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The CM Storm Havoc ships in a black box with a clear image of the mouse, engulfed in flames, on the front.
The back of the box lists several key features of the mouse and follows the same color scheme.
The front of the box is kept closed with Velcro. Opening the flap reveals the Havoc and a diagram of the layout of the mouse. Included in the box are the mouse, a leaflet with warranty information and the manual.
A top view of the mouse shows the CM Storm logo placed at the back of the mouse. Once connected, the logo lights up, as do the scroll wheel and DPI buttons. These buttons can be configured to light up in different colours, while the DPI LEDs on the top left of the mouse only light up white. The scroll wheel has a slightly rougher rubber finish to enhance your grip.
The right side of the mouse has a smooth glossy finish and does not feature any branding or special functions.
The left side of the mouse shows the three thumb buttons. The middle thumb button has a small protrusion, making it easier to correctly place your thumb without having to look at the mouse. The area surrounding the scroll wheel is glossy, creating an attractive contrast with the rubber texture.
The sensor has been placed slightly above the centre of the mouse, which is also where the only branding on the mouse can be found. The feet are made out of three parts, providing full coverage and even pressure distribution during operation.
The cable is entirely braided and is surprisingly smooth, preventing the wire from getting stuck on edges or fraying. A nice little touch is the CM Storm logo on the USB connector.
You should measure and write more technical information about the mice you review. Stuff like: acceleration, perfect control speed (at different dpi), angle snapping/prediction. You should check the esrelity and overclockers forums.
I really like your articles I just want to see this information included.
I think figures only tell a part of the story, its like these 8,200 dpi ratings, I can’t use anything over 5,000 dpi or its like a jerk fest. and not the nice kind.
Im still happy with my old logitech mouse.
I do like cooler master, but I think they suffer a little from the thermaltake syndrome. build quality issues. My last cooler master case fell apart slowly over a year. I tend to only get corsair/silverstone cases now. Not so sure on these mice either. I think they are made in a chinese factory for multiple companies with slightly different enclosure designs. id rather get a mouse from one of the compoanies like steelseries, razer etc, who dedicate a lot of R&D to the designs.
Hey,
While he has built himself an impressive setup, his benchmark seems to be based upon the assumption that the acceleration of a mouse remains constant (in his example a player with low sensitivity would accelerate at a constant 2m/s, resulting in a total of 900 meters travelled in a minute, or 54km/h). When measured over a period of 10 seconds that results in 20 meters travelled at speeds between 2m/s and 20m/s.
Note that the above is based on testing with a constant acceleration over a fixed period of time.
However, whilst gaming there is always a certain amount of momentum between swings where a mouse would either move at a far lower or higher speed. A mouse like the Havoc is rated up to 150 IPS, or 1371.6km/h (150 inches – 381 cm * 60 * 60 / 1000 according to my calculations).
A more accurate way of measuring the acceleration would be through a form of stop-start testing where the mouse is ‘catapulted’ and rapidly brought to a stop in multiple directions until it stops tracking. This would also be a good way to test for input delay and wake-up times. At this moment in time I don’t think it would be in anyone’s best interest to start flinging mice at the walls, so we’ll need to look into a safe and reliable mechanical method to make that work.
Perfect control speed, defining proportional movement in-game, is something that would also be tricky to do. Even with just raw input, games like Battlefield 3, CoD, CS, etc. all handle differently because the engines partially determine the maximum turn speed. As an example, I noticed that I could crank up the sensitivity higher in Battlefield 3 than I could in CS. Rather than test it for every individual game, we would like to find a way to test this across the board.
We will also need to find a way to eliminate the problem of compensation by the user. If a mouse performs poorly a user will be automatically inclined to ‘correct’ the mouse.
Angle snapping and correction I can test by drawing in Photoshop so that shouldn’t be a problem.
Stay tuned while we work on getting this worked into our reviews!