Cooler Master CM Inferno Review

The mouse is the bread and butter and ultimate tool for anyone who plays games on the PC. Over the past dozen years there's been an explosion in shapes and sizes of it and for all different utilities. It's evolved quite nicely from a few buttons and a mouse ball to lasers, lights, and more buttons than most people would ever know what to do with. That, however, is not the case for gamers. Cooler Master has a new mouse out specifically built for MMORPGs that are so popular, the Cooler Master Inferno.

The Inferno features a number of features for gamers in order to get the best tactical advantage. One of these Cooler Master dubs the Onboard Sentinel-X with 128KB of memory onboard the actual mouse allowing the user to store up to 3 different game profiles, macros, scripts, and other user customizations.

The Inferno is a laser mouse as with most and polls at 1000Hz, has a 1ms response time, and 4000 DPI laser.

One feature to use the onboard memory is the Advanced Storm MacroPro Key which allows one to run through pre-programmed micros, scripts, mouse motions, and actions. This should definitely give a tactical advantage to any genre you play in, though it is geared towards RTS and RPG genres.

Missing the rapid fire button that gamepads have? Well you'll feel right at place then with the Rapid Fire Tactical key that the CM Inferno features for sustaining fire.

Here we see the mouse it's self. It's a pretty nice grey/black/red color scheme and as wit most modern gaming mice contoured to fit your hand. What also pops up right away is the the number of buttons! Eleven buttons, with nine of them programmable. you can also see the ability to change the polling rate of the mouse with up to five different levels, the heavy duty scroll wheel.

The mouse has some pretty cool lightning and the layout of the buttons and aesthetics remind us a little bit of Tron. This is definitely a mouse that'll stand out, not in a bad way, but obviously not your typical desktop mouse.

Here are the technical specs from Coolermaster.

Model SGM-4000-KLLN1-GP
Memory 128 kb
DPI Display 4000 DPI Storm Tactical Laser Sensor
Buttons 11
Programmable Buttons 9
Max Speed 115 inches per second
Lift Off Distance 2 mm
Polling 1000 HZ
Response Time 1 ms
USB Gold-plated
Full Speed USB Yes
Software Included
Warranty 1 year
UPC Code 884102009594

The main control screen of the Inferno might seem a little confusing at first but we find it wasn't too hard to tweak your settings. Here you can bind the actions for the buttons and also set the DPI level.

This is where one can heavily adjust the scripts, macros, and their Storm Tactics button for unleashing your best combinations on foes.

Even more settings here to adjust the onboard memory settings, profiles, sensitivity and more! Basically whatever you want adjusted or tweaked to your needs the Inferno has you covered.

In testing with the desktop the mouse was very fast and responsive, ability to quickly maneuver based on needs across the desktop and other monitors. The mouse didn't quite come as natural in it's shape to my self right away but over time I adjusted to it quite nicely. I tried it out in some RPGs, shooters, and strategy games and compared to some of my favorite Logitech mice like the MX518 and Revolution it handled it's self exceptionally.

Overall the CM Inferno mouse is stellar in handling, sensitivity, and customizations that one can implement. It seems more built for MMO and strategy games but also does very well in shooters. Definitely if your looking for a mouse with many, many micro and preset options then it's hard to look much of anywhere else. Also with a price of around $50 without having to deal with very annoying mail-in-rebates it's also a great value. The design may not be for everyone but if you're looking for a new mouse this should definitely be one to consider.

Score: 94%