Making the right choice for a gaming mouse can get tricky, because there are numerous variables to take into account. Is it a comfortable size, shape and weight? What is it finished in? Is it sensitive enough? Is it wired or wireless? Possibly most important, what’s the price range?
There are a great many options out there, and sometimes it gets tough to make the right choice… particularly when there are a lot of big names out there to distract you from other potentially excellent (although maybe less known) products. Not, mind you, that Cooler Master is an unknown brand – they just may be a brand not immediately associated with a gaming mouse.
But they should be. The new CM Storm Sentinel III is a mouse that definitely warrants attention. It delivers great performance and comfort with style, and at a better price than a number of the other products out there, who rely on reputation rather than performance.
The Sentinel III is an eight button mouse (with one of those doubling as a scroll wheel) powered by an Avargo 3988 Sensor capable of resolutions of up to 6 400 dpi. Sure, there are more sensitive mouse devices out there, but 6 400 isn’t a bad number at all, and four dpi levels makes it easy to tweak the mouse to exactly how you want it to perform, and switch sensitivity on the fly.
Knowing which sensitivity setting you’re on can sometimes be an issue, but the Sentinel III uses an OLED screen set to the back of the main controls to quickly inform the user about setting like dpi, and the user can set things like lift height and calibration without specialised software. Surrounding three sides of this screen is a customisable lighting system, allowing full colour light settings to be made.
Further customisation is made possible by removable weights, for a total weight variation of 22.5 grams – it doesn’t sound like a lot, but it does make quite a difference. Controls can also be trimmed up with a thumb accessible “function” key that allows each control to have an alternate function, accessible when it is depressed.
The Sentinel III combines great design and comfort with some very good ideas and a decent level of sensitivity. It will serve most users perfectly well, even if it might be overlooked when placed on a shelf next to more prominent brands. But rest assured that this mouse is a solid performer, dependable, comfortable and reliable. Sadly it is not an ambidextrous mouse, but it still has enough great ideas and design elements to make it a very decent option for a control input peripheral.
Cooler Master might not be best known for their peripherals, but the Sentinel III certainly shows that they know what they’re doing when it comes to mouse devices.