Img Credit: Mionix
This is the Mionix Castor, available in a wide variety of color choices for any matchy-matchy PC enthusiast, including Matte Black (not shown), Shark Fin Grey, French Fries Yellow, Ice Cream Blue, and my personal favorite, Frosting Pink. Note that only the Matte Black variant comes with RGB lighting for the palm emblem and scroll wheel, the more colorful variants only have a slight color variation for the logo. This is a welcome change for a lot of people even, that are a bit burnt out on the RGB craze as of the past few years.
I chose to purchase the Castor in Frosting Pink from Amazon for about $55, a few dollars off the MSRP, and it arrived at my door and was promptly put to use on August 16th. So I have just under a month of daily use, with a lot of gaming putting it to the test. Lots of CS:GO, PUBG, Quake, things that demand more accuracy than say..Hearthstone. ;) Don't get me wrong, I played a lot of that too.
The Castor is a 5000 DPI sensor driven mouse, the exact sensor is identified as the PMW-3310 sensor. If you're an enthusiast of mice, you might have heard of it, as it's widely regarded as one of the best mouse sensors available, only usurped by one other, that to my knowledge is only in one or two Logitech mice. Let me tell you, coming from my old Razer Deathadder, this mouse was a dream to handle. Granted, this might also be because I switched surface materials along with mice. I used the Castor on my usual cloth mat for a few days, before deciding that I liked the wood glide on my keyboard tray more than the mat at this point, it just felt so nice to glide around and pick people's faces off! That said, the Castor tracked beautifully on both surfaces, and I had zero complaints and overall felt my aim was tightened up and my overall experience was a lot more enjoyable than it was with my previous mouse. Sensor and Tracking? 10/10.
This mouse has 128kb of memory built into the mouse itself, so it will remember your DPI settings that you can customize in their PC software, which you can have the pleasure of setting up to five at once of, and with 50 different steps to choose from. I personally keep only two settings, I believe they're close to 1500 and 3500. This is of course up to user preference, and I change between the two quite frequently with different games. You also have the option to set what each of the buttons on the mouse does, completely up to you, who needs a left and right click, anyways? The software leaves a bit to be desired, but it does what it's supposed to do and I can't think of what it's missing. 8/10.
How does it feel though? It feels great. It's smaller than our reference mouse, the Deathadder, as in..it's shorter, but it feels a bit wider in some spots. The Deathadder is a very smooth surface the entire way around, and leaves a lot to the imagination in terms of design language and any sort of desire to stand out of the pack. The Castor is a right handed mouse covered in a soft-touch coating, that is a delight to hold in my hand, I felt like I was walking on air, with my fingers, while using this mouse. It's also lighter than the Deathadder, initially I was looking for a heavier mouse and thought I was making a compromise here, little did I know that I was enjoy a lighter mouse all the same, I feel like I have immensely more control in games with this mouse, and even just flirting around on my desktop.
The scroll wheel is decent, I don't have any complaints other than wishing the click was a bit easier to press down, but that's just a minor complaint for me personally. Most wouldn't have any issue I don't think, activating the middle click. On the left side of the mouse we see some deviation from the norm in the presence of a thumb grip that I can only say reminds me of a fresh Basketball. I was skeyptical of this, but I ended up loving the feeling of it and found it helping in keeping my thumb positioned to hit the two left-side buttons. The Castor also has these swooshy cut-outs on the right side of the mouse, for your fingers to rest. I generally found these to stay out of the way, or they were comfortable to utilize, they won't be for everyone's finger sizes or shapes, or positioning preference, however. I'd say design and feel, gets a 8.5/10, if they made a leftie version and loosened up the scroll wheel a bit, it would be a 10 for me.
Img credit: Mionix
All in all? I'm going to give the Mionix Castor a 8.5/10, the price isn't exactly competitive for these features, but what you do get, is an absolute pleasure to use and the simplicity can be appreciated every time you use the mouse. Awesome sensor, great coating, great hand feel, great weight, the software works, multiple color options beyond just RGB settings (and you even still have that with the Matte Black). Absolutely worth a look at and a potential purchase, if you love to play FPS titles, this could be your next buy.
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Thank you muchly! I know I haven't been around much the past few months, but I banged this out in like an hour while sitting around campus this morning at school, I think I'll start writing some more reviews and such much more frequently!