Mountain is still very much the new kid on the block of gaming peripherals. Despite having only a few products out there, they’ve proven to be more than capable of tackling the big guys. Having reviewed and loving their Everest Max Keyboard, I was more than sure that their mouse – Makalu 67, would also be a great experience. And indeed, their lightweight contender is an attractive package that brings much to the table at an absolutely great price.
Mountain Makalu 67 is available for purchase on Mountain’s website.
DESIGN
Mountain Makalu 67 comes in sleek, simple packaging similar to the one for their flagship keyboard. The mouse itself moves away from the good old honeycomb formula and instead opts for a beautiful ribcage design with six sets of angled lines running across its shell. Thanks to this and the fully plastic build, it weighs a mere 67 grams and definitely makes good on the promise of being super-light to use. The plastic itself features a smooth matte coating ensuring that its surface won’t attract fingerprints or degrade any time soon.
Coming in at 127 mm in length, 70 mm in width, and being 42 mm tall at its highest point, it’s going to be more suited for gamers with larger hands. It roughly compares to Glorious Model D from which it’s bigger only by mm or two. In terms of shape, the mouse is made for right-handed people with curved contours falling off on the right, leaving a small hump on the left. Despite the size, the shape isn’t very aggressive and strikes a fine balance that makes it work well with both the palm and claw grip.
Makalu 67 moves away from the somewhat tired honeycomb design
Now I used plenty of lightweight mice over the years, and somehow the Makalu just clicked with me in terms of how it feels to use. In fact, for me, it probably takes the cake as the most comfortable ergonomic and lightweight mouse. Firstly, it came down to the grippy feel of the shell plus the shape of the mouse which made me handle it in a comfortable hybrid claw position.
Second, there’s the excellent feel of the two main clickers, the side buttons as well as the scroll wheel. The main ones use the Omron D2FC-F-K switches and feature a very low pre and post-travel distance along with a fairly loud and satisfying sound. The side buttons are nicely shaped, differently colored than the rest of the mouse and they protrude quite a bit from the body itself. Both are easily accessible with your thumb, both feature a low travel distance, and are equally satisfying to use as the main ones both in terms of feel and sound. The scroll wheel is much the same, managing to feel very smooth but also very tactile thanks to the pronounced steps. It also helps that scrolling up and down produces no noise whatsoever.
The middle of the mouse is where the party’s at
The mouse is also equipped with high-quality and fairly large Teflon feet that make it easily glide across any and all surfaces. These can easily be removed thanks to the small indentations right next to them and while they’ll probably last you a long time, Mountain even decided to include a replacement set.
The braided cable is 1.8 m long and is flexible and very light, complementing the lightness of the mouse itself. Again it’s very similar to the ones found on some of the Glorious models and as such, it comes as close as possible to making the mouse feel like it’s wireless.
Now, the liveliest part of the Makalu 67 is its top portion around the scroll wheel. First, it’s here you have the DPI button which you can use to cycle between 4 different settings. Even though the sensitivity of the mouse itself will tell you, you also have 4 small LED indicators so you don’t have to even touch the mouse or go into the software to know which DPI setting you’re at.
Feels absolutely amazing to use
Second, it’s around these buttons and the scroll wheel that Mountain decided to implement the RGB lighting. It’s rather tastefully done and perfectly complements the already excellent design. There are 8 individually customizable LED’s in the ring which you can set to play a couple of simple effects with the classic RGB wave perhaps being the best looking of the bunch.
PERFORMANCE
Makalu 67 is equipped with the PixArt PAW3370 sensor that goes up to 19 000 DPI and has a 400 IPS tracking speed. It’s an extremely high-end sensor that essentially makes the mouse extremely responsive, accurate, and precise. Any sort of lag or jitter is non-existent and all the available polling rates are very stable. You even have two lift-off distance levels to choose from which can come in handy depending on what you use the mouse for or how you like to handle it.
Now take all of that into account along with how great the mouse feels to use and how light it is and it’s clear Makalu 67 is one great mouse. I found it especially enjoyable to use in first-person shooters both competitively and casually but it’s more than capable to handle games of any genre just as well. Most of my time with it was spent playing Risk of Rain 2 which can get very chaotic at times and all the sudden movements and changes in direction were handled smoothly and precisely. I also took it for a spin in Titanfall 2 and Battlefield 5 and the Makalu handled both games without missing a beat. Of course, the specs here might be somewhat of an overkill for an average user but even they will find that Makalu 67 is a good choice simply on the merit of how reliable and comfortable it is to use.
Ergonomics meet performance
The excellent performance can further be expanded with the usage of the accompanying software. As we mentioned in our Everest Max review, the Base Camp software is straight to the point and easy to use, but it can seem a bit lackluster when compared to some high-end competitors.
The software is divided into 5 tabs and in the first one, you have your everpresent option to create, name, save and export different profiles. The second one is the lighting tab where you can choose between 4 different presets which you can further customize with different colors and animation speeds. Of course, you can play around with colors a bit in the custom mode which unfortunately allows you to only apply static colors without any sort of special effects.
Makalu takes the cake as one of the prettiest lightweight mice
The third tab allows you to customize the function of each key in several different categories. Essentially, any button on the mouse can be used to run OS commands and programs or used to execute certain macros, keyboard shortcuts, and more. The fourth tab enables you to record macro combinations for both your mouse and keyboard while the fifth allows the fine-tuning of the polling rate, sensitivity, DPI levels, lift-off distance, and more. The mouse also has some onboard memory so the software doesn’t have to be running after you apply all your desired settings.
CONCLUSION
If I haven’t touched on any flaws of the Makalu 67, well, that’s because most of them are really nitpicky. Considering the fact that this is the very first mouse ever to be released by Mountain is an awesome achievement and a testament to their design philosophy and attention to detail. Of course, you could be wishing for it to be wireless or even lighter than it already is but I think that’d be missing the point. And the point here above all else was to bring a light, well-designed, super-performer at an affordable $60 price point which Mountain most definitely did.
