Page 2 - A Closer Look - Hardware and Software
The Thermaltake ARGENT M5 Wireless RGB looks good in my opinion. You can find some straight lines and hard angles at the front side of the mouse, which give it a gaming-esque style. If you go to Thermaltake's website and check the mouse section, you will notice there are two versions of ARGENT M5. Today’s review unit is the wireless version, and of course, it comes at a higher price compared to the wired version. The color of the mouse is black. In my personal opinion, black is the best color if you want to emphasize your shining RGB LED lighting effects. Although there are RGB LEDs, unlike the wired version, the wireless model does not have an RGB strip at the bottom. This is understandable since the wired ARGENT M5 does not have the same power consumption constraint the wireless one has. From the above picture, we can only see the RGB LED-backlit company logo on the mouse. The second RGB LED-backlit area is the scroll wheel. In this photo, you can only see the Thermaltake's logo at the back of the mouse. Later, we will see what the scroll wheel RGB LED looks like when plugged in. It is a common practice to have RGB LED-backlit logos on the mouse.
The Thermaltake ARGENT M5 Wireless RGB measures in at 128mm in length, 64mm in width, and 37mm in height. The size is big enough to be considered as a palm grip mouse. In fact, the ergonomic design of the ARGENT M5 Wireless RGB provides pretty good support to your palm resting on the back of the mouse. The above photo shows the mouse is symmetric, that is, it can be configured suit both left-handed and right-handed user. The bulge of the mouse does not seem to be very big. This may cast doubt on the palm supporting performance. I will discuss the actual user experience of the ARGENT M5 Wireless RGB later and see if the mouse can provide enough support to user's hand or not. The ARGENT M5 Wireless RGB weighs about 117g, which is no featherweight like the ROCCAT Kone Pro Air at 75g, but also no heavier than the SteelSeries Rival 650 Wireless.
As a wireless mouse, it requires wireless transceivers for it to work. Of course, the mouse transceiver is inside of the device. There is also a wireless dongle for your computer. The wireless dongle is for the 2.4GHz radio band. If your computer has Bluetooth, then the wireless connection can be established without using the dongle. Note Bluetooth is more energy efficient than the proprietary 2.4GHz protocol, as it features much longer battery lifetime per charge. The ARGENT M5 Wireless RGB is equipped with a braided cable for wired connection and battery charging. Thermaltake also includes a USB to micro-USB converter to extend the USB dongle. The cable is lightweight and soft, therefore I do not feel any extra dragging force caused by the wire when plugged in, but still not as good as a paracord cable. The mouse comes with a 1.8m cable, but if you want to keep out of trouble when you pull the mouse out of your backpack, a rubber strap is present to keep you organized.
The USB connector of the ARGENT M5 Wireless RGB has Thermaltake's company logo on it, so you will not confuse it with some other USB cables of yours. Also, the USB connector is gold plated. The gold-plated connector does not necessarily improve performance, but it looks good.
The Thermaltake ARGENT M5 Wireless RGB features high-quality Omron switches rated for fifty million clicks each. Three of the most important buttons of the mouse -- the left click button, right click button, and scroll wheel -- are also well designed on the ARGENT M5 Wireless RGB in terms of texture and layout. The left and right buttons have the same plastic texture as the rest of body. This feature actually makes sense, since it maintains the consistency of the mouse in terms of color and texture. However, I would prefer to have some gritty texture to provide some more grip to the mouse. In other words, I fell the mouse is a little bit too slippery. In the middle of the two buttons is the aluminum scroll wheel. The scroll wheel looks and feels premium, but again, it lacks grip in my opinion. There is also a button under the scroll wheel. The button is used to toggle its setting profile. Each time the profile is changed, the backlight effect of the Thermaltake company logo and the scroll wheel may also change if it is configured differently. On both sides of the mouse, there are four buttons in total for you to program to whatever you want them to do, thanks to the Thermaltake's iTAKE Engine software program.
By default, those two buttons on the left side of the mouse are for forward and backward navigation, which should not come as a surprise to you. The size of the navigation buttons is pretty big. This feature allows the user to easily locate those buttons. On the right side of the mouse, the two buttons are not programmed with any functions by default. They can be configured in iTAKE Engine. Overall, this mouse just uses hard plastic everywhere such that it lacks grip, since it does not have any rubber or grip-enhanced surfaces.
The LEDs on the ARGENT M5 are RGB that can be emit 16.8 million different colors. I would like to say by having 16.8 million choices of colors, you will be able to have a different LED setting for 46,207 years if you change the setting once a day. My point is, it is more than enough to allow you to have your favorite color settings, and it is expected with all modern gaming products. With the help of iTAKE Engine, the lighting effects can be set as Static, Pulse, Blink, Wave, RGB Spectrum, or Reactive mode. Of course, you can also define different colors for each mode, which makes it really fancy in terms of customization ability.
Flipping over the mouse, you will see another nice feature to it: Two pieces of large Teflon feet. The Teflon feet can significantly minimize the friction between contacting surfaces, which makes the handling of the mouse smooth. The area of each Teflon foot is large enough to provide good support and gliding performance. There is a PixArt PMW3335 optical sensor, which is specified for 16,000 DPI sensitivity. This is the same sensor found in the ASUS ROG Keris Wireless. People may not use the mouse at maximum sensitivity, but at lower and more common DPI settings, say, 1000 DPI, the precision performance of a high-performance sensor may be better than that of a lower performance economy sensor. Combined with the maximum 1000 Hz polling rate, the Thermaltake ARGENT M5 Wireless RGB does its job as a gaming mouse.
In terms of weight balance, the ARGENT M5 is centered roughly on the sensor, which is good for a gaming mouse. During use, I did not notice any sensor rattle.
The Thermaltake ARGENT M5 Wireless RGB is mostly plug-and-play. If you want to customize its settings, such as the ten buttons’ configuration, DPI level, polling rate, color setting of the RGB lighting, and even checking the battery status, the configuration software, iTAKE Engine, is required. You can download it from the Thermaltake's website easily, so there is no need for any physical discs. iTAKE Engine has lots of functions, but it looks intuitive in my opinion. The theme color is black, and the whole GUI is well-organized. You can have up to six profiles configured for different scenarios. All six profiles are labeled, so it is pretty straightforward to use. Basically, you do not need to spend a lot of time on figuring out how it works. The data in the profile can be exported to the local drive of your computer. It is worth mentioning, all configurations can be changed on-the-fly through the wireless connection and written to the 64K internal memory of the mouse, so you can feel some lag when setting up the mouse.
You can set the maximum DPI from 100 all the way to 16000 with the step size of 1 DPI. There is no way that you cannot find your favorite DPI or your lucky number. The mouse can memorize one setting of DPI, polling rate, and button response time per profile. By setting and using different profiles, the user can really optimize the settings based on different use cases. One other important feature of iTAKE Engine is to check the battery energy level and to turn on and off the power saving feature. Without power saving, the mouse will not turn off the RGB LEDs even it is not used for long time. Generally speaking, iTAKE Engine is reasonably powerful. You can basically customize everything on your mouse.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look - Hardware and Software
3. Subjective Performance Tests
4. Conclusion
