Ozone Neon M50 Gaming Mouse Review

Gaming mice come in many different sizes and styles, some focusing on features, some on lighting and some on performance. Ozone attempts to strike a balance between these aspects with the Neon M50 Gaming Mouse. Do they succeed? Let’s hope so.

Starting from the packaging, Ozone’s packaging is as commendable as ever; sporting an attractive look, sturdy feel and lovely unboxing experience. What makes the box that much more persuasive is the free €3 voucher for G2A; enough to get a couple great games such as The Witcher 2 and Batman: Arkham City. That’s pretty sweet.  Settling your eyes onto the mouse includes unboxing as if opening a lost treasure chest. As shown in the photo, it sits in a plastic mould with the cable hidden. Other than the mouse comes an extra set of rubber feet, a quick guide and an Ozone Gaming Gear sticker. Let’s take a look around the product out of its little shell.

First things first, the right-handed mouse is larger than average and sports the dimensions of 132.63 by 73.48 by 41.29 mm.  The top face is quite standard with the dpi toggle and scroll wheel, an laminated Ozone logo can be found at the palm. Left and right faces seem to have a texturized rubber and a couple buttons on the left. Separating the top from the side is a strip of glorious RGB illumination; more on that later.  What’s very interesting is the bottom of the mouse; near the optical sensor at the middle of 4 rubber feet is a manual dpi toggle to change between profiles. This is definitely a rarity in today’s market.  Onto the 1.8m cable, it’s a high quality braid that ends with a gold-plated connection. Surely it performs as well as it looks.

Holding the mouse is an extremely pleasant experience for claw and palm grip users, it’s not so comfortable for fingertips style. The right handed approach is executed successfully using subtle curves and grooves which also make it the stylish mouse that it is. Sliding around is done swimmingly as the 4 rubber feet provide excellent gliding, but there are many aspects which contribute to this experience. Firstly, the weight of the mouse is 115.5g, relatively light but not too light to feel flimsy. Then comes the rubberised grip, perhaps not the highest quality of rubber but it gets the job done on both sides of the mouse. However, things do tend to get messy with a little bit of sweat or oil. Also helping is the soft-touch finish which gently attaches the mouse to your hand but easily reveals finger oils. The final, and definitely not the least, assistant is the optical sensor. A PIXART PMW3310 has an incredibly reliable accuracy which will scarcely fail you when you need it most and climbs to 5000 dpi.  Standard buttons on the face are powered by Omron and thus have a great clicky feedback with a little more force needed. Scrolling is a therapeutic happening, having fantastic response and a soft-touch rubber coat that’s heavily grooved. The dpi toggle is also by Omron, however the side buttons aren’t. It’s pretty noticeable and the front button is mushy and stiff compared to the second for some reason.

Moving on to the features and software, this mouse ticks most of the boxes. The driver is downloadable from the website as shown in the guide and is compatible with Windows. It’s noticeably straight forward having all the neat features on one screen. Six programmable buttons (8 if you include scrolling up and down) are easily assigned to whatever floats your boat.  As mentioned before, two dpi settings of one profile may be toggled on the fly and profiles switched using the slider at the bottom of the mouse. The values come predefined as 800/1600 and 2400/5000 dpi. You can set your preferred dpi to the nearest unit, even if its 4999 dpi- an incredible touch. USB report rate may also be adjusted from the interface, ranging from 125 to 1000Hz.  Macros are also available and easily created along with adjusting angle snap and scroll wheel speed. An internal 128kB of storage keeps all 6 profiles’ worth of functionality safe. Paired with this heavily user-friendly selectivity are the RGB lighting effects to get the part started.

When gripping the mouse, 16.8 million colours are submissive to your will; but is it executed well? For the most part it is however there are a few problems.  Colours are well-defined and saturated beautifully on the logo and the strip which are married together. You cannot use one and not the other, use different colours or disable one or the other. Moving on to effects, we’re rather limited having Spectrum Cycle, Breathing and Standard only. Ozone had such an opportunity with the RGB spectrum and didn’t use it. Lighting for the standard mode is a bit different, giving each dpi option a different colour. This certainly helps in identifying what setting you’re on, yet I’m equally sure that some gamers out there would like their mouse to remain the same colour to match their setup. The trail of light is simply beautiful and encompasses the device; it could have looked that much greater if Ozone invested a bit in their software. Perhaps it’s understandable for the price point.

The Ozone Neon M50 Gaming Mouse, for just €50, is practically irresistible. Simple and probably adequate lighting, a tingling amount of features and adjustability paired with the performance that most gamers crave. Available in glossy white or matte black, it’s a perfect solution for most types of games at a low budget.    

"We are well known for our continual support to pro gamers and eSport organizations and we are constantly learning from them. We know what they need, and what challenges they have to face in every single tournament " - Rojo Galvín, Ozone's General Brand Manager.

Who it’s for;

• Budget gamers looking for features, lighting and performance.
• Should satisfy most FPS gamers and perhaps MOBA gamers who don’t use more than six programmed buttons.
• Those who want a balanced weight and great gliding.
• Gamers looking for durability with extra feet.

Who it’s not for;

• Competitive FPS gamers who need higher quality and MOBA players with more button needs.
• Those with a higher budget.
• Gamers who’d rather get more performance than lighting at the price.
• Those who want to sync mouse lighting with other peripherals.

Like what you see? Get yours now while stocks last at the Gamers Lounge:
http://shop.gamers.com.mt/product/366/ozone-neon-m50-rgb-gaming-mouse