Mountain Makalu 67 Review – Ultimate Lightweight Mouse?
This is the Mountain Makalu 67, a 67g featherweight mouse with the new Pixart PAW3370. It’s a tad more expensive than the competition, like the Glorious Model O, but does the newer sensor and supposedly improved design justify the difference? Lets have a play and find out. But first, if you haven’t already, consider subscribing for more videos like this one every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Like I said, this is the Makalu 67. It weighs just 67g, hence the name. It gets to that weight by a mixture of light weight ABS plastic, ribcage design and a pretty simple PCB. Despite all the holes, remarkably firmness and rigidity aren’t a problem at all. You can’t make it flex or bend, nor accidentally actuate any switches which is great news. Part of the design I’m actually a big fan of is the lack of holes on the mouse buttons themselves, and the front part of both sides – right where your fingers rest. Some of the other lightweight mouse continue their hole patterns all the way up the sides and gripping a lattice structure just doesn’t feel as nice as a full side.
The downside to the Makalu design is that is kind of feels like a cheese grater on your palm. It’s not too bad and you do get used to it, but feeling those edges scrape against my palm as I maneuvered the mouse around did feel a little strange.
Remarkably, despite the lightweight design, all the buttons feel incredibly well reinforced. The left and right clicks feel solid, and the two side mounted ones have a nice tactile click with no excess travel – a positive miracle with these kinds of mice.
The sensor Mountain used here is the new PixArt PAW3370, which is mean to have a 50% lower error rate than the PMW3389, up to 19000DPI (not that anyone will use it up there) and 1-2mm of lift off distance that’s adjustable in their software which is surprisingly well designed. You’ve got 5 DPI modes that you can setup in their software which adjust with 50DPI increments, then switch between with the button on the top and the 4 LEDs to show you which mode you are in.
Tracking with the new sensor is great. I found it to be a little twitchy, even with lower sensitivity and DPI settings, and low liftoff distance. I got used to it fairly quickly, but there is a little learning curve. Either way, the sensor felt as responsive and accurate as you could expect, especially with a 1000Hz polling rate.
As for the mouse’s movement, that’s handled by the large PTFE pads on the bottom, which, combined with the light weight, feel like the most slippy pads I’ve ever felt. It glides effortlessly across a mouse pad, so if you like to flick shot or run ultra low DPI this could very well be the mouse for you. You even get replacement pads included in the box if you burn out the originals.
So, what’s it like to game on? Pretty great. I’m absolutely awful at games like CS:GO, as you can see, but I tried it in games I’m more familiar with during my testing too, like COD Modern Warfare, and it’s fantastic. It suits an aggressive playstyle well, flicking around like a mad man and clicking on heads non-stop. I can’t say that it made me all that much better of a player, but it’s definitely not the bottleneck in my progression for sure.
If you like mice like the Glorious Model O, you’ll like this. It’s a comfortable mouse for medium to large hands – definitely a palm gripper’s dream – and thanks to the low weight and great sensor is an enjoyable playing experience. It’s not quite for me, I’d rather have a few extra buttons on the side and like a more comfortable grip personally, but I can see the market for this for sure. It’s currently £60, making it slightly more than options like the Glorious mice, but I would say it’s worth trying thanks to the sensor and rigidity.
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TechteamGB Score
