Corsair Vengeance M65 gaming mouse review

The Vengeance range of gaming peripherals has been a great success for manufacturer Corsair, and the update to its impressive wee gaming mouse, the Vengeance M65, is going to do nothing to change that.

Corsair pretty much make everything that goes into putting together a gaming PC these days. In fact, I wouldn't be the least surprised to see them badging up CPUs, motherboards and graphics cards in our Corsair-dominated future. But despite the broadening focus, now encompassing a huge range of components and peripherals, one thing has remained reassuringly constant - an emphasis on quality. So it was with the original Vengeance M60 mouse: a quality gaming rodent, with a 5700 max DPI capability and a rock-solid laser sensor backing it up.

What's changed with this Vengeance M65 then?

As you might expect from the iterative nomenclature, and the fact they're using an identical chassis, there are no radical stylistic additions here. Under the hood, however, Corsair have upgraded the laser sensor, shifting from the Avago LaserStream ADNS-9500 to the ADNS-9800.

That gives the M65 a maximum DPI setting of a relatively massive 8200.

Personally, I love high-sensitivity gaming mice, but with a DPI setting that high I generally find it a little too twitchy. One unexpected loud noise later and I'll find myself facing in a completely different direction on-screen thanks to a slight involuntary jitter of my mouse hand.

So what's the point in shifting over to a mouse with a DPI setting you may never use? Well, it's not just that headline figure that makes a difference - even lower down the DPI scale the improved Avago sensor makes its presence felt.

The translation of movement from your mouse movement to the screen is incredibly smooth, with none of the slight twitchiness I've experienced in using the M60 and M65 mice side-by-side. It's an incredibly accurate mouse, right up there with the best of them.

This is an impressive update to an already impressive mouse, and given that it's hitting the street with the same £50/$70 price-tag of the M60 - and you can pick it up in Stormtrooper white - the Vengeance M65 gets a big thumbs up from me.

It may not come with a huge range of extra buttons (the pricier M95 will cater for those needs), but if you're after a sensitive, well-priced laser gaming rodent the Vengeance M65 is an ideal candidate.