Cougar Deathfire EX Keyboard and Mouse Combo Review

To test the Cougar Deathfire EX keyboard/mouse combo, I used both pieces of kit together for over a week. This meant I used the gear for general office tasks as well as for gaming and photo editing.

To keep things simple, I will break up my thoughts into two distinct sections – one for the keyboard, one for the mouse.

Keyboard

The first thing to mention about the keyboard is that is there is no software included – which means all the lighting options are configured from the board itself.

The colours and effects are all pre-configured, though, as the keyboard is not RGB-capable. Changing the LED options is thus very easy, as all you have to do is press Fn+ and one of the number keys from 1-8. Each number key has a different effect assigned to it – for example, Fn+1 causes a rainbow effect, Fn+4 makes the wave effect and so on.

If you want a static colour, that can be done by pressing Fn+5. If you press both keys again, you can choose which colour you want from the following options: white, yellow, blue, orange, turquoise, green, violet, red.

In practice, this makes it very easy to get your desired effect or colour. Of course, this level of control is not as sophisticated as a software-controlled RGB keyboard, for example – but those cost much more than the Deathfire EX combo so it is hardly a fair comparison.

The lighting does look good, too, and the LED strip which runs around the outside of the keyboard is a very nice addition to an otherwise typical back-lit keyboard.

Moving on to physical use of the keyboard, I'll start with this: the Deathfire EX keyboard is better than a bog-standard membrane keyboard but ‘memchanical' keyboards will never be able to match the feel of genuine mechanical switches.

There is some definite tactile feedback from the Deathfire EX board – in fact, the ‘switches' actually require quite a lot of force to actuate, definitely more than I am used to with my Cherry MX Blue keyboard that I use on a day-to-day basis. This takes some getting used to but it did not cause me any finger-fatigue so I cannot fault it for that.

That being said, gamers typically want switches that require less actuation force as that speeds up the time it takes to register each key press – something which can be vital if you are a FPS or MOBA gamer, for example. As such, I can't help but feel Cougar have missed a trick here.

For typing, however, the tactile feedback is definitely appreciated – it does give a much better feel than a standard membrane keyboard. However, the Deathfire EX cannot escape the fact that it is still a membrane keyboard at heart – as such, the keys do still feel a bit ‘mushy' if you bottom them out. In this regard, memchanical switches simply cannot compete with proper mechanical switches.

Elsewhere, there are multimedia buttons on-board but they do share space with the Fn keys – they are not dedicated buttons.

Lastly, there is also one more feature worth mentioning. Cougar give you the ability to switch the WASD keys' function to the arrow keys – something which would be useful for any left-handers out there. To do this, simply press Fn+W and the keys effectively ‘switch'.

Mouse

As with the keyboard, there is no software to control to the mouse's LED options. To change the colours, you only need to press the button below the scroll wheel. By default, the mouse cycles through the 8 available colours (white, yellow, blue, orange, turquoise, green, violet, red) but if you press the colour button again, the mode changes to a static colour, and you can then choose between one of those 8 colours.

While this makes changing colours very easy, it brings me on to my biggest criticism of the mouse – this button below the scroll wheel changes the LED colour, not the DPI stage. To change the DPI, you have to flip the mouse over and adjust a small switch on the underside of the mouse.

I just find this highly impractical. While gaming there is simply no time to be faffing around on the underside of the mouse – simply changing the DPI stage on this mouse would mean certain death in a competitive FPS battle. It is also highly annoying when editing photos – I frequently lower my DPI when cutting around corners in Photoshop as this improves accuracy. While using the Deathfire EX mouse, this usually easy task becomes much more complicated.

I think the solution is simple, too – Cougar only need to include two buttons below the scroll wheel, one for the colour effects and one for the DPI. There is really no need to have the DPI switch on the underside of the mouse as this is just not practical at all.

I am not too sure about the max DPI of 2000 either – I personally prefer a level around 3200 DPI and I know many gamers would also use a sensitivity higher than 2000. Still, I am sure 2000 is enough for a number of people, though I do think it could do with being a little higher just to improve the Deathfire EX's appeal.

The mouse is nice and light, though, at 100g, making it perfect for FPS gamers – where twitch reactions are vital. The side buttons are also useful in-game – I like to re-map them to activate my grenades or a secondary weapon.

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