COUGAR Revenger 12000 DPI RGB Gaming Mouse Review

It seems like everyone makes a mouse, throw a billion buttons on it, throw some DPI and a bunch of gimmicks on it and it’s good right… wrong.  Many times, these mice are clones, look and feel like every other but many don’t care about the things that mater, but it seems that Cougar does.  Cougar has been around for a while now and they have been making keyboard and mice for almost as long.  With that said, I bring you my review on their newest mouse, the Cougar Revenger 12,000 DPI Ultimate Optical Gaming Mouse.

Before I get into the review, let’s go over some of the features and functions.

• 12,000 DPI
• PixArt PMW3360 Extreme Optical Sensor
• 32-Bit ARM Processor
• OMRON Micro Switches
  • Guaranteed lifetime of at least 5 Million Clicks
• Gaming Grade Scroll Wheel
• 512KB On-board Memory
• Trigger Button
• Anti-Slip Flanks
• Premium Pro-Gaming Surface
• 1000Hz Poling Rate / 1ms Response Time
• 2-Zone RGB backlit Color LED
  • 3-Stage DPI LED Indicator
  • Color Changing Logo and Palm Rest
• 6 Programmable Buttons
  • Up to 21 Different Functions
• Gold Plated USB Plug
• Cable length of 1.8meters/70.87 inches

Nice specs, and the box looks nice, let’s tear it open and see what’s inside.

OK, before we get into the mouse itself, let’s go over the other things in the box first.

The first thing we see is the Users Manual.  It’s a basic manual, but it has some good info in it.

One side goes over the default button assignment, features and specifications.

The other, goes over where to download Cougars UIX software, Installation procedures, Warranty information, Disclaimers and Legal Notices.

One very important thing they mention on this side as well, “Please do not directly look into the optical beam!”.  Be careful with this, and yeah I giggled a little.

The mouse also comes with these 4 stickers.  3 of the stickers look like guitar pics, and then one is a rectangular logo on the top right hand corner.  Sadly, the Dragonblogger logo is not an included logo.

That’s about it for the extra’s, now let’s check it out the mouse itself, the Cougar Revenger.

[nextpage title=”Up Close and Personal”]

Inside the nice looking box, which I usually prefer a plain brown box comes this mouse.

This sexy logo and bottom strip are not stickers, it’s a picture of the palm rest for this mouse and 1 of its 2-Zone RGB backlit areas.  It has 16.8 million colors it cycles through, but here are a few.

This light adds nice light underneath your palm while you play, I will get into the 2^nd zone soon.

This is the same area with the light off and in the light.  Let’s work our way around the mouse, let’s go to the right hand side.

The right is basically bare, but here we can see the Anti-Slip Flanks.  These little honey comb shaped groves will help your hands from slipping after hours of gaming.  This is a gaming mouse, so they want to make sure you have a stable grip and it does a good job.  There is another side to this, I will go over it very soon.

Coming around to the front of the mouse, it looks a bit futuristic.  It’s got all of the curves of the batmobile, ferocity and its speed, such attention to detail.  Here we have the left and right mouse button.  They are backed by the OMRON MICRO switches, guaranteed they say for a minimum of 5 million clicks.

The front reveals its gaming grade scroll wheel as well.

While scrolling, it’s not incredibly clicky sounding, but you can feel the rubberized rumble of it.  The scroll wheel can also be used as a button, pushing it down.  The entire texture of the Cougar Revenger is a very matte type feel, smooth almost rubber, it feels nice in your hands. Cougar Calls this their Premium Pro-Gaming Surface.  Let’s move behind the wheel for a sec.

Behind the gaming grade scroll wheel, we find the DPI trigger.  The DPI trigger allows you to cycle through the pre-defined DPI’s, though you can also change those DPI settings through the UIX software.  We will go through the UIX software shortly.

The DPI trigger while held also activates sniper mode.  Sniper mode has its own DPI setting, usually higher than the others allowing you more finely tune your DPI when needed and once released puts you back into the DPI mode you were in previously.

One thing you will notice about the Cougar Revenger is that the cable under the left mouse button rather than in the middle, don’t worry it never gets in the way.

Here you get a better view of it.  In this shot though we catch what looks like gills but it’s actually the Revenger’s 3-Stage DPI LED Display, we will focus more in on this in a second.

Turning it a little more to the side, we can see again the Anti-slip rubber flanks again, yup on both sides.  We can also see the Forward and Backward buttons, like all of the other keys on this mouse, they can be re-purposed to function however you choose.  We also find the DPI LED Display, let’s focus on this now.

This is how it looks like when the LED is lit up and on the first of 3 stages.

This is the 2^nd stage in the 3-Stage DPI LED Display, we are almost at the boss.

This is the 3^rd and final stage, this boss doesn’t look so rough.  All 3 of these LED’s are not only programmable, but you can also change the color of the lights and lighting effect as well, I will go over this in the next chapter when I cover the UIX software.

These are not all of the lights, but I wanted to give you an example of how they look.

Last but not least, we have the bottom of the mouse.

The bottom reveals the Revenger Gaming Mouse sticker, Serial Number, Model Number, all of its certifications and the Optical Sensor.

Then we have the bottom of the Gaming Grade Scroll Wheel.  The walls built around it keep it confined and make it look like some sort of scooper or blinder to keep it focused.

Moving away from the mouse, we have the 1.8meters/70.87 inch rubberized cable.  I do like the braided cables… and they are supposed to protect from bunching up or twisting, but I have not found that to work very much as my daughter has proven with a bunch of headphones and mice and it costs more, so it does not bother that it is rubberized.

Then at the end of that very long cable, we have the gold-plated USB plug.  The connector is backed by the standard type cover but branded Cougar.

OK, so we have covered the mouse entirely, let’s move on to the UIX software.

[nextpage title=”UIX and Features”]

The mouse on its own works great, but if you want to change a few things you can and you don’t have to touch windows own mouse configuration software because Cougar packs its own.  While UIX is not included in the box, you can download it off of Cougars website.

The first time you install the software, it will update the firmware on the mouse.

When you start it up, you will be greeted with this screen.  On this screen, you can adjust the DPI, set the Sniper DPI Settings, Polling Range, Angle Snapping, Lift Height, Double Click Speed, Scroll Speed and Windows Pointer Speed, and that’s just on the Performance section.  Let’s dissect the Performance section a bit.

On the DPI Settings, you can program what each of the 3 DPI settings resolve when you pull the trigger button, or whatever button you may change to be the DPI selection button.  You can pull the slider left or right to raise or lower the DPI sensitivity.

With the “Independent X-Y axis adjustment” check box you can go so far as setting the X axis and Y axis independently.  That would drive me insane, but lets me on we have a lot to cover.

The Sniper DPI setting, allows you to use a key, by default the trigger key as a temporary key to have a higher DPI.  While you are gaming, you can pull back on the trigger key and get a little extra sensitivity to align your scope just right and shot through another gamers barrel.  Like the other DPI settings, you can adjust the axis individually as well.

The polling rate allows you to adjust how quickly the computer receives and sends signals to the mouse.  The higher you raise it, the better response times you receive.

Angle Snapping, I tend to keep off, but you may like it.  This function allows you to make mouse movements a bit straighter.  It feels very unnatural to me but it is adjustable so give it a try you might like it.

Lift Height can get you in trouble.  This allows you to define the height at which the mouse will stop tracking your movements.  If you chose too low, the mouse will stop working when you lift it and if you set too high, the mouse will track when lifted.  I have had a few times where I set it too low and it would not move at all.  This can be very comfortable for different grip types as well, I leave this one on default as well, Middle is for me.

The Double Click Speed is a basic Windows Mouse adjustment but it is a very nice one for many people.  I used to train people how to use their computers and found that a few of my students, the older ones usually had a hard time double clicking, they would click a little too slow and it would only register as a single click.  I used to adjust windows for them so that a single click would be a double click or lower the double click speed.  It can be a life saver for many, but I leave this one as default as well.

Scroll Speed, this allows you to adjust how many lines a scroll rolls up or down on.  I tend to play with this one a bit, but this is the default speed.  Since I do a lot of reading on my PC, I don’t raise it too much because it will scroll me right off of the page I was on.  Too low and you will be scroll for a few minutes to scroll passed that one page.  They even let you adjust it to “On screen at a time”, that will greatly depend on the resolution of your screen because it may be awkward for pictures.  Give it a try, you can always revert it.

Windows Point Speed can almost be seen as a DPI adjustment.  Too low and it will be like your DPI is way too low and too high you may be looking for your pointer at times.  I did say it was almost like the DPI adjustment because there is a difference, though there is a fine line and you will need to play with it, also the “Enable Mouse Acceleration” check box as well.  This check box will improve the overall smoothness of the mouse movement.

That was just once section of the UIX software, let’s check out the “Key Assignment” section.

In this section, you can click, hold and drag icons from the section on the right over and icon on the left and release it.  Let me show a little of what I mean below.

Pretty simple, right?

There are 3 tabs in the “Key Assignment” section.  There’s “Basic”, “Advance” and “Macro”.

Basic, lets you setup basic key assignments of the mouse while Advance give you a little more control, with a subsection that I will go over and finally Macro, let’s you set up and play different macros you can make and might use regularly.

Under Advance, here is the drop-down menu.

Here you can select the DPI Switch, Sniper Mode, Mode Switch, Ins. Mode Switch, Launch Program and Media Function.  We have already seen DPI Switch, so let’s check out Sniper.

Like the DPI switch I showed you previously on how to program, here is that Sniper Mode I spoke of before.  As I mentioned previous, with Sniper mode, you can have a higher or lower than average DPI setting assigned to any key, I think the trigger key is the least obtrusive, what do you think?  Moving on, let’s check out the options on “Mode Switch”.

On Mode Switch, you can select profiles in which these Modes are saved under on the left-hand side.

Ins.Mode Switch or Instant Mode Switch allows you to change the profiles to one of the saved Profiles as long as that button is held, like Sniper Mode.

Launch Program, a nice little feature.

Launch Program, like drag and dropping functions from the right to the left, here you drag the Quick Launch icon to the left, then you assigned the program you would like to use so that now when you click on that mouse button, that program launches.  A great feature for frequently use programs, kind of like a shortcut on the desktop, but even easier to get to from anywhere on the screen.

The “Media Function” setting allows you to use the mouse as a media play, or at least controls for a media center, maybe for a Kiosk or something more functional.  Like before just drag a function from the right to the left and click Apply and you are good to go.  Now, one of my favorite tabs, the “Lighting Control” tab.

In this section, based off of the DPI selector trigger (the default key at least), where you would select your DPI the lighting is controlled as well.

Here you can select Lighting Controls for the front DPI selector section and for the Logo/Palm Rest section.

The upper left lights are the 3-Stage DPI LED Indicator and the bottom right hand corner is the Logo/Palm Rest section.

Here are changed the defaulted cycling lights the fully lighted selection and change the colors.  Here is how it looks like on the mouse itself.

Notice how both lights are different colors.

On the left of the lighting color control, you can select the Breathing and Fully Lighted effects and if you don’t like the lighting, you can turn it off.  On the right, you can select the cycling lights where it cycles through all of the colors.

Finally, the UIX software can be used for many of Cougar’s products.

Since I have been doing the review on the Revenger, it shows the “Revenger” icon, but soon you will see my review of the Cougar Attack X3 RGB.  If you have a few devices that use this software, you can install it and control it from this one interface, just click on the left or right arrow

Clicking the left or right arrow, will cycle through the list of Cougar products.

I think though, talking about it is one thing, but seeing is believing, let me show you how it works.

Let’s wrap it up and see if you agree with my Final Thought and Conclusion of the Cougar Revenger Gaming Mouse.

[nextpage title=”Final Thoughts and Conclusion”]

I reviewed the Cougar 550M previously and this is almost identical, but what broke the deal for me on that mouse was the price but Cougar did it right with the Revenger.  The Revenger actually has everything the 550M has minus the braided cable with a better price tag and almost double the DPI.

Let’s check out the pros and cons and I will go over a few things afterwards.

Pros

• Very long cable
• LED-Lighted
• 2 LED Lighted Zones
• Offers 4 modes of lighting
  • Off, Full Lighted, Breathing and Color Cycling
• Programmable Keys
• Strong build Quality
• Very Comfortable and Familiar feel, even if you never used one
• Very customizable and functional software, UIX
• Sturdy Build
• HIGH DPI Resolution
• VERY Affordable

Cons

• No Apple Support
• USB cable is not braided

The cons are cons only because it’s hard to make something perfect but this mouse has the makings for a perfect mouse.  Amazingly comfortable in your hands, tons of features without even using the UIX software and tons more with UIX and to top it off, this mouse is amazingly affordable.  The OMRON Micro switch guarantees this is not a mouse that will last only a month and the PixArt PMW3360 optical sensor allows for that high DPI.

This mouse does not have support for Apple products software wise, though I am sure it will still work and there is nothing stating that it will work for Apple products, so it is not falsely advertised.  It works on the Tablet Express Dragon Touch X10’s full USB port so I am sure it will work on a MAC, maybe minus some of the bonus’.  The braiding, well it just does not look as pretty but how many times do you look at your cable… and as for the potential reply “but braided cables don’t kink up”, they do kink up and almost as easy so it’s just for looks.

The fact that it is not braided just means that there is not and added cost when buying this mouse, it makes it more expensive.

Usually I say I have no choice but to give something a 5 out of 5 of course if it deserves it, but it is my pleasure to give the Cougar Revenger a 5 out of 5 Editor’s Choice.