Hope you liked this intro, I think this mouse deserves it, the packaging is really cool as easy to handle, more so since this is one of the first, actually the first mouse carrying the new PixArt 3370 19.000 DPI optical sensor, but that’s not the only thing going on for it.
This the Makalu 67. You’re now probably asking yourself, what’s up with the 67 number, but with taking a quick glance at it and noticing its hollow housing, you can easily guess why. Well, it’s weight is only 67 grams in total.
You’re also probably wondering, what is this Mountain brand, I’ve never heard of them. It’s a German-based brand, Maybe some of you actually did hear about it one particular occasion, that being their Kickstarter campaign for their Everest modular mechanical keyboard. I’ll be getting my hands onto one, be sure to subscribe for that, but in the meantime, they’ve developed the Makalu 67 and released it to the public.
Mountain Makalu 67 – a newcomer
Although I did try a couple of sub-100 gram mice models, this is my first time ever where I’m actually trying a sub-70-gram mouse, others were closer to the 80-90 gram mark. It’s kinda weird seeing and not seeing the mouse at the same time because there are parts of it sort of like missing. It’s cool nevertheless, looks like some kind of exoskeleton with this ribcage design which is a bit different compared to other models, it’s not just plain cutouts, but rather a combination of few things for achieving greater rigidity. You can see right through it, in the middle of it all there’s a small custom PCB with a Mountain logo on it, carrying electronics and that Pixart’s 3370 optical sensors. At this point, going any lighter wouldn’t probably make a big difference, not at least to me I think, and I feel like shape becomes more important than weight once you cross a certain threshold, and I think that could be around this 60 to 70-gram mark
Despite being a light mouse, the Mountain Makalu 67 still has pretty bulky volume, shape-wise you could put it next to your regular gaming mice. The funny thing is that, although being completely hollow and bare-bone, the outer shell is actually really rigid. Pressing it from the top and sides doesn’t introduce any obvious flex. It has a water repellent PCB coating, while the surface texture is basically completely plastic and pretty smooth, but it still provides enough grip. Design-wise, it’s pretty straightforward, the branding is minimalistic, and the thing that mostly stands out is the way the cutouts were designed, together with the RGB rig placed between the left and right mouse click, separating the scroll wheel and holding inside of it four white LED’s for DPI level indication, as well as the DPI switch on this glossy surface. On the left side, we have these big back and forward switches with a sort of like gray metal brushed finish to them, and they’re probably the most distinctive part of the mouse until you plug it in and let the light RGB show out of it. Just below them, you can see that we have those same cutouts coming from the back of the mouse to this front part, but the material is actually not completely removed, the panels are closed, they said it’s to provide more grip, although they could probably also go without them for possibly more weight reduction, I don’t feel like it affects the grip level since it’s already indented, to begin with.
Speaking of the switches, behind their covers you’ll find Omron’s 50M switches. We have a total of six of them, including the middle mouse click on this rubberized scroll wheel, which is really quiet but with very distinct movement between each step, while the other ones are very firmly placed, but you don’t need a lot of force to actually press them, it feels really precise, and all of them are programmable as you’ll see later on, but first, let’s hear how they sound.
Turning it onto its back, you can see that the bottom surface also gets trimmed down, weight reduction, bro, we have the sensor in the middle and around it 100% PTFE mouse feet which are easily replaceable, there’s this indent so you can grab and pull them out without any additional effort, and Mountain will actually provide you with extra two ones.
Makalu 67 has a lot to control
Before I jump over to performance, let’s take a deeper dive into software utility for the Makalu 67, since this a completely new brand in question, and I always love to take a better look at a new company take when it comes to that. Starting it up, you have a sort of like a home screen tab which opens up first, showing your devices, similar to Logitech G Hub’s, while they’ve also implemented some quick links and tabs to the website, latest update, and their social media channels, which kinda feels overwhelming considering that’s not what you came for initially, but could come in handy, although I doubt it will be that often. Clicking the device tab will get you to the main event in question. Here on the left, you have a total of five sub-menus, spanning from profile setups, where you can set up up to 5 different profiles, you can import and export them, load them as a certain game comes on, and yes, the active profile stays saved onto the mouse itself so you can jump over to different devices. Next up is the lighting effects where you will have a usual set of effects on your disposal, then we have key bindings and macros, which somewhat ties onto each other, you can either remap the keys to a different action or create a set of actions, very easy to setup. Last, but certainly not the least, is the settings menu is where the main action is.
Starting off with simpler things, here you can check and update the firmware of the device, you can set up to five different DPI levels in 50 DPI increment for the PixArt 3370 19,000 DPI optical sensor, and you can jump from one to another using that dedicated switch, next up is the polling rate, ranging from 125 to 1000 Hz, the sensitivity of the courser, double click speed and button response or how long does it take for the signal to be sent to the PC when you press a button. Finally, we have an ON and OFF mode for angle snapping and low and high lift of distance. Gathering my thoughts on what I actually saw and experienced with this utility, I really like how they laid it all out, everything was pretty intuitive although there is a lot of options at your disposal, there were some minor hiccups and bugs along the way, but they seem to be working on it regularly to polish all of that out.
OK, now that everything is out of the way, how does the mouse actually perform? Just to be clear, I’m not a professional FPS player, but I know a thing or two about popping an enemy or two.
More PixArt 3370 gaming mouse models to come?
The mouse is extremely responsive and precise, I’ve personally never had anything like this in my hands. I’ve compared it back to back with my G403 in few games, used them both on the Glorious Extend stealth edition mouse pad, and in few different games and Kovaak’s aim trainer. The difference in performance can easily be picked -up going from one mouse to another. I could really feel the advantages of going over to a sub-70-gram mouse, plus of course this new sensor. There’s no unwanted acceleration or jitters, random movements, or spin-outs, where you put it, it will go there instantly, basically, I could find anything to complain about in that regard, the new PixArt’s 3370 sensor performance is on point. Really eager to see how other manducates will also use it. The difference between low and high lift-off distance setting is also pretty obvious, I kept mine at low in the end, and with it, the movement of the courser and cross-hair is constrained in a pretty tight space when moving the mouse up and down.
Being a wired mouse, doing flick shots and sudden movements with it could sometimes result in cable pulling the mouse back and unwanted retention of it if the cable is too stiff and heavy, but, I’m happy to report that’s not the case with the Makalu 67 as it uses this what seems to be an ultra-light paracord cable, which makes using it almost feel like borderline wire-free, especially if you plan to use a bungee.
Of course, performance won’t mean a lot if the mouse doesn’t suit your comfort and ergonomic wise. Obviously it’s right hand only design, so It won’t be interesting to a portion of users from the get-go. Putting that aside, I’m a palm grip style of the user, and this mouse is for my fairly averaged size hand just the right shape and size. It’s actually a larger example of a gaming mouse in this class, with a total length of 127 mm and 70 mm of width, or around 58-60 mm where the palm meets the mouse, so I feel like it’s more suitable for that palm grip style in my case, while It seems like the claw grip style would be more doable for users who have a bit larger palms. One thing that also goes in hand with the ergonomics, is that fact that the mouse pretty evenly balanced in weight, not that It has a lot of it to begin, but again, it’s not leaning on being heavier on one of the sides, making it even more maneuverable.
The competition is really fierce in this segment, no doubt about it, and when you dial in all the core things that make a gaming mouse great, the details begin the surface and they then become the important and differing factors in building your final purchasing decision. With everything seen here, I feel like Mountain with the Makalu 67 manage to do just that, got a lot of things right, which is pretty impressive when you consider that this is one of their first product ever.
That’s it for this time, thanks for checking out my Mountain Makalu 67 review, if you have any question feel free to hit me in the comments section of my YouTube video listed above, you can contact me via my social media channels!
