Thermaltake ARGENT M5 RGB Gaming Mouse & MB1 Bungee Review

A Closer Look & Performance

The mouse is absolutely gorgeous, although it does look a tad familiar to me, given a few weeks back, I reviewed the wireless one. Obviously, it’s no surprise that they look the same. That’s no bad thing though, the matte black, the stunning ambidextrous shape, and that aluminium scroll wheel make this one a real stunner!

Down the left side, you’ll find two large switches, which each have a nice tactile feel to them.

Of course, the mouse is fully ambidextrous, so it’s the same on the right side. That’s fantastic if you’re left or right-handed, as you won’t be left out of the party. Of course, either way, you’re still gaining two additional switches that can be used for shortcuts and macros; all the switches are fully programmable.

At the back, you’ll find the lovely new TT logo design, which has RGB backlighting too; we’ll see that in action shortly.

Towards the front, you’ll find the usual left and right mouse buttons. They’re each mounted on their own sprung panel and feature a 50M rated OMRON switch. They’re super tight and responsive with a short actuation. They’re pretty light to click, allowing for fast gameplay, however, not so light that I found myself clicking by mistake.

The scroll wheel looks awesome and feels even better in real life. It’s a big hunk of aluminium with a diamond pattern texture cut into it. It’s very comfortable to use, and while you can feel it’s quite heavy when using it, it’s on a really nice bearing that makes it very easy to spin. It feels tight, doesn’t rattle around and doesn’t squeak, so that’s a good start. It’s also clickable, giving you an extra switch.

While it’s visually easy to miss, the black section behind the scroll wheel is also a switch. This one is set up to cycle through profiles/DPI by default, however, just like the rest of the mouse, it’s fully programmable with the desktop software.

Flip the mouse over, and you start to see a lot of differences between this model and the wireless model. For starters, there’s no power or Bluetooth button on this one, obviously. There’s also an RGB lightbar that runs around the edges of the mouse for some underlighting; this was likely removed from the wireless model to improve battery life.

Towards the front, there’s a heavily recessed micro-USB port. While the cable is included, I can’t see any reason why you couldn’t use your own; handy if you lose or break the original cable! Furthermore, you can see the RGB lightbar goes completely around the base of the mouse, but at the front, it’s a little higher up so it goes over the cable.

The ARGENT M5 has a really nice size to it. I have fairly large hands and long fingers, but it still fits my palm reasonably well. I don’t feel like I have to grip it particularly hard to lift it either, it’s very well balanced and has good grip points.

It’s a lot lighter than the wireless model, although the wireless one had a 50/50 weight distribution and this one is a touch nose heavy, even if the mouse is much lighter than the wireless model. Even more so with the cable attached. That’s not an issue, just an observation.

The mouse feels incredibly nimble, and while it’s not ultralight, it’s certainly not bulky either. Plus, the large slipmats offer plenty of extra glide anyway. I found it worked well on bare wood, soft gaming mats and harder cloth mats.

Fire up the RGB, and the mouse sparks to life with some really interesting colours. They’re great colours, but as you can see, they’re quite light and bright looking, almost tipping into the pastel range from some angles.

It’s not overly bright though, it’s a softer light, and that’s likely because the bulk of it is underlighting and not very direct. I like this, and it’s less distracting.

You can set a colour per profile, or choose from the usual range of effects that range from the full puking rainbow to soft fades, so you’ve plenty of choices. For me, I’d set it to red and leave it, but that’s the joy of RGB; you have that choice.

One thing I do like is that there’s plenty of lights so the zones mix really well, rather than being able to see each light individually; it makes for smoother colour transitions.

Of course, we also have the MB1 mouse bungee, a neat looking little thing that it is too, but completely optional, of course.

It does exactly what it should, giving you a cable grip so it doesn’t drag or snag, and it worked perfectly.

Plus, if you plug it in, you get matching underlighting effects; neat!