Corsair M65 Ultra Review

Conclusion

We have to confess that we’ve seen so many variants of the M65 in recent years that when the M65 Ultra appeared we almost gave a resigned sigh. It will be exactly the same as all the others just utilising the newest Corsair sensor, the insanely capable Marksman with its 26000 DPI peak available to you in 1 DPI increments. Let there be no doubt, it’s the finest sensor available on the market right now, but if that is all the M65 Ultra had up its sleeve it wouldn’t make for the most interesting review.

Thankfully that is by no means the only update the M65 has received. In fact the other two new key updates are such they almost leave the sensor somewhat in the shadows.

Firstly the M65 is as comfortable as it has always been. I’ve got fairly large hands and the chunky nature of the M65 body fits them perfectly. It is a tall body, but also broad too, which gives the mouse the air of something squat and muscular as the wider shoulders trick the eye into making it seem shorter than it is. The placement of the side buttons means they fall easily beneath your thumb, and that large sniper button is extremely easy to press when you need it. However, it has enough resistance that you’ll never catch it when you don’t mean to and suddenly find your crosshairs slowing to a crawl in the middle of an intense firefight.

On the subject of buttons the main pair are Omron switches as we would expect, but instead of being a mechanical switch they are Omron’s new optical models. The key difference here is that with a mechanical switch there is always a small delay whilst the switch stops wobbling about before you can click it again, but with a light-based switch that doesn’t exist and so it’s ready for your click in an instant. That could very well be the difference between the champagne and laurels of a glorious victory, or the sad trudge off after an ignominious defeat.

The last party piece of the M65 Ultra is the six-axis gyro within which lets you define a tilt angle in 10° increments and then use a flick of the wrist to activate whatever you desire. This gives you another four buttons on the mouse without requiring it to look like one of the MOBA specific models which more closely resemble a calculator. We’d require far more time with the M65 Ultra than we have to put it to its fullest use, or perhaps to just be comfortable enough assigning mission-critical functions to it, but even for simple things such as activating recording on Shadowplay, or saving the most recent footage, taking a screenshot, or pausing the game, it works so smoothly you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it. We’re sure that it will be days before someone is using it for very complex functions.

As we said at the start, the M65 Ultra has enough going on under the hood that the class-leading, spectacular, Corsair Marksman sensor almost becomes an afterthought. Be under no illusions though, even if the idea of lifting your mouse to perform actions doesn’t float your boat, the combination of the comfortable M65 chassis and the 26000 DPI Marksman sensor is enough already to make the Corsair M65 Ultra worthy of your investment, and thus it wins our OC3D Performance Award.

  

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