The CM Storm Spawn -
The CM Storm Spawn was much smaller than I expected. I have a large palm (with stubby fingers) which makes many mice uncomfortable to use. When the mouse is small this is even more of a discomfort the spawn’s smaller size does have me concerned, but we will reserve judgment until we get it into action. Getting back to our description, the Spawn is small and squat this differs from most mice that are much longer than they are wide. It honestly looks like someone just removed the back half of the mouse leaving the large buttons, wheel etc. in place.
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The outer shell is made of colored plastic that is resistant to most scratches (incidental ones but not anything major). There are openings where Cooler Master has placed buttons or grip surfaces. These are all made of a rubberized material that offers excellent grip even with wet fingers. The mouse buttons feel like they have the same surface which makes them appear more responsive (and they are). Along the right side of the Spawn is what we can only describe as a finger rest. When you have this mouse in your hand your ring finger naturally rests right along this ledge. It makes the Spawn more comfortable to grip in many ways as your ring and pinky finger are not both being dragged across your mousing surface.
Along the left side of the Spawn (where your thumb rests) are two buttons by default these are for back and forward when in Internet Explorer but they can be configured to work differently using the Spawn software (which we will cover later). On the top of the mouse we find the scroll wheel/middle mouse button and two additional buttons. The Scroll wheel is a stepped type meaning that you can feel a click each time it moved up or down. It is very responsive and accurate. The two additional buttons are setup to change the DPI level of the mouse up or down. Moving it up can increase mouse accuracy but also increases the speed it moves across your desktop (it is also much more sensitive to motion), decreasing has the opposite affect (of course).
The cable used is something of a departure though. The last few serious gaming mice I have played around with had cloth covered cords. These actually reminded me of the old electrical wiring that had wax coated cloth for a shielding instead of PVC. Still those have a disadvantage as well; after time they become frayed and collect dust and dirt very easily. The Spawn uses a very supple PVC coating on its 2 meter cord. The end of this cord is a gold plated USB plug. The gold plating is supposed to be for better conductivity, however most electrical experts will tell you that gold plating is not going to give you any advantage in connectivity. It will help protect this from corrosion and dirt. Unless Cooler Master made the whole thing from gold and the port on your motherboard was gold (solid) as well there is no true “performance” benefit from using gold. It is all about longevity and preventing corrosion and dust from affecting this product.
Flipping the Spawn over, we see that Cooler Master has learned something. The Teflon pads on the bottom are pretty large and they also conform to the entire front area of the mouse. Why is this important? Well, have you ever been playing a game and your mouse slid over the edge of your mousing surface? With most mice the small point Teflon pads will catch on their way back over the edge. With the Spawn this is not likely to happen unless you really push it off the mouse pad. We also find the 3500 DPI optical sensor mounted perpendicular to the centerline of the Spawn.
Internally Cooler Master has thrown some excellent components into the mix. The buttons on the Spawn are all rated at 5 million clicks, the wheel is a Japanese Ultra-Step encoder, the polling rate on the Spawn is up to 1000Hz, and of course there is the Sentinel-X 32KB of memory to store your settings. This allows you to take the Spawn with you and keep all of your customizations.
In all it is a well put together mouse, even if it does look a little weird. The wide squat body makes up for the lack of weight that you would get from a more traditional mouse. We can’t wait to see how it performs with some of our favorite games.
