Published: June 22, 2014 | Source: i-rocks | Author: Bryan Waters

i-rocks M05 Spirit Cocoon Mouse Review

Conclusion

It’s extremely difficult to put the M05 into a particularly box. It’s not hugely obvious where it would fit in the marketplace.

Let’s start with what it does well.

It’s eye-catching. We don’t think anyone would disagree. When you chrome plate a mouse, it’s guaranteed to get attention. As well as being a pig to photograph. But if you thought it was hard to miss when it is sitting idly in a box, that’s nothing compared to how it looks when lit up. We’ve never seen a mouse that lights up entirely or this brightly. The M05 is like a beacon of multiple hues. The colours are heavily saturated and if your only requirement is that the mouse reflects your favourite colour then you can almost stop reading and go and buy one right now.

The other elements of the M05 are less exciting.

Whereas the i-rocks M09 was designed like a gaming mouse, but came with a more gentle sensor, the M05 Spirit Cocoon is designed like the type of mouse you’d get free with an ‘internet ready PC’ from your local emporium, and yet has a decent 3500DPI sensor. So it has a sensor of a gaming mouse, but no side buttons. Now the lack of side-buttons is almost unforgivable these days. They aren’t some newfangled invention that might not catch on. They’ve been around for well over a decade and many of us struggle to remember a time when they weren’t part of your rodent.

The method of changing colours, wait until the mouse cycles to the one you want and then hope to stop the cycling in time, is hardly the most user-friendly arrangement. We can understand the need for simplicity and plug-and-play, rather than having to install some software or increase the price of the mouse with some on-board memory, but it’s still a pain. Perhaps most irritating of all is the fact that the clear plastic coating, which is why the whole mouse lights up, feels like something you’d get from Fisher Price toys. The mouse is small and the lack of grip doesn’t help at all. When you add that to the lack of side-buttons and that £30 price tag is much less inviting.

But maybe you don’t want a gaming mouse. Maybe you only care about the bling factor. Maybe you want a tiny mouse that is brighter than the sun. If you do, then the i-rocks M05 Spirit Cocoon is the answer to your prayers and thus it wins our OC3D Bronze Award. For everyone else, wait until i-rocks combine the sensor and colours of the M05 with the comfort and features of the M09.