Cougar 550M Mouse Review

Overview

 

It’s been a while since I reviewed the Cougar 700K and 700M, two products that I thought were two of the best products we saw in late 2014. In fact I am now the proud owner of both products and at this time would not change them for the world! Although things might be about to change as today I will be looking at Cougar’s latest mouse the Cougar 550M.

This is the Iron Grey version, there are two to choose from this one and also a Metallic Blue version. Both mice are right-handed only, optimized for Gaming and are equipped with a SDNS-3988 6400 DPI Optical sensor. The mouse has six programmable buttons, features OMRON switches and has 512KB of on-board memory. There’s 16.8 million colour lighting too across two separate zones. The 550M sports a Polling Rate of 1000Hz/1ms and the mouse connects to the PC courtesy of a 1.8m braided cable with a gold plated USB plug. The mouse itself measures in at 135mm (L) x 70m (W) x 45mm (H) and weighs in at approximately 120g.

 

 

 

The Cougar 550M arrived at pcG in a very small predominately black box with a large image of the 550M on the front. As you can see from the image (above left) the front of the box highlights designed in Germany (made in China), the 16.8 million colour illumination, Cougar UIX System software as well as the fact that this is the Iron Grey edition. In addition to this we also find the following:

The back of the box features a wealth of information regarding the 550M with a large image of the mouse at the top highlighting various aspects of the design, these can be seen below. In addition to this there’s a smaller image of the mouse highlighting the 16.8 million colour illumination. Over on the left there’s also a features table (see Specifications/Features below).

 

Rather unusually the sides of the box are actually quite informative. On the left we have a side view of the 550M along with its specifications (see Specifications/Features below).

The right side of the box goes on to further highlight three specific features of the Cougar 550M. The 1000Hz Polling Rate / 1ms Response Time, 5 million clicks guaranteed and the rather unique programmable Trigger button (but more on that later!).

 

 

There’s not much in the box other than the mouse itself, a User Manual and (of course) that all important sticker! 🙂

 

At the time of writing the Cougar 550M mouse is available from Overclockers UK for approximately £42 and comes with a 2 year warranty.

 

Specifications/Features

courtesy of Cougar

 

 

* Additional details available here

 

First Impressions

 

 

I have to admit that I saw the design for the Cougar 550M some time ago and from the very first moment I saw it I liked the look of it. Although I have to confess that the 550M does sport that all important favourite colour of mine (Orange!). But seriously the Cougar 550M is a good looking right-handed mouse, it’s got that look of simplicity to it and sure it might be a safe design, but Cougar have put a fair amount of effort it to making it look the part! This should be a mouse that suits the Gaming masses, perhaps…

Looking at the business side of this right-handed only mouse we can see that it’s actually quite busy, especially as there’s so many surfaces on offer. Up front we have the main DPI indicators consisting of three 16.8 million colour LEDs. Behind this we find the two silver thumb buttons, that are actually quite well placed (although that front one’s still too far forward IMHO) for my bastardized Claw/Palm grip. Below this we have one of the main surfaces, this surface is for your thumb and it’s not rubber (although it looks like it), it’s actually just plastic with a indented honeycomb design. At the very back of the mouse (when looking from the side) we also get to see that flash of metallic orange, very smart it looks too.

The right side of the mouse is dominated by the plastic honeycomb design while still featuring the orange flash at the back. Both sides are effectively the same even down to the shape, the right side is just missing the DPI LEDs and the buttons.

 

 

A lot of the design of the Cougar 550M seems to be at the front as the styling is somewhat complicated yet aggressive at the same time! At the front we have the main scroll wheel, featuring a rubber tyre that’s housed within a metallic orange frame. The wheel itself is great to rotate thanks to that rubberized grip, but the graduations are hardly palpable, which is a little bit of a shame. The cable for the mouse is attached to the left side of the mouse via a bullet type silver connector, that looks kinda cool too!

The back of the Cougar 550M is far less complicated. At the base we have the main splash of colour courtesy of that orange accent piece that wraps around the back of the mouse. Tucked in between here and the upper body of the mouse is actually an illuminating strip (16.8 million colours) that illuminates when the mouse is powered on. Above this we find the main Cougar logo in silver.

 

 

Looking at the Cougar 550M from above we can see a little more of its ergonomic (highly contoured) shape. As you can see this is a shape that’s likely to fit with most grip styles. From above we get a better view of that rubberized scroll wheel and its orange aluminum frame. The most important and striking feature of the 550M though we find behind that scroll wheel, and that’s the Trigger button. From the image above left it would look like any other DPI selection button that you would push, but oh no, this is very different! This button is a Real Trigger and you pull it back! At first this sounds a little weird, but you’d be surprised how well placed you index finger is to perform this operation. It’s quite stiff in operation though (maybe as it’s new), although this is no bad thing as you wouldn’t want to accidentally be changing DPI. We will have to see how I get on with this, but at this point I’m impressed and I like the idea! 😉

Flipping the 550M over we see that gone is the aluminium frame of the 700M replaced with a simple plastic one. The 550M features three large glides two up front and one larger one at the back and in the centre we find the SDNS-3988 6400 DPI Optical sensor.

Yet again I find myself impressed with a Cougar product. Cougar have taken a familiar design and turned it into a truly compelling Gaming mouse, made even more exciting by that impressive innovation with that trigger button/switch! As far as the design goes, there’s very little to dislike here…

 

Hardware Installation

 

 

Testing Methodology/Setup

 

 

The following games were used during testing:

• Fallout 4
• The Talos Principle
• The Forest (ALPHA)

 

Hardware Performance

 

Looking first at the Cougar 550M from an ergonomics point of view there’s a lot to like, mainly because Cougar have stuck with that (standard Microsoft mouse) design. There’s no angles or funny buttons to trip you up, this really seems to be a mouse for everyone! The only draw back is if you’re left handed as this is a right-handed only mouse. Luckily for me that works and I found great comfort with my bastardized Claw/Palm grip. The only issue if any (and this is common across many Gaming mice) is that the front thumb button is too far forward for my liking.

Now let’s talk about that Trigger button, that by default is set up as a DPI Cycle switch. This here is real innovation as it’s something not seen before and it works surprisingly well too! A simple pull back with your index finger is all that it takes, the only gripe is that it takes a fair amount of force to do so. I guess it’s a fine balance between making the action positive and accidentally switching DPI, and the latter is not what you want. Overall I’m a fan of this Trigger button and I would even seek out this feature if I were buying a Gaming mouse in the future.

From a pure performance point of view there really is something about Optical mice compared to Laser mice. I genuinely feel a little more in control with an optical mouse, although I’m somewhat unsure if this is subliminal and just a placebo. The tracking offered by the Cougar 550M is simply brilliant and I had no issue in Games while playing using the default 1600 DPI setup. At much above 2000 DPI things just got a little too twitchy for my liking, but other Gamers may well be ok with these higher DPIs.

 

 

The images above lead me on to the Cougar 550M’s illuminations. As you can see from the images there’s two main zones of illumination both supporting 16.8 million colours. There’s the DPI indicator (three LEDs) at the front and the large zone at the back that sweeps around the base of the mouse. It’s all nice and subtle but it works really nicely and most importantly looks pretty cool. Although (being greedy) I would have liked to see that Cougar logo illuminate! 😉 It’s also worth noting that all of the LEDs had very good colour representation, now unwanted pinks (when you wanted white) here…

 

SOFTWARE

 

 

I have to confess I’m already a fan of Cougar’s UIX System software and have been using it for a while on my own personal machine. The fact that the software is unified (meaning: one piece of software covers all devices) is great, especially if you have more than one device. The software itself features three main tabs (Performance, Key Assignment and Lighting Control), all three can be seen above. The first tab Performance is where to come to play with your DPI settings, three DPIs are supported and you can select any value between 50 and 6400 DPI in increments of 50. You can also set a specific Sniper DPI value, that can then be bound to any of the six buttons. Here you can also adjust the Polling Rate (best left at 1000Hz), Angle Snapping (leave off), Lift Height (I set mine to high as I’m a bit of a Lifter!), Double Click Speed, Scroll Speed and Windows Pointer Speed. You can also Enable mouse acceleration if you want, but I wouldn’t if I were you… 😉 All of this of course is stored aboard the 550M, courtesy of its on-board 512KB of memory.

The second tab is the Key Assignment tab, here’s where you come to do the (somewhat obvious) task of binding functionality to any of the six programmable buttons. You can bind functionality from three main sections (Basic, Advance & Macro). See Macro below…

The last of the three main tabs is the Lighting Control tab. As you can guess it’s here where you can configure the illumination of the two zones aboard the 550M. Both zones support independent 16.8 million colour illumination as well as the following modes (Breathing, Fully Lighted & Off).

 

 

The last couple of sections we’ll take a look at is the Macros section and Game Profile Management section. Both sections speak for themselves, but the Macros section is where you can come to record your Macros. I’ve recorded a simple macro for grenade throw (called My Macro) with a fixed Delay time of 40ms, note the fact that I could record both mouse and keyboard controls. Macros can be edited here and commands inserted if needed.

Finally let’s have a quick look at the Profile Management screen where you can go and configure all of your Profiles, assuming that you want more than the three provided. You can also create your Profiles (Modes) here, assign images to those Modes and bind executables (Games) also. As you can see I’ve created a Fallout 4 Profile.

Overall I’m really impressed with Cougar’s UIX System software I looks great (ok I know what you’re thinking it’s orange right!) and contains pretty much all of the functionality any Gamer would want and it’s easy to use. I don’t think I need to say much more than that…

 

Final Thoughts

 

Well it looks like Cougar have done it again, the Cougar 550M is another great Gaming mouse and is one that’s likely to appeal to many; thanks to its safe ergonomic design, great optical based tracking and some damn fine software to back it up…

The Cougar 550M arrived at pcG in a small black box that contained not much more than the mouse and a user manual. But that’s all a Gamer needs right, well yes and the software that needs to be downloaded from here! Once out of the box and in the hand it’s soon apparent that the Cougar 550M is a far safer design than the 700M (my fav mouse), this right-handed only mouse is similar in style to the old Microsoft mouse of many years ago and is therefore likely to appeal to many. But the most important feature of the Cougar 550M is not its shape, or perhaps not its dual zone 16.8 million colour illumination! It’s that Trigger button found in the centre of the mouse. Not only is this not really a button as, as the name suggests it’s actually activated by pulling it backwards, and it works surprisingly well. I have to take my hat of (again!) to Cougar for coming up with another really useful innovation in the world of Gaming peripherals, these guys really are thinking outside of the box it would seem.

Once plugged in of course you get to admire the Cougar 550M that little bit more thanks to that dual zone 16.8 million colour illumination. It’s simple yes, but both zones can be changed independent of one another and there’s a simple breathing mode too. All in all it simply makes an already good looking mouse look a little bit better.

From a pure performance point of view I could not fault the SDNS-3988 6400 DPI Optical sensor aboard the 550M. Over the last couple of years I have come to appreciate the Optical sensor that little bit more, it does seem to give that little bit more control. And here aboard the Cougar 550M the same is very much true, as during Gaming (mainly playing Fallout 4!) the 550M never put a foot wrong and tracked as good as any mouse I’ve tested to date.

So the mouse looks good and has got some nice features and the mouse tracks extremely well, but what about the software? Well this area is often overlooked by manufacturers, and we find some pretty poor examples of software when we look back at Gaming Mice in general. But thankfully here, the opposite is true! The Cougar UIX System software is simply brilliant as far as I’m concerned and shows that someone somewhere (inside of Cougar one assumes!) really cares about this aspect of their products. Not only does it look good, but it’s also easy to use; but what’s even nicer is that the Driver is Unified; meaning that if you were to add another Cougar device it would simply embed itself into the same software, nice! 😉

To be frank I think the Cougar 550M is one of the best Gaming mice I’ve tested in some time, there’s really very little (if anything) to complain about. My biggest issue would be the forward thumb button being too far forward for my liking, but even that’s somewhat subjective! All in all a great Gaming mouse with signs of some real innovation backed up by awesome optical tracking and impressive software.

 

Verdict

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Many thanks to Cougar for providing this sample for review