Thermaltake Level 10M Gaming Mouse

Manufacturer: Thermaltake
Product Name: Level 10M Gaming Mouse
Model Number: MO-LTM009DT
UPC: 841163046982
Price As Tested: $94.99 (Amazon / Newegg)

Full Disclosure: Thermaltake provided the product sample used in this article.

Gamers drive the desktop computer industry. It's true, just like luxury and performance cars drive the rest of the automotive market. Performance and feature innovations that appear first on the likes of Ferrari and Lexus trickle down to lower end cars after their development has been subsidized by the purchasers of the higher end cars. A similar phenomenon exists in the computer industry. It's most noticeable with video cards, but it affects other items as well-- look at how computer cases have advanced in the past few years.

Microsoft introduced the first mouse that was described as "high resolution" or "high DPI", with an amazing for the time 400 dot-per-inch sensor. With the standard VGA monitor of the day boasting only 640x480 pixels, an inch and a half of movement would send your pointing sweeping the width of your desktop. The Level 10M mouse has a minimum resolution of 800DPI and goes all the way up to 8,200DPI, useful if you have the reflexes of a cat on crack or a multi-monitor gaming setup. And there are the other features expected in a "gaming mouse", like programmable macros and lighting effects and some degree of physical adjustability.

I'll test this mouse by using it in both daily tasks and a variety of games to see how it compares with my current pointing devices...

Features & Specifications

Let's take a look at this new mouse...

Closer Look: Level 10M Gaming Mouse

The Level 10M Gaming Mouse box assures us that the product was "Designed in Germany" and "Delivering the best user experience with aesthetics, functionality, and innovation".

The accessories include three post cards (presumably to inform your friends about your cool new mouse), a small hex wrench for adjusting the mouse, a warranty booklet (two years), a driver CD, and a drawstring pouch for carrying the mouse.

The Level 10M mouse itself sports a thick aluminum base with an integrated cable strain relief, a rubberized top surface, and a nylon mesh sleeved cord whose USB connector has a cap with holder. The mouse is available in black, camo green, red, and white; our sample was black.

You can adjust the height of the rear of the mouse by using the included hex wrench to turn the screw on the top of the mouse. The screw on the side of the mouse adjusts the sideways tilt of the mouse up to five degrees in either direction. In case you were wondering, this is what Thermaltake means when they say the mouse has "3D Steering". Since the open body of the mouse reveals wires normally hidden, Thermaltake has sheathed them in glistening red as you can see in this image.

Since the Thermaltake Level 10M Gaming Mouse is "designed to be seen", you can control the LED lighting of three different areas: the scroll wheel, a rectangular outline on the left button, and a dragon logo under the ventilation holes on the left side of the mouse. Each of these areas may be set to one of seven different shades, or turned off entirely. A four-bar indicator on the right mouse button shows the current resolution, with one light for minimum resolution and all four lights for maximum resolution (you can set the resolution of each step using the included utility software). Thermaltake claims the holes on the left side of the mouse provide "ventilation", but since there's nothing pushing air through the holes, they're mainly cosmetic.

The left side of the mouse has three buttons, labeled "A", "B", and "Lightning bolt". The default functions for the black buttons are "browser forward" (A) and "browser backward" (B). The silver button with the lightning bolt emblem is actually both a button and a four-way rocker switch. Rocking the button backwards and forwards increases and decreases the mouse resolution, respectively; while rocking it up and down invokes a macro function. Pressing the button inwards cycles among the five macro profiles the mouse can hold. Changing the resolution or profile invokes a brief on-screen display of the new selection, i.e. "800DPI" or "P2" for "Profile 2".

The right side of the mouse has two more buttons, which are labeled "C" and "D". These buttons have no default function.

The bottom of the mouse shows the centrally-located laser sensor-- a position I prefer to the forward mounting many new mice seem to have-- and the serial number.

Let's take a look at Thermaltake's supporting software in the next section.

Gaming Mouse Software

Unlike many other gaming mice, the Thermaltake Level 10M Gaming Mouse has 128KB of internal memory, and macro profiles are stored in the mouse, rather than in the driver on your computer. This way of doing things has some good points and some bad points. Once the profiles and macros are sent to the mouse, you don't need any software support on the computer at all. For example, I was able to program some macros on the mouse, then unplug it and connect it to a Mac, and the macros still worked perfectly.

The down side of this design is that this limits the number of active profiles you can have, since you're limited by the memory in the mouse. In the case of the Level 10M, you're limited to five profiles at any one time, which you can cycle through by pressing the silver lighting bolt button on the left side of the mouse. To load additional profiles you must run the included utility and swap out one of your existing profiles.

There's no software documentation included with the mouse, but you can press the question mark button at the upper right of this screen to go to an instructional Thermaltake web page. Sadly this is for a slightly different version of the software and the example mouse used is different, too.

At the top left of this window are five tabs denoting the different profiles. In this case Profile 1 is active, and is the "Half Life 2" profile I defined. You can select other profiles from the drop-down menu under "Current Profile" and it will replace the existing profile. When you cycle to a new profile by pressing the lighting bolt button, the on-screen display just indicates "P1" through "P5"; it would have been nice had the actual profile name been displayed.

The four main areas of the interface (denoted by the vertical, red-outlined labels) are Light Option, Macro Key, Performance, and Profile Management. The Light Option interface is simple: click on one of the three custom lighting areas, and then choose the color you want.

The Macro Key tab is where you define macros, which may be any combination of keyboard characters, mouse buttons (yes, you can program one mouse button to click another mouse button), and "commands", which are listed in the screen shot below. To define a new macro, you click the "New" button, give the macro a name, then click the "Record" button and perform the actions you want the macro to invoke; pressing the "Stop" button completed the macro. Key presses and mouse clicks are recorded as both "press" and "release", with adjustable millisecond time intervals between each. Once you define a macro you may fine-tune it by deleting individual steps within the macro and adjusting delay times with millisecond precision.

Note that this part of the program is only for defining macros; it's not where you assign macros to profiles or physical mouse buttons. I'll get to that part later.

The "Performance" tab lets you fine tune everything from the double-click time to the polling rate. Interestingly, you can define independent sensitivities for each axis of movement, although I'm not sure what use that would be. You can also define which DPI applies to each of the four selectable DPI settings, and although as delivered the maximum DPI is 5000, using this panel you can set it as high as 8200 dots per inch!

Another indication that this is a serious mouse is the ability to adjust the polling rate, which is the rate at which the mouse sends its position to your computer. Most non-gaming mice (and almost all wireless mice) use a 125Hz rate, so your game or application gets mouse position updates at a maximum of 125 times per second. This rate is a compromise that saves power (for wireless mice) and CPU cycles (for lower-end CPUs). However, the Level 10M Gaming Mouse isn't about "compromise", so you can adjust its polling rate up to eight times faster, or 1,000Hz. Now, regardless of the polling rate, your mouse will only send its position to your computer when it's moving, so you'll only get the maximum rate when the mouse is moving really fast. Using Mouse Rate Checker, we can see that with fast mouse movements, we do indeed reach (and slightly exceed) 1,000 updates per second.

Follow me to the next section where I'll show how to assign macros to mouse buttons and profiles.

Mouse Software Continued

The last tab is profile management. It doesn't really do anything except allow you to create new profiles, and rename or delete existing profiles (which does not delete any macros assigned to them). You can also select a profile and make it "Active", which means it will occupy the currently selected profile slot. There's no way to see what macros are actually in each profile, though.

Assigning macros to mouse buttons is a three step process: first, select the profile you want the macro to be associated with by clicking the appropriate profile tab at the top of the window. In this example I'm using Profile V, "Serious Sam BFG". Next, select the button you want to assign the macro to by clicking on it on the image of the mouse. Here I've selected the front button on the left side of the mouse, and it's highlighted with a red dot and outline. Last, click the "T Key" button on the right side of the window, which will pop up a dialog with a drop-down menu showing all the macros you've defined. Select the macro, check any of the repeat options you want to apply, then click the "OK" button. Important: Any changes you make to profiles and button assignments are not saved to the mouse until you click the "Apply" button at the bottom of the window. There's no warning if you spend half an hour defining macros and profiles and quit without pressing "Apply".

You can assign things other than macros to the mouse buttons. The "Single Key" button offers a choice of clicks and modifier keys, along with some mouse functions and "backward" and "forward" commands as shown below. You can also set a button back to its default operation with the "default" button, or launch a program with the "Launch Prgm" button.

The last two buttons, "Air Through" and "3D Axis Movement" don't actually control any mouse functions; they simply launch your browser to a web page explaining these features in marketing terms.

Testing & Results

Testing Methodology

I used the Thermaltake Level 10M Gaming Mouse for a week on my primary PC, playing a variety of games as well as using it for ordinary day to day work. The games I used were Bad Company 2, Crysis 2, Serious Sam BFE, Half Life 2, and Singularity. I also used the default configuration (which I labeled "General Browsing").

Results

The pointing device you use for your computer might be a mouse, trackball, track pad, or something else: it's a very individual choice. Consequently some users will absolutely hate a device that someone else thinks is the best thing available. The Thermaltake Level 10M Gaming Mouse is, for my use, a good mouse that is nonetheless afflicted with some significant issues.

The good parts first: the macro functions worked perfectly, and since they're stored in the mouse, they will apply to any computer you plug the mouse into. I'm not sure how useful this actually is, but it's still neat. Button action is very crisp and light, and the mouse is solidly built and exudes quality, which I suppose one would expect at this price level. The lighting effects are nice, and if you click the "Battle Mode" button in the utility, the lights will start pulsating once you pass some defined level of button-pressing rapidity. If you've ever damaged a wired mouse cable where it enters the mouse, you'll appreciate the integrated strain relief on the mouse cable. Last, the ability to adjust the physical structure of the mouse-- raising or lowering the rear surface where your palm rests, and adjusting the sideways angle of the mouse body-- make it easier to find the best fit for your hand. Personally I adjusted the body at maximum height and a very slight leftward tilt.

Although reaching for ever-higher resolutions is common these days, I have to wonder who would ever actually use 8200DPI? I found 1600DPI useful in a few games but kept the mouse at its lowest 800DPI setting most of the time. Most of the games I play are FPS, and a "sniper" button that reduces the mouse resolution while it's held down would have been nice. Perhaps a software update can add this feature as a programmable button action.

And now for the bad parts: the first problem is the placement of the buttons on the left hand side of the mouse. As I mentioned, the button action is very crisp and light, but the buttons are placed precisely where a right-hander's thumb will rest when using the mouse, which means it's very easy to press the buttons accidentally. Many other mice with left thumb buttons place them above this area so that the user has to raise their thumb slightly to press them; I think this would have been a better design to use.

The lightning bolt button acts as a four way rocker switch, and you can define each of the four ways as a separate macro. However, the position of the switch makes rocking it down impossible with your thumb on the switch; instead, you have to move your thumb to the top of the switch and press downwards to rock it down. It's a minor point but something you have to get used to if you assign macros to this button. And it took some time for me to stop accidentally pressing the rocker switch in when using it...doing so immediately switches the mouse to the next profile, which can obviously be disastrous in the middle of a fast-paced game...and the "press to switch profile" function can't be changed.

There is no documentation included on the mouse software, and the online documentation is so sparse that the procedure for assigning a macro to a mouse button isn't actually defined anywhere that I could see...I had to figure out for myself that you have to click on a button on the picture of the mouse before you can assign a macro to it. The software can't show you a list of the macros assigned to a profile, which means that if you want to see what a button does in a particular profile, you must switch to that profile, then click the appropriate button on the picture of the mouse on the screen, then click the "T Key" button to show the current assigned macro. With 11 possible macros per profile, this can get tedious.

In the last section I'll give my final thoughts and rating of this mouse.

Level 10M Mouse Final Thoughts

A pointing device is the most personal choice you can make in your computer hardware, given the options available. Since there's no "perfect pointing device", it follows that there's no one device that everyone will like.

The Thermaltake Level 10M Mouse is part of Thermaltake's "Tt eSports" lineup, which includes a mechanical keyboard, a headset, mouse pad, and other accessories. Like the original Level 10 case, it's the product of a design collaboration with BMW, and like the Level 10 case, it sacrifices some functionality on the altar of design. Most gaming mice have adopted a design wherein the top of the mouse bulges up to support your palm, and the sides of the mouse are contoured for your fingers and especially your thumb. The Level 10M mouse uses a slimmer, more "classical" design typically seen in non-gaming mice, and this simply didn't work as well for me as the more common gaming design.

The mouse is beautifully made, tracks perfectly, and you can feel the precision and quality with every button click. However, the placement of the buttons on the left side renders them too vulnerable to unintentional clicks, and the software suffers from a number of usability and documentation issues. The concept of storing the macro definitions in the mouse has its advantages, but having to manually switch macro profiles does not, especially when all you see on the screen is an uninformative "P3" (profile 3) when switching, instead of the name of the profile. After reviewing gaming keyboards whose drivers automatically load the macro definitions for a game when the game is launched, I wonder why I have to do this.

On the other hand, if you don't routinely play more than five games at any one time, you'll probably remember the macro definitions for your profiles.

Level 10M Gaming Mouse Conclusion

This is only the fourth product that Thermaltake has graced with the "Level 10" appellation. The first was the $800 Level 10 case, and the second two were lower-end (although still expensive) "Level 10 GT" cases. At an MSRP of $100, the Thermaltake Level 10M Gaming Mouse is very expensive for a wired mouse, especially considering that you can get the same tracking precision, macro features, and lighting effects in mice that cost $40 less, such as the ROCCAT Kone Pure Gaming Mouse. What you're paying for here are the BMW design and the very heavy duty construction.

Performance? With up to 8200DPI, perfect tracking, and high quality switches, the performance of the Level 10M mouse couldn't be any better...mechanically. It seems, though, that with the utility software, appearance was more important than function and documentation. I don't see why a software manual couldn't be included on the driver CD of a $100 mouse.

Appearance is a big win. While not as dramatic as the Mad Catz Cyborg R.A.T. mice, the Level 10M has the same sleek Bauhaus aesthetic as Thermaltake's Level 10 case. It will definitely stand out on your desk.

With a thick aluminum base, integrated strain relief, rubberized top deck, and some adjustability, the construction quality of this mouse is excellent.

Functionally, the mouse is hobbled by poorly-placed left side buttons and unintuitive software. With much less expensive competing mice offering the same features, I think Thermaltake could improve their product significantly with some software upgrading.

As for value: well, you're paying for that "Designed in Germany by BMW" thing. For $94.99 (Amazon / Newegg), this is a very expensive mouse, especially for a wired mouse. Granted, it's a lovely piece of kit, but since you can get functionally equivalent rodents for much less money, the value proposition here isn't good.

At the end of the day, this mouse sells on style and quality rather than function and value. If it's the kind of thing that gives you a special feeling when you see it sitting on your desk, or when you use it, then it might be worth it for you.

Pros:

+ Beautiful BMW design
+ Heavy aluminum base, adjustable lighting effects
+ Integrated cable strain relief
+ Adjustable mouse body

Cons:

- Poor left side button placement
- Unintuitive and poorly-documented software
- Similar features and functionality available in much less expensive mice

Ratings:

• Performance: 9.50
• Appearance: 9.00
• Construction: 9.75
• Functionality: 8.25
• Value: 7.00

Final Score: 8.70 out of 10.

Recommended: Benchmark Reviews Seal of Approval.

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