CM Storm have produced their first gaming mouse – twin laser sensors and fully customizable. Lets take a look.

Product on Review:: Sentinel Advance Gaming Mouse
Manufacturer: CM Storm
Price: £49.99 (at time of writing review)



Fuelled with a passion for gaming, the exciting new brand CM Storm has yet another product that has found itself to us today. In the hope of challenging the gaming peripheral market with innovative products CM Storm have brought us the CM Storm Sentinel Advance, a powerful twin-laser gaming mouse with great looks and aesthetics.

With already a handful of new products, CM Storm targets the hardcore gamer. The current CM Storm lineup has been concerned with chassis specific products and indeed Cooler Master their creators dominate the market with provision for power supplies, cooling products and computer cases, but gaming peripherals are a new venture for CM and so they hope to take on the giants Roccat, Razer, Logitech and others.



CM Storm has the following to say about the Sentinel Advance.

Dominate the competition and strike fear in your foes with the latest CM Storm Tech – The Sentinel Advance.

This technological marvel utilizes the latest innovations in cutting-edge technology: 5600 DPI twin laser, rapid fire mode, internal Sentinel-X™ memory and our patented security, Storm Guard™; The Sentinel Advance is designed for one purpose and one purpose only – to search and destroy.

Overpower your enemies with speed and precision beyond their imagination. Conquest is at your fingertips – Sentinel Advance.

So already we know that the CM Storm Sentinel features besides many other things a massive 5600 DPI twin laser sensor. Let’s delay no further and take a good look at this gaming peripheral.

Features

Superior Gaming Grade Precision – Twin laser engine to ensure extreme stability and ultra precise tracking performance.
Onboard Sentinel-X 64Kb – Safeguards your mouse settings and store up to 5 different game profiles.
Octoshade™ LED Tech – Enable yourself to quickly recognize your active profile, by personalizing your mouse lighting with a spectrum of colors and effects.
OLED Profile Management – Allows gamers to switch DPI and profiles on the fly with instant visual feedbacks.
Tag Your Own Gaming Clan Logo – Upload your own clan logo and display it in all its glory on the OLED profile management screen.
Weight Adjustment System – Five 4.5 gram metal weights allow you to select your ideal mouse weight with a 22.5 gram weight variation.
StormGuard™ Security – Groundbreaking security system for safeguarding your gaming peripherals.
Warranty
2 years

Technical Specifications

Packaging and Bundle

Cooler Master have particular competence when it comes to marketing their products and the CM Storm Sentinel Advance doesn’t surprise. In the usual manner it is presented in a nicely designed box, showcasing the Sentinel Advance underneath a plastic shell. There are various details in and around the mouse. On the reverse of the box there are some more in depth features and specifications for you to absorb.


The front of the Sentinel Advance box

The back of the box with further details

Taking all of the contents out of the box we have the following:

CM Storm Sentinel Advance
Drivers CD
CM Storm Guard


The contents of the box

The CM Storm Guard is a bracket that is allows the cord of your mouse to be securely fastened to your case so prevent the theft of a peripheral. This is designed for CM Storm cases, and is quite a neat idea for those who frequently attend LAN events and want to ensure their expensive peripherals are not taken by unwelcome thieves.


CM Storm Guard, a brilliant tool for stopping those thieving goons!

CM Storm Sentinel Advance

First impressions of the Sentinel are that it looks fairly long. It follows a similar style to the ever popular MX-518, but oozes much more style and finesse. It’s quite refreshing to see a full sized mouse on our shelves, the trend recently seems to be to minimize and create products that are smaller with less.



The left side of the mouse, showing the two side buttons

Looking down the Sentinel Advance

The Sentinel Advance gives us eight programmable buttons, two along the left side – typically used for navigating forwards and back during web browsing, standard left and right buttons, two buttons next to an LCD screen to control the sensitivity, a button to manage the colour scheme of the Sentinel Advance and finally the scroll wheel. All buttons feel like they are in suitable places and are nice to use. Aesthetically the Sentinel Advance looks and feels great, it fits into the palm like a glove. It’s nice to see that there has been extra special care taken to deliver a mouse with many intricate levels of texture such as the mesh grill on the top, and the matt rubberized grips at either side for clasping.


The right side of the Sentinel Advance, showing the CM Storm emblem

The crux of the Sentinel Advance is the dual laser sensors. This actually means we can control both the X and Y axis – perfect for gamers who take advantage of high resolution wide screen monitors. The dual laser setup inside the Sentinel Advance also means a huge 5600DPI is available. Via the two buttons next to the LCD there are four preset DPI profiles: 1100, 2600, 3800, 5600. But you can customize these presets with the software bundled.


A very smooth character

On the underside of the Sentinel Advance CM have decided to integrate a weighting system. For a mouse of such a high calibre this is a great move. We are all different and have different needs. Some prefer a light mouse, whilst others prefer their mouse to be weighty and fasten to the surface. Inside this small tray holding give 4.5g weights.


The underside of the mouse, large pressure pads and laser sensor


The weight system, customize the heaviness of that machine!

There is protective sleeve on the cable cord for the Sentinel Advance, this gives some additional defence against cutting the cable or crushing it. The USB lead has a nice gold plated finish to it.

In the next section we will take a look at the bundled software as well as checking out the customizable lighting system that features the ability to actually display images/logos inside the OLED screen.

Software and Performance

The software bundled with the CM Storm Sentinel Advance has a nice GUI and is very helpful in allowing you to manage the mouse. The GUI allows you to customize the profile settings, colour schemes, DPI settings, macros and of course button functions. But there are also a stack of other options that you can control such as double click speed, button response time. One of the brilliant things about the software here is that you can choose the lighting on the top of the mouse and the bottom, so I could choose to make the lighting pink on the top of the mouse and then on the lights at the bottom have blue. This is what we call true customization, being able to do exactly what you wish. There’s virtually no boundaries with the Sentinel Advance.


A fully customizable GUI


Not only can you change the colour of the top, but also the bottom

From the photograph of the OLED display that I have taken you can see the CM Storm logo there, but what the software with this mouse allows you to do is upload your very own BMP logo, this is a great little idea to add some character and personalization to the Sentinel Advance and whilst the image can only be black and white, going forward this idea is going to lend itself to future mice I can tell.


The OLED display on the Sentinel Advance

Performance
The Sentinel Advance is a very responsive gaming peripheral, everything you can expect from a premium gaming mouse is right there. The button placements are decent enough and the configuration at default is easily playable, but because of the above software if you happen to want to change things – you can, with ease.

It’s quite a large, bulky type of mouse so if you have small hands this may not be the best mouse for you. But medium to large handed people will really enjoy this – it fits into the hand really nicely and the textures are pleasant.

Bottom-line: It looks great, and it performs great!

Conclusion

I’ve been using the CM Storm Sentinel Advance now for many weeks, and I believe I can safely say that it stands out as one of my firm favourites. I have medium sized hands, and this mouse suited this gaming peripheral well.

The CM Storm Sentinel is as innovative as a mouse could be. From the integrated LCD display to the customizable colour configuration this mouse is a product with plenty of technology, and we haven’t even mentioned to twin laser sensors that allow up to 5600DPI and the onboard memory that gives you full control over creating your own profiles.

I can’t really fault this mouse; it has a nice ergonomic design, fits into the hand nicely and provides you with the confidence in game. I can’t see anyone being disappointed if the Sentinel Advance turned up on their desk. For this reason, it receives the highest award – Gold!

Pros
+ Ergonomically pleasing
+ Up to eight programmable buttons
+ Massive customization
+ Weight system
+ Very accurate – a great gaming mouse
+ 5600DPI

Cons
– None!

We would like to thank CM Storm for providing the Sentinel Advance. Discuss this review on our forums