Corsair M45 Review

[section_title title=”Performance”] Performance

Comfort
The Corsair M45 is actually quite a comfortable mouse to use despite the angles and definitely panders to a claw grip more than anything. If you’re feeling particularly lazy during browsing you can almost control the mouse solely from the first knuckles due to the way the mouse plumbs out towards the back.

Although Corsair have stuck with the pet peeve of mine – having the DPI buttons located centre – the top one isn’t too bad to reach and use during gameplay and the lower one isn’t that much of a hindrance. Of course these can be switched out but then you’re just allocating functions to the still less than desirable positioning.

Another point of the M45’s design I was initially wary over was the location and extremely small profile of the side buttons. In suiting a claw grip the M45 definitely doesn’t feel as much of an exercise to use the side buttons as the SteelSeries Raw did.

Gaming
I used the M45 in our usual gaming tests of Battlefield4 and League of Legends as well as this week’s newcomer and behemoth, Titanfall, and I’ll start with this first.

Titanfall is a twitch shooter by nature and for those that haven’t played; it’s extremely fast paced both in combat and the game ‘parkour’ elements.  Due to fairly pare back nature of the game I got up and running with a DPI of 2200 and never looked back with the M45. With grenades and my ‘Titanfall’ assigned to the side buttons everything felt at ease and I didn’t feel at a disadvantage at all. Panning and tracking across the semi-abrasive surface of my Func mouse pad was great; the M45 having great glide and feeling extremely responsive. I played with all the weights in and, if I’m honest, the balance between speed and traction felt perfect and ideal for Titanfall in particular which requires a lot of camera movement relative to most FPS on the market today.

Switching to EA’s other big shooter, Battlefield 4, and the test here is more of the M45’s all out functionality. I have grenade and prone assigned to the side buttons as well as the DPI buttons being in constant use as expected. Much like Titanfall, Battlefield too provided an enjoyable, competitive experience with the M45. The less than ideal location of the bottom DPI button reared its head here but the only time I’d be using that was for trying to zone in on someone anyway so more than likely prone. Side button input was responsive to ensure I could hit prone as soon as you see muzzle flash although the software support of a sniper button with no dedicated hardware offering becomes especially baffling in a game like Battlefield 4 where it would be ideal.

Bringing the game speed down a touch and the M45 performed admirably in League of Legends. I sacrificed the DPI switching buttons this time around and assigned my team mate saving ‘it’s warded’ macro to the top DPI button due to its easy to reach location. Generally in League you don’t have time, or should need to switch DPI so here I could make some use of the M45’s limited hardware and re-purpose it. Much like Titanfall, League has you tracking a lot as you click and move whilst farming and positioning. The Omron switches under the mouse buttons were nice and responsive not needing much pressure at all – ideal for League of Legends.