The CORSAIR M65 ELITE scores an almost perfect card, to the point where we find ourselves scratching our heads to come up with some issues so we don’t appear to be on CORSAIR’s payroll.

The build quality, as has been the case for some time now, is always a strong point, the aluminium chassis will take years of use without batting an eyelid, every button feels well-engineered and built to last, the adjustable weight system on the bottom screws in beautifully and is perfectly flush with the base of the mouse.
QUICKSTRIKE, a system designed to preload the left and right mouse buttons, is absolutely fantastic. This really does separate the men from the boys and we fully expect other mouse manufacturers to develop their own technology to rival this. Pair that with CORSAIR’s Axon signal processor, an insane 8000Hz polling rate and a 26000 DPI PixArt sensor and you’ve got a real weapon in your hands.

Thanks to a fantastically designed shape, the M65 ULTRA fares well for lengthy spells of typical computer usage, browsing your favourite social media sites, doing some word processing, even working from home, the M65 will certainly not give you any long-term problems.

The wire is slowly working its way away from gaming mice, often presenting a problem for serious gamers with snags and resistance from the cable causing slight deviation from the intended direction of movement; CORSAIR are wise to this potential issue and have developed a cord with so little resistance that you forget it’s there, it bends with the absolute minimum of effort and doesn’t spring back at all.

RGB lighting is all the more important these days, your rig has to look as good as it performs and the M65 won’t let you down here. The LEDs are lovely and bright with smooth transitions and the software makes setting them up a doddle.

Speaking of software, iCUE has gone through a fair few changes over the years, and not all good. We feel like it’s on the way down at the moment, changes are being made for the sake of change but without actually optimising or improving the experience at all. Something we’d suggest to CORSAIR would be a basic/advanced toggle, where you can choose how in-depth the software goes for beginners and advanced users. Setting up macros or monitoring system specs isn’t always necessary and can just confuse the process completely. Non-the-less, the software does a decent job, looks nice and ties together all of your CORSAIR components nicely.

Unfortunately for the WIRELESS version, we have to remove some points for its weight gain, 110g is too heavy for an FPS mouse in 2021, with most of the competition arriving well under 100g these days, especially when compared to its closest rivals, the 74g Razer Viper Ultimate and the 80g SteelSeries Prime Wireless.


The M65 RGB ULTRA offers a fantastic gaming experience thanks to the immediacy of the QUICKSTRIKE buttons and 8000Hz polling rate, a comfortable shape, bulletproof build quality and a decade of tweaks; the WIRELESS could do with losing some weight though.



Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.

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