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Cooler Master MM731 review: A decent wireless FPS gaming mouse
The Cooler Master MM731 is a gaming mouse designed to minimize hand interruptions. It’s lightweight, wireless, and there’s nothing too complicated about its construction or design. The price tag is safely below the $100 mark, and it’s not prohibitively expensive either. Having said that, though, I can’t praise me too enthusiastically, as there are several flaws that keep this mouse from competing with the best in a crowded market.
The MM731 is essentially a no-nonsense gaming mouse whose simplicity benefits FPS gamers. There are two main switches on the top, a scroll wheel, an RGB backlit Cooler Master logo, and two thumb switches on the left. Flip it over and you’ll find a Bluetooth/USB/2.4GHz switch, LED status lights, a pairing button, and a DPI switch. There’s also a small slot for storing a USB wireless dongle when you’re not using it, and it’s a nice touch.
The main selling point of the MM741 is the wireless connectivity provided: 2.4GHz directly to your device via the provided USB dongle or Bluetooth.
Cooler Master’s wireless technology works well on both counts. 2.4GHz is provided by a small USB Type-A dongle that connects your PC to the mouse immediately after power on. The connection also had no perceptible lag, even with a dongle plugged in on my PC’s cluttered rear I/O.
MM731 Specifications
sensor: pixel art
Sensitivity: 19,000
Connectivity: Wireless (2.4GHz, Bluetooth)
vote rate: 1000Hz (wired/2.4), 125Hz (BT)
Programmable buttons: 5
light: rear logo area
cable length: 1.8m
weight: 58 grams
price: $90 / £85
As for Bluetooth, it’s not a connection I would recommend for gaming, as the more widely used Bluetooth connection isn’t as good as its dedicated 2.4GHz connection. The polling rate alone is severely reduced on bluetooth. That said, there’s more flexibility in offering it, and it can come in handy when you’re missing a port or playing on a device that doesn’t have any available. For example, I can use this mouse on my Dell laptop, which only provides a USB Type-C connection, without using up a precious port provided by my USB Type-C to Type-A adapter.
I find myself using this mouse on the road more than my usual Logitech G Pro Wireless Superlight because it lacks this Bluetooth capability. So this is a victory for Cooler Master.
The mouse can also operate when connected via the included cable. This is a lightweight and flexible USB Type-C to Type-A cable because the mouse itself has a Type-C connector and won’t interfere with your game while the mouse is charging. Dragging and redirecting the mouse’s cable while in use is a minor annoyance for me, and it’s nice to see Cooler Master doing it right.
In terms of weight, the Cooler Master is also very light. By my estimate, it weighs 58 grams without the cable or USB dongle. That’s about 6 grams lighter than the Logitech G Pro Wireless I’ve been using as a benchmark.
It must be said, though, that Cooler Master feels the cheaper of the two is its reduced weight. The overall finish avoids the actual imperfections of the honeycomb shell, but feels rough to the touch. It feels cheaper than most comparably priced mice I’ve used, and when you’re spending that much money, you expect it to have some kind of high-end quality.
Still, some effort has been made to make the overall design better fit the gamer’s grip, and the gentle slope up and away from the left side of the mouse does make for a comfortable grip. Unfortunately, however, the two thumb buttons are not what I want, which means I occasionally find myself having to roll my thumb up for melee combat during the heat of Hunt: Showdown, which I programmed later Two thumb switches.
Of course, different grips will yield different results here, and some may find the positioning more beneficial than others.
The Pixart sensor tracked my movements well in-game and in our test software, but I didn’t expect anything less from the PixArt sensor. The sensor is actually quite far from the gaming mouse, which probably won’t make much of a difference to most people. However, this is ideal for players who want to align the sensor with their thumb or fingertip for maximum accuracy, and the MM731 is positioned significantly more forward than the Logitech G Pro Superlight.
However, while programming the MM731, I ran into the mouse’s biggest concern: software.
Cooler Master’s Masterplus software let it down. The MM731’s software is probably the most imperfect software I’ve ever used. It’s clunky, and the user interface looks half-baked at best. My main problem is that when you switch the DPI, the LED on the bottom of the mouse lights up a different color, which doesn’t show up in the app at all. This means you have to set the DPI settings in your application, save them, and then cycle through the mouse to determine which color represents which DPI setting by trial and error.
Most of the overall functionality in the Masterplus software is there, but it’s not intuitive to use, and it ends up feeling like just another little detail that takes the shine off an otherwise good wireless gaming mouse.
There’s nothing huge about the Cooler Master MM731, but it’s also hard to pin down anything particularly good. At best, it feels like a $60 mouse, and even so, it faces stiff competition, especially from Razer.But it’s actually priced closer $90When the wireless gaming mouse market is so competitive, the MM731 isn’t enough to win me over or pull my cash from the best wireless gaming mouse out there.