32Kb processor, it is designed for the claw-style gamer with an ergonomic design, and that it has a superior rubberized anti-slip grip design. The front of the package flips open to reveal a view of the mouse itself through a cutout, while the flap shows off some key features of the mouse. When you flip the package over to the back, you'll find a list of specifications. Inside the package, not only are you going to get the CM Storm Spawn mouse, but you will also get a user manual and an installation CD with the retail version of the mouse, but which was not provided to me with the review sample.

The CM Storm Spawn mouse, as mentioned before, is designed for the claw-style way of holding the mouse, which just means you like to have a very tight grip on the mouse rather than just using your fingers. The Spawn is a bit smaller than other mice on the market. There's a groove on the right-hand side of the mouse, featuring the Spawn name, that allows you to rest your ring finger, and there's even a smal ledge for your pinky finger to rest as well. On the left-hand side are two side buttons where your thumb sits. The Spawn includes two thick rubber grips formulated on both sides, allowing lift-off gamers to have full control during their game play. These two rubber pieces are sweat proof and ultra slip resistant. The back end of the mouse features CM Storm logo printed on the bright red chassis of the mouse. When looking at the front of the mouse head on, you'll notice that, along with the scroll wheel, there are also four clickable buttons — your typical left and right mouse buttons, as well as up and down buttons above the scroll wheel.

The Japanese-made scroll wheel has an ultra precise stepping encoder that allows gamers to navigate small distances with the scroll wheel while establishing great control and precision. The four clickable buttons use the Omron Micro Switches, which are backed up by a minimum guarantee of 5 million clicks. The up and down buttons on the front of the mouse above the scroll wheel are going to give you the chance to change your DPI on the fly, with presets of 800, 1800, and 3500. The Spawn gaming mouse utilizes a high performance optical engine and ensures extreme stability. Built with an anti-drift architecture, it provides loss-less performance under mouse lift and drop, giving you the opportunity to raise the mouse above the mouse pad, while it still tracks the movement. The Sentinel-X microprocessor safeguards your mouse settings by storing your button assignments, advanced macros, and other mouse customizations on the mouse itself, which is going to allow the gamer to plug and play on any other system without losing initial settings.

The USB cable on the mouse has the standard rubber coating around the wires inside, which are going to protect them from being bent and broken. The USB cable measures two meters in length and has a gold-plated USB connector at the end, providing a maximumaximum of 1000Hz USB Transfer rate and a pooling time as low as 1.0ms.

Now that we know exactly what the CM Storm Spawn gaming mouse looks like, it's time to take a look at the drivers that come with the mouse and get everything configured so we can test it out and see how it does against the competition.