ISSUE 380|COMPUTER SHOPPER|OCTOBER 2019 77
ITMIGHTNOThave the more overtly quirky
shape of the Contour Unimouse,but the
Cooler Master MM830 packs alot of unusual
hardware intowhat at first resembles a
straightforward gaming mouse.Instead of a
two-set of conventional side buttons, it has a
gamepad-style,vertically oriented D-pad, and
next to this is an integrated OLED display.
This is asimilar concept, if lower in spec,
to the built-in screen of the Asus ROG Ryuo
240 CPU watercooler (Shopper375). Straight
out of the box, it just shows the manufacturer
logo and slogan, but you can writeyour own
messages and even have it show small images;
afar more personal touch than the usual
customisation staple of RGB lighting, although
this is also present on the MM830.
RESTING PLACE
It’s certainly an interesting mouse,and
straight awayitproves itself comfortable to
use as well. Built forright-handers, it’s alittle
bit shorter than the Asus ROG Gladius and
doesn’t have quiteashard acurve on top, so
it’s slightly more suited forclaw and fingertip
grips than full palm grips. It can still
accommodatethe latter,however,with the
protruding thumb rest and flared-out right
edge providing lots of support.
The shell and main buttons are made from
abasic plastic, but the MM830 nonetheless
has amore substantial, satisfyingly weighty
feel than the Asus TUF Gaming M5. The
lighting is also implemented better,asit
shines around the scroll wheel and dpi
switching button as well as the palm rest, so
it won’t be covered up nearly as much.
This is generally avery well-made
mouse indeed, although there are afew
imperfections. First up is the D-pad: it’s a
good idea, as it gives you acouple more
extra points of control than standard side
buttons without taking up toomuch space,
but they’re still spaced toofar apart forour
liking. The leftand right buttons in particular
require decisive stretching and bending of
the thumb respectively.Conversely,the top
and bottom buttons are easy to reach, but
are weirdly more difficult to press. We like
to think we don’t have especially weak
thumbs, but sometimes we had to brace
the whole mouse with our ring and little
fingers to get enough purchase.
Our other gripe is that the gigantic Teflon
footpads feel like theydrag toomuch on
wood. The MM830 glides fine on amousepad,
COOLERMASTER
MM830
★★★★★
£45•From http://www.amazon.co.ukVERDICT
TheCoolerMasterMM830isanincredibly
feature-richmousethatdoesn’tforgetabout
thebasicsofcomfort
but in both cases there’s amuch more
present sense of friction than most mice.
Fortunately,wecould partly counteract
the effects of this by raising the dpi value.
Whereas the ROG Gladius and TUF Gaming
M5 can switch between two dpi settings on
the fly,the MM830 can switch between four,
foreven greater flexibility.Bydefault, these
are 400dpi, 1,200dpi, 4,000dpi and 12,000dpi,
with distinct LED colour coding foreach one,
and this is also the mouse with the highest
maximum sensor resolution of the lot: a
dizzying 24,000dpi. The sensor is only
12,000dpi natively,but afirmware update
uses software trickery to double it virtually.
In practice,this makes the cursor almost
entertainingly over-sensitive,prone to
swishing off the screen at the mildest of
wrist movements. Still, the option is there
foranyone who wants ahigher resolution,
as is the possibility of setting it as low as
200dpi or anywhere in between.SHOWANDTELL
Cooler Master’s Portal software is even more
awash with customisation options than Asus’s
ROG Armoury utility,although this is mainly
thanks to the variety of the hardware.You can
record macros, remap any button except
left-click with shortcuts and media controls,
change all four dpi presets, choose the polling
rate(although the default 1,000MHz is fine),
change double-click speed and response time,
tweak the lighting colours and set different
effects, record and bind macros, and, most
unusually of all, select what you want to
appear on the OLED display.
While you can make your own crude
doodles or scribbled text, the ability to
upload images is toolimiting to reallyappeal: theyhavetobeinbitmap format,
must be black and white, and measure 24x94
pixels in size; that’s alot of hoops to jump
through forwhat is ultimately avisual
gimmick. It is, however,afun gimmick, and
custom messages are just one thing the
displaycan be used for: you can also set it
to show system monitoring information, such
as CPU, GPU and RAM usage,aswell as an
APM (actions per minute) counter or the
mouse’s current polling rateand dpi.
Most conveniently,itcan tell you which
settings profile is currently in effect. Portal’s
final trick is the ability to set up to four
custom profiles, encompassing all other
tweaked settings and switchable on the fly
through the D-pad. It’s yet another useful
feature,allowing you, forexample,tohave
one profile forgaming, one forwork and one
forcasual browsing, although unlike dpi
settings, there’s no LED indicator to let you
know which profile is active.With the OLED
display, this information is available at a
glance,although you could also set distinct
mouse-wide lighting foreach profile instead.MASTERWORK
It’s true that the MM830’s two biggest
features –the D-pad and OLED display–end
up being minor niceties rather than game-
changing innovations. However,that
shouldn’t detract from the fact that they’re
attached to an already-great mouse.It’s
endlessly customisable,and the shape and
thumb rest make it even more comfortable
in the hand than the ROG Gladius. The
MM830 is also more expensive,but since
it’s both more ambitious and largely
successful in realising that ambition, we’d
sayit’s worth the extra cash.