Vengeance M90 and K60 Review!

Two gaming peripherals from the Vengeance line up of Corsair products. The M90 mouse and K60 Cherry Red mechanical keyboard. I’ve been quit cynical of Vengeance products over the course of our reviews too not many peoples delight. Their hardware and software to me just did not have a standard of quality and design I expect from manufacturers. 

So, now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about the gear!

First up, it’s the Corsair Vengeance M90
http://www.centrecom.com.au/catalog/corsair-vengeance-p-55447.html?sort=2a

The Vengeance M60 is a full-fledged gaming grade laser mouse. Let’s have a look over the spec sheet.

 

·         5700 DPI Sensor

·         Adjustable DPI in 100 DPI Increments

·         Up to 1000mhz Response Time

·         15 programmable buttons

·         48kb of on board memory

15 buttons, that’s a whole lot to be on a mouse. The buttons are some-what ergonomically placed around your thumb placement. The on-board DPI adjuster is located quite a fair bit down towards the front of the mouse which could make on-the-fly changing slightly awkward. The mouse glides on surfaces and is very smooth. The optimized base with aluminium lining makes this glide on good mouse pad surfaces.

The scroll wheel is very sturdily built and the click seems to respond great. You don’t get accidental scrolling when trying to click with it. The mouse feels somewhat good in your palm; however it feels a bit small for me when trying to use it in a grip manner. I think smaller gamers would find this slightly more comfortable.

The programmable buttons aren’t very programmable. You are limited as to what you can assign the buttons as. Generic mouse buttons aren’t an option for the mouse, so using this for FPS games makes it slightly useless. The buttons proved completely useless in Modern Warfare 3. I’d imagine RTS and MMO games are where this could excel. The side buttons are a bit on the heavy side and requires you to dig in to actually click on it. This could be an issue for those who need quick and repetitive button clicks. Even though the more than required buttons make it a bit overkill, gaming on the mouse feels much better than its predecessor.

The software on the Corsair M90 needs some improvement. It does not feel polished and finished in a sense. It looks like they are still trying to work out how they can showcase the software to the end user.

Overall I think this is a slightly better mouse than the M60, problem is it is designed for the RTS and MMO player who needs the extra buttons on the mouse. FPS gamers would benefit from getting a mouse not designed with limitations. It feels good and definitely looks eye-catching with its jet-like design with all the buttons.

Next up we have the Cherry Red Mechanical keyboard the Vengeance K60
http://www.centrecom.com.au/catalog/9000004-corsair-vengeance-p-55450.html?sort=2a

The keyboard also comes with a palm rest that also doubles as a nifty little storage device that holds the supplied WASD and number pad keys red in colour. This I thought to be quite a clever little idea from Corsair as I think sometimes when they provided in little Velcro bags, it becomes less practical to carry around, this way it is part of the keyboard so you always know it’s going to be around. The downside to palm rest is the fact it doesn’t lock into position, so it tends to jiggle around a bit. The fact that the keyboard doesn’t also have rubber base encourages it to move around a bit when force is applied, so beware of that.

 

The keyboard features a standard full sized layout with no extra dedicated macro keys (model above features this). It does feature multimedia keys with a roller for volume control.

Even though the keyboard is Mechanical, it doesn’t feel like it. It’s somewhere in between which maybe a design strategy by Corsair, but I’m not exactly sure it works well. Some might appreciate the mid-way approach to a classical keyboard and mechanical touch but it does feel flimsy and delicate in a way.

Typing on the keyboard is relatively comfortable, more so from other mechanicals I’ve used and I think the statements above reflect this performance. As per normal mechanical keyboards, it does get relatively loud (well, louder than normal keyboards) so nocturnal users take note.

The keyboard has a very thick braided cable with dual USB plugs, so knock off two ports off your computer if contemplating getting one of these. Good thing is it provides one USB port on the actual keyboard which is ideal for connecting up your mouse, wired or wireless. The top part of the keyboard is covered in metal, so not only does it add to the weight but definitely gives it a nice shiny and polished look to it.

Gaming on the keyboard was quite good. The mechanical keys proved to be very accurate for Cherry Red and smooth to play with.

Overall I’ve been surprised with these Vengeance models, I must admit I was not looking forward to testing these as previous models fell quite short in everything, but these two models, even with a few flaws prove to be worthy options for peripheral upgrades.

By Sahin Selvi
sahin.s@centrecom.com.au

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