| Corsair Vengeance M60 Laser Gaming Mouse |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Input Devices | |||||||
| Written by Joey Peng | |||||||
| Monday, 09 April 2012 | |||||||
Page 3 of 5
Corsair Vengeance M60 Detailed FeaturesThis section we'll take a closer look at the details of the Corsair Vengeance M60. The biggest FPS feature going for the M60 is its dedicated snipe button. What they really mean by "sniper button" is a button that can instantly toggle DPI to a much lower setting to set up for aiming and micro adjustments. This could be used in applications like photoshop when making fine adjustments. The true advantage is how easily accessible it is during game. 
While not widely advertised, the M60 also has adjustable weights, elegantly placed within compartments at the bottom of the mouse. For easy access a screwdriver is needed although technically you could pry it open with nails. They add some level adjustment but won't be a huge impact like some mice since the metallic shell still has its weight. 
The driver available for download at the time of this review was version 2.12 beta. That being said, there are definitely major improvements that can be made in terms of software. At least Corsair has the UI down for the M60 driver. 
The first major drawback is that the auxiliary keys are not truly programmable (yet). There's a set of predefined functions related to DPI, multimedia, and general click functions. However the function assignment process is very odd. Even worse, they let you customize the left and right mouse buttons. Because of the confusing UI I accidentally set my left click as something else and could not revert until I plugged in a different mouse. 
Under "Manage Performance" you'll find all the common controls, including DPI, polling rate, and lift-height management. One of the more fun tools to play with is the surface quality test. Somehow it was very difficult to get highest quality as even my Steelseries mousepad only generated 4/5 bars. 
The mouse also lets you manage different profiles, though given that macro buttons pretty much don't exist, I feel this functionality is more for show. How many people are out there that really use different DPI settings per game? 
The Vengeance M60 is a great piece of hardware. However on the software support side it's a little lacking. One could argue that for FPS, macro buttons are not necessary, which is generally true, however it would've been nice to still have that functionality in a $69.99 mouse.
|
|||||||
Comments
The Corsair M90 also has this feature, but it can be programmed into any of the thumb buttons.
Corsair's mouse hardware is quite good. They really know how to make great hardware. However, I agree that their weak spot is actually their software. When I first got the Corsair M90 (MMO mouse)I couldn't get the thumb buttons working at all (and I wasn't alone). It wasn't until about a month later that they released a new software version and an actual manual. The mouse comes with neither, and early adapters were mostly left to guess how the mouse was supposed to work.
Their new software finally works properly, and the instructions available from their website are actually pretty good. The M60 doesn't have many buttons to worry about, but the M90 has lots of buttons, and you have to basically do a little dance to get them working. A visit to the Corsair forums, reading the top post in the mouse forum, should get you up and running.
Personally I find it inexcusable for a company, especially a company like Corsair who is trying to convince people that they make superior products, to not include software and a manual (paper or file) in their packaging.
In my opinion, it being the 21st century and all, it's time to include some flash RAM in the devices that contains the drivers and software so, when plugged in, the mouse automatically installs the driver and software. We're talking expensive mice here (anything over $50). I don't see why, at those prices (and more) they cannot include such a simple feature. Of course, it helps if the software actually works out-of-the-box.