Corsair Raptor M45 gaming mouse

Being a fan of understated styling I have to admit I really liked the look of the Corsair M45 as soon as I took it out of the packaging. It has a really clean finish – matt black, silver and red (when lit up) colour scheme, with the main body is coated in silicon.

The sides on the other hand, are a rough, almost fine-grained, sandpaper like plastic which while sounding horrible in theory, actually works really well. You can rubberise your grips all you want but textured plastic is just as good for grip when it's dry. I could see this mouse becoming a little less grippy if you were sweating buckets, but even I don't sweat that much.

The left hand side also features a pair of side buttons which are almost invisible thank to the colour scheme.

The right hand side is almost identical to the left, featuring just a slight reshape of the rough plastic.

  
At the front there are the usual two buttons, along with a silver rimmed scroll wheel that makes a nice focal point, visually. It features no side switching, but does have the usual middle mouse click and a rubber wheel for extra grip. It turns quite slowly, but this gives greater control and perhaps more importantly – it does so absolutely silently.

Sitting just behind it are two buttons, DPI up and down, with an LED indicator in-between the lights up when the mouse is powered on (see next page).

I particularly like how there is no seam for either front buttons. They're made from the same, single piece of material as the rest of the mouse's body. This gives it a very clean look.


Flipping the raptor over and lifting up its skirt, the optical sensor is dead center, surrounded by three weights, which screw in and out. They do require a screwdriver to remove, so do not worry about them coming loose mid-game.

At the front, rear and sides, there are several PTFE pads. This stands for Polytetrafluoroethylene, which to you and me is teflon … but because of a copyright claim on that particular brand of plastic, everyone is required to call it PTFE.

The cable is braided which is nice to see and Corsair hasn't wasted any money gold leafing the USB connector. However, it has made its header bright red, which can be handy when you're routing around the back of your PC trying to find the right one.

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