Page 2 - A Closer Look - Hardware and Software
At first glance, the DeepCool MG350 has a very ergonomic look to it. The mouse has an asymmetrical shape, designed specifically for right-handed users. This is evident how the right side protrudes out a little more to let the thumb rest on it. Both sides of the mouse have smooth plastic grips, making it relatively easy to hold. I enjoyed how this felt in my hand, as it made holding it very easy. The mouse shell is covered in a smooth black plastic, which gives it a clean look. There are two buttons in the middle of the mouse to toggle the sensitivity up and down. There is a total of two LED lighting zones on this mouse, those zones being the scroll wheel and the logo on the side.
The DeepCool MG350 has smaller physical dimensions compared to an average gaming mouse, coming in at 72.92mm in width, 106.62mm in length, and 43.58mm high. The MG350 weighs in at 92g, which is about average. Like most mice today, the weight is balanced to the center, meaning it will feel balanced when you lift it up. When using the MG350, I found that I was most comfortable using a claw or finger grip due to its small size. Being a person who prefers using a palm grip, I still found this mouse to be generally comfortable to hold for short to moderate periods of usage.
A braided cable is fed out from the center of the front end of the mouse, likewise to pretty much everything 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. The 1.8m length 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. 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 difficult areas when connecting it to a USB port.
The DeepCool MG350 comes with common buttons you would expect on a standard gaming mouse, including the forward and back keys on the left side and the sensitivity increase/decrease buttons in the middle. There is another button located on the left side preset to "rapid-fire", which is essentially another fire mode for FPS games. I personally used the MG350 software to change this button to be a multimedia button, which will be discussed in detail later on this page. The primary buttons have Omron optical switches. The rated lifespan given by DeepCool is around 20 million clicks. Both mouse buttons feel very crisp when pressing them, making a nice clicking sound.
The MG350 includes four sensitivity levels that can be adjusted and preset into the mouse using the MG350 software, which we will touch on shortly. There are two sensitivity adjustment 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 increase/decrease buttons makes reaching your desired sensitivity much easier as opposed to having only one toggle button, which requires you to cycle through each sensitivity before reaching your desired DPI. The LED lighting will blink a few times to indicate when the sensitivity has been toggled, although there is no variety of colors that will light up to indicate which sensitivity level the user is operating at. 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 when using a claw or finger grip. I realize 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 with the scroll wheel, the grip on the wheel was good, as I found no problem with the scrolling when I browsed the web. The scrolling performance was adequate and comparable to any other mouse I have used. As mentioned earlier, the scroll wheel of the mouse is one of the LED lighting zones. The lighting does not contain much variety of pattern options, which we will look at in just a moment.
At the bottom of the mouse, the feet and sensor can be seen. The pads are made of PTFE, commonly known as Teflon. This is fairly standard across mice in general, so you know what it is. The two Teflon pads allow the mouse to glide smoothly when being dragged across any flat surface. The DeepCool MG350 uses a PixArt PAW3335DB-TZDU sensor. This sensor can sense up to an impressive 16,000 DPI along with being capable of tracking speeds of 400 IPS with acceleration of 40g. These are serviceable specifications, although we will see how this sensor actually performs in our subjective performance tests.
The PAW3335 sensor is also found on other mice like the ASUS TUF Gaming M4 Air and the ASUS ROG Keris Wireless. The "DB-TZDU" designation is probably a DeepCool designation for the PAW3335 with some firmware-level changes, but is otherwise still the same hardware. When adjusting your sensitivity, you are able to adjust the DPI by intervals of 100, which is reasonably precise. The MG350 runs at a maximum polling rate of up to 1000 Hz, which can be adjusted at three other settings of 125 Hz, 250 Hz, 500 Hz.
DeepCool has its own software specifically for the MG350 mouse. The software is simply called “MG350 Gaming Mouse” and can be downloaded from DeepCool's website. Since the MG350 is not the first mouse DeepCool has manufactured, I thought they would have had a universal configuration software by now just like Corsair iCUE or Razer Synapse. The download file is 9.8MB as of the release time of this review.
The MG350 software is intuitive and easy to use. There are three primary tabs for customization: Light setting, button settings, and advanced. In the light settings tab, users can adjust the lighting style of the MG350. Unlike many other gaming mice we have reviewed, the lighting configuration options are quite limited. For starters, there are only two LED lighting styles -- breathing and static. There is also only one color to choose from, that being cyan. Users can adjust the brightness and lighting speed of the LEDs. Otherwise, this is all the light settings tab has to offer. In the button settings tab, the user can map different functions to each button on the mouse. There are a total of eight buttons on the mouse, giving users plenty of options for custom function mapping. There are eight main functions that can be mapped to any button, that being the default key, mouse key, DPI key, rapid-fire, standard keyboard button, multimedia, system function, and office key.
Finally, the advanced tab allows users to adjust mouse sensitivity, polling rate, lift off distance, pointer speed, scroll speed, and double click speed. The polling rate can also be modified with the available options being 125Hz, 250Hz, 500Hz, or 1000Hz. There are four different sensitivity levels that the user can set at increments of 100 DPI. Users can adjust the specific DPI values with all four sensitivity settings in view together. The lowest sensitivity that can be set is 100 DPI, with the highest sensitivity being 16,000 DPI. The lift off distance can also be adjusted, although the only options are 1mm and 2mm. The current button assignment configuration will constantly be displayed on the right side, which I think is nice to let users know what button configuration they have if they forgot to commit a change.
Overall, I found the MG350 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. Any changes made in the software are updated on the mouse instantly, which is an improvement over the 5-second delay present with the MC310 software. In the end, the MG350 software is well-designed and friendly to use.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look - Hardware and Software
3. Subjective Performance Tests
4. Conclusion
