At the front of the box, we can see Cooler Master’s usual approach with reflective font printing for the product name along with the pictures of the actual product itself – just came to know that the model of the keyboard (MB7C) and mouse (MS35). It’s really appealing from the angle of those who wish to get an entry level gaming peripherals.
Cooler Master plans to keep things simple at the back, so you’ll only find a briefly described feature of the keyboard and mouse at the back.
The content of the box is pretty simple and straight forward: user’s guide, Octane keyboard and mouse.
Mouse (MS35)
- 10 million click life cycle
- Illumination with on-the fly color cycling
- 7 LED backlighting colors to choose from
- 4 preset DPI levels (500-3500)
- AVAGO 3050 optical sensor
The MS35 mouse comes in a standard layout (4 level DPI toggle buttons, side buttons), matte plastic surface and the appearance that resembles the head of a cyborg/ Optimus Prime.
The DPI toggle buttons has a pretty good click and response but as a palm grip user, we find the position favors claw grip users more. Not only that, the gap between the mouse makes me a little uncomfortable after long hours of usage.
The left side of the MS35 mouse comes with 2 side buttons to toggle between previous page and next page, and to pair with the DPI toggle button to toggle the LED color modes.
The front view of the mouse.
Moving on to the bottom of the mouse, there’s a disc shaped cover with CM Storm logo engraved on it but we can’t seems to find a way to remove it.
The MS35 mouse with its LED switched on.
Changing the LED color on the mouse.
Keyboard (MB7C)
- 19 keyAnti-ghosting
- 6 dedicated multimedia keys
- Dedicated backlight on/ off key
- 3 brightness levels
- 7 backlighting colors with quick cycling and adjustable pulsating speed
- Turbo mode – quickly adjust repeat rate
- Game mode – enable/ disable windows key
- Keyboard lock/ unlock
Bubble bursting time. Removing the keycap reveals that the Octane MB7C keyboard is actually a rubber dome switch keyboard.
And there’s no way you can get a mechanical keyboard keycap to fit on it, it just won’t work.
The Octane logo on the arm rest.
The extra large space bar immediately caught my attention as it’s pretty uncommon even for a gaming keyboard but it gave a rather soft but solid landing when pressed from the side.
Removing the space bar reveals that there’s 2 pieces of spring hiding underneath the keycap, which explains where that soft but solid landing came from.
The bottom of the keyboard looks a little odd at first glance. Imagine the amount of screws that has to be removed if you plan to perform a tear down.
The patterns at the bottom of the keyboard resembles the patterns found on carbon fiber vinyl, except that it’s plastic.
These large rubber feet deserves a medal.
The keyboard feet to raise the keyboard to your comfortable height.
Before the keyboard feet is raised.
Keyboard feet raised.
The LED color is default to blue but you can select the color of your choice from the 7 colors available.
LED color toggle.
The default pulsing frequency.
Reduced pulsing frequency.
The keyboard lock function located at F11 allows you to disable the keyboard input entirely (FN and F11 is still available) to prevent someone from messing around when you’re away from your keyboard.
Instead of having a large numbers of key rollover, the Octane MB7C keyboard is designed with optimized key matrix to prevent blocking / ghosting for the commonly played games. We’ve tried several key combinations for some commonly played games from various genres (FPS, RTS, Rhythm games) and each combination is able to register perfectly without any issue.
Wear & Tear
Thoughts and Verdict
Based on the trend that we’ve seen for years, majority of those who bought themselves a gaming peripheral would prefer more aesthetics and LED backlit plays a pretty big part in decision making. The 7 color LED is definitely something worth being mentioned as most peripherals that offers similar feature will cost somewhere around RM250 or more but the CM Storm Octane Gaming Keyboard Mouse Combo cost only RM199.
As for user experience, we’ve noticed that 19 KRO of the Octane MB7C keyboard doesn’t applies to any random key combinations. Its optimized gaming key matrix somehow, doesn’t gives us any ghosting / signal blocking issue on majority of the mainstream games that we’ve tested. We also noticed that Octane MS35 mouse appears to be more favorable to claw grip users – reaching the DPI toggle buttons requires palm grip users to curl their fingers more than usual, the gap that gives an unpleasant feeling after long hours of usage.
RM199 is a pretty good deal for what the CM Storm Octane Gaming Keyboard Mouse Combo has to offer and we find no reason to not to recommend it to anyone who wants a budget gaming peripherals that not only looks great but works well enough to deserve to be called gaming peripherals.
Pros
- Aestheticcally pleasing
- Fair priced for those on a tight budget
- Adjustable 7 colors LED backlit
- Media keys for music and video playback
- Optimized key matrix that works well on most mainstream games (FPS, RTS)
Cons
- Keycaps gets shiny pretty fast
- The mouse favors claw grip users more
