Cougar Minos X5 and the Revenger S Mouse Review - Features and Benefits

Besides the software, top notch sensor, and RGB lighting, the Minos X5 and Revenger S are normal 6-button gaming mouses. Cougar has been listening to the gaming community, refining their products, and have now entered the high-end gaming mouse market with the Minos X5 and Revenger S. The quality was evident as soon as I plugged them in.

We do get to talk about the PixArt 6630 sensor, however. Released in 2016, as an exclusive for Logitech in the form of 3366, it’s now found in at least two dozen mice. The 3360 uses an IR LED sensor, offering 12000CPI (counts per inch), and an exceptionally low, <1%, error rate on image capture. It also will track at 250ips (6.35 meters/second) at up to 50g of acceleration.

Now, DPI is different than CPI, though they are often used interchangeably and is incorrect. We see dots-per-inch used as a general indicator of how good a mouse is, or how fast the cursor will move on your screen, but it’s almost meaningless for mice, and is a better measure for things like printers or screens. This is where CPI, or counts per inch, comes in. Since optical sensors in mice are continuously capturing an image of the surface they’re on top of, sampling frequency, or CPI, becomes a more relevant measure. PixArt themselves refer to it as ‘frame rate’. The higher the CPI, the more data you have, and with more data, the better error correction you have. There’s another half to this, of course, the underlying algorithms that do the interpolation and error correction must do good things with the data. This all translates into features like sensitivity (which confusingly is in DPI), and polling rates.

Moving on, the PMW3360 also has surface calibration, selectable lift height sensitivity, angle snapping, and up to 2000Hz polling rate. I’m sure I cannot distinguish between 1000Hz and 2000Hz, but some you fast-twitch gamers out there might be able to. With the very high DPI and polling rate, tracking should not ever become an issue.

About tracking, the sensor never failed to track on any surface I tried it on, including a mirror and glass. Because of the high-resolution sensor, both mouses can track at up to 250 inches per second, at up to 50G of acceleration. I’m not really a fast twitch gamer, but both the Minos X5 and Revenger S felt very stable, there were no hiccups with the cursor, and delivered solid performance in every game I played. Lift height is selectable up to 3mm but comes default to 1mm. Lifting off produces slight jiggling of the cursor, and is well controlled.

I really like the textured rubberized grips. My old MX518, with its slick rubber sides, had become unpleasantly sticky, even after regular cleaning. Balance is interesting, the Revenger S is tail heavy if you pick it up at the grip points, and because there’s no lip on the right side, your fingers can slip off. The Minos X5 is better balanced, though still tail heavy, but because there’s a slight lip on the right side, my fingers never felt like they were going to slip off.

Overall build quality is excellent, and I didn’t find any rattles or squeaks. The only issue I found was with the Revenger S, the buttons didn’t feel as crisp as the Minos X5. Ergonomically, the Minos X5 felt better in my hand than the Revenger S, even though I liked the shape and weight of the Revenger S more. Buttons also felt better on the Minos X5, more positively clicky, and quieter than the Revenger S. For my money, and my hand, the Minos X5 is the mouse I would buy.

Let’s look at the UIX software.