Page 2 - A Closer Look - Hardware and Software
At first glance, the DeepCool MC310 looks like your average lightweight mouse with a honeycomb shell for weight savings. There is no branding present on the top exterior shell. Despite DeepCool claiming the grip type of this mouse is for right-handed users, the MC310 has a symmetrical shape suitable for left-handed users too. Both sides of the mouse have smooth grips, and it is easy to hold. I like the way its matte black finish looks. The honeycomb shell is made out of smooth plastic, and thanks to the strong matte black plastic finish, fingerprints do not show easily. Greasy hands will still leave a mark though, so just be sure to wash your hands whenever you finish eating. Speaking of food, it is wise to be careful when eating around this device as crumbs can easily fall through the holes.
Inside the shell is mostly hollow. Peering through the holes reveals a printed DeepCool logo towards the backside and the internal circuitry at the front. Because of this, there is not much to prevent dust from entering inside the mouse. After about a week of usage, I noticed the dust build-up on the interior when looking through the honeycomb holes. Interestingly, there is no translucent diffuser for the RGB LED lighting. Instead, the RGB LED lighting shines straight through the holes of the honeycomb enclosure. You can even see the physical LEDs directly when peering closely through the hollow shell. Aside from shining through the honeycomb holes, the RGB LED lighting also illuminates the scroll wheel, the DeepCool logo inside the mouse, and a thin translucent diffuser strip running along the bottom of the mouse.
When it comes to physical dimensions, the DeepCool MC310 measures 68mm in width, 126mm in length, and 38mm in height. The MC310 weighs in at 75g, which is fairly light for a mouse, but it is slightly heavier than expected given its honeycomb shell. We have seen lighter in the category like the Cooler Master MM711. The weight is balanced to the center, meaning it will feel balanced when you lift it up. When using the DeepCool MC310, I found I was most comfortable using a palm grip due to the larger size of this mouse. I still found this mouse to be generally comfortable to hold for short to moderate periods when using a claw or finger grip. The build quality of the MC310 is generally good, although the mouse will flex a little bit if you press down on the bottom. This is not a severe issue though, especially since weight is usually not applied on the bottom side of a mouse.
A braided cable is fed out from the center of the front end of the mouse, likewise to pretty much every wired mouse I have used in the past. Aside from looking nice, the braided cable also provides less friction than a regular rubber-coated cable, allowing for smoother mouse movement. On top of that, braided cables offer better build quality when compared to regular cables due to having greater structural integrity. That said, for an lightweight mouse, a paracord cable would have been better, since it is lighter, but do keep in mind this is a budget model. The cable measures 1.8m in length, which is industry-standard and does the job well if you like to keep your PC off your desk or somewhere at a reasonable distance. The mouse connects through a USB Type-A connector, with the connectivity being USB 2.0. While adding gold plating would have looked nice, it would not affect performance. Not having a gold-plated connector makes sense in this case as it adds no benefit, but raises the cost. The cable is very flexible, making it easy to run through tight areas when connecting it to a USB port.
The DeepCool MC310 comes with the common buttons you would expect on a standard gaming mouse, including the forward and back keys on the left side and the sensitivity toggles in the middle. The primary buttons use Huano switches that are rated for 10 million clicks. This is a shorter life span when compared to mice from other manufacturers such as Corsair or ROCCAT, which has switches rated for up to 100 million clicks. It would have been better if the MC310 had a higher lifespan, but this is a budget product. Both mouse buttons feel very crisp when pressing them, although these switches feel stiffer than Omron switches. Regardless, the Huano switches are still nice to press.
The MC310 includes six sensitivity levels that can be adjusted and preset into the mouse using the MC310 software, which we will touch on shortly. There are two sensitivity toggle buttons located behind the scroll wheel to increase and decrease sensitivity. I think this is a great addition as many budget mice only have one sensitivity toggle button. Having two toggles makes reaching your desired sensitivity much easier as opposed to having only one toggle button, which could potentially require you to cycle through each sensitivity before reaching your desired DPI. The RGB LED lighting will also change color whenever the sensitivity is altered, which is a creative visual detail. The buttons are close enough to each other such that your fingers will not have to stretch much to reach them, but also far enough away from each other to avoid accidental clicks. I do realize that this could be different for people with larger hand sizes. All the buttons feel very nice to click with good travel and response times.
Continuing on to the scroll wheel, the grip on the notched wheel was good as I found no problem with scrolling when casually browsing the web. The scrolling performance was adequate and comparable to any other mouse I have used. The scroll speed is adjustable in the MC310 software, which is a nice feature if you do not want to adjust the scroll speed through your operating system. I took advantage of this by increasing my scroll speed whenever I had to work on a task that required extensive scrolling, which I found quite helpful. As mentioned earlier, the scroll wheel of the mouse is one of the RGB LED lighting zones. We can see the sides of the scroll wheel are made out of a translucent RGB LED diffuser, which helps display the colorful lighting.
At the bottom of the mouse, the feet and sensor can be seen along with the DeepCool logo, part number, model number, and some certifications. The rated voltage and current are also printed at the bottom, with the numbers being 5V and 100mA, respectively, as a standard USB device. The bottom of the MC310 uses a light blue color scheme rather than the matte black we have seen on the rest of the mouse. The pads are made of PTFE, commonly known as Teflon. This is fairly standard across mice in general. The four Teflon pads located at each corner allow the mouse to glide smoothly when being moved across any flat surface.
The DeepCool MC310 uses an optical sensor, although the specific sensor is not specified. What we do know is that this sensor is capable of tracking speeds of 60 IPS with an acceleration up to 20g. These numbers fall on the shorter side when compared to performance sensors from PixArt, which can track at speeds of 400 IPS with an acceleration up to 50g. This optical sensor is also capable of sensing up to 12,800 DPI, while the lowest sensitivity is 200 DPI. We will see how this sensor performs in our subjective performance tests on the following page. The DPI steps vary depending on the sensitivity range. From 200 DPI to 2000 DPI, the sensitivity can be incremented by steps of 200 DPI. From 2000 DPI, users can increase the sensitivity by 400 DPI up to 2400 DPI. The step change from 2400 DPI to 11,200 DPI is 800 DPI. Finally, users can only move up to the maximum 12,800 DPI from 11,200 DPI. I wish DeepCool had been more consistent with the step changes along with giving users the option to shift the DPI by smaller steps. With that said, the MC310 still provides a decent range here. The MC310 runs at a maximum polling rate of 1000 Hz, which can be adjusted at three other settings of 125 Hz, 250 Hz, and 500 Hz. Lighting and sensitivity settings can be saved onto the mouse itself. Macros or key remaps cannot be saved, but I found it surprising to find any onboard profile storage at all on a $30 mouse. The RGB LED lighting extends to the sides of the bottom of the MC310, which looks particularly nice on a black mouse pad surface and further adds to the aesthetic of the mouse when plugged in.
The lighting comes with a variety of modes that can change the display of the light. I tried all the different color combinations on the DeepCool RGB LED lighting software to see how it looked and every color I tested looked accurately represented. There are twelve different lighting effects available to choose from on the MC310 software, such as cycle breathing, ripple, and flowing water effect. All the lighting effects look great on the different lighting zones. The lighting strip at the bottom of the mouse looks especially great and makes it look like the MC310 is floating when placed on top of a black mouse pad.
DeepCool has its own software specifically for the MC310 mouse. The software is simply called “MC310” and can be downloaded from DeepCool's website. The MC310 is the first mouse DeepCool has manufactured, so the software name makes sense for right now. This is under the assumption that the software name will change in the future if DeepCool decides to continue in the peripheral market, specifically with mice. The download file is 29.7MB as of the release time of this review.
The MC310 software is intuitive and easy to use. There are four primary tabs for customization: Button, macro, performance, and backlight. In the button tab, users can customize the function of each button on the mouse. Each button is numbered, making it so users can keep track of any customizations they decide to implement. There are twelve functions users can assign to the selected button, with some of these functions having their own sub-section of options. Some of these options are incredibly neat, such as volume control, calculator, and mute function. In the macro tab, users can fully utilize the macros available to them. A key list and LED tab are also available for users to customize when creating macros. In the performance tab, users can adjust the mouse sensitivity, scroll speed, and fire speed. The sensitivity and scroll speed have ten levels to choose from. The polling rate can also be modified with the available options being 125Hz, 250Hz, 500Hz, or 1000Hz. Users can adjust the specific DPI values with all six sensitivity settings in view together. Users can also adjust the color of the RGB LED lighting when a given sensitivity is selected.
Finally, the backlight tab is for changing the RGB LED lighting effects on the mouse. As mentioned earlier, there are a total of twelve lighting options. Each one has its own pattern adjustments, such as clockwise or anti-clockwise or selecting a specific light shift speed. On top of all that, there are four available profiles for users to save their different settings to. The profiles are labeled as "Game 1", "Game 2", "Game 3", and "Office". You will need to map a profile cycle function to one of the buttons if you wish to have access to all four without having to use the MC310 software. The profiles only save the button mappings, which is reasonable for a budget mouse. It should also be noted that users can import and export settings along with resetting to the default settings.
Overall, I found the MC310 software to be relatively intuitive and easy to use. The look of the user interface is clean and well organized. I enjoyed the variety of customization with this software, especially with the button mapping. It should be noted that users must select the “apply” button before any changes can be uploaded to the mouse. There is usually a 5-second delay when uploading the change to the mouse, which is not super long, but I still wish the changes could be reflected on the mouse faster. In the end, the MC310 software is well designed and fun to use.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look - Hardware and Software
3. Subjective Performance Tests
4. Conclusion
