Sensor

The Minos X5 has pretty much the best optical sensor out there, which is the PMW3360 made by PixArt. With a proper firmware, you really can't have issues with it, even if you are the most hardcore FPS player out there. It's amazingly responsive and raw, giving you a true 1:1 tracking feel. The nominal maximum tracking speed and acceleration values are 250 IPS and 50 G. The MCU is a 32-bit ARM based Cortex-M0 PT32C302 by PTC.

The resolution can be changed from 100–12,000 CPI in increments of 100 CPI. You can set the X and Y axis up differently if that is your thing. The polling rate can be set to 125, 250, 500, 1000, and 2000 Hz.

There are three lift-off distance settings, marked as low, medium, and high. It didn't track from a DVD in height (roughly 1.2 mm) at the lowest setting on a black cloth mousepad. You can also check on the surface calibration option as it has pre-defined profiles for Cougar mousepads, but can add your own settings as well.

Paint Test

There is absolutely no noticeable jittering at the reasonable CPI steps, or unwanted angle snapping and measurable sensor lens rattle.

CPI Divergence

CPI accuracy is not one hundred percent correct. There are noticeable deviations in all CPI steps, and these increase linearly. This issue is most probably firmware related.

Perfect Control Speed

PCS is almost unmeasurably high, sitting somewhere at around 7 m/s. There is no chance you would ever hit it while gaming, even if you are playing on a very low sensitivity.

Speed Related Accuracy Variance

This test shows the sensor's accuracy at different speeds. You can see me doing a fast swipe to the right before I slowly slide the mouse back to its original position.

Displacement is almost entirely caused by human error in this test. The SRAV is negligible in our case, which is just as one would expect it to be with this sensor.


Here's the same test done with the MouseTester software.

Polling Rate

From 125 to 1000 Hz, the polling rates are absolutely stable. As for 2000 Hz, the graphs did not show accurate results. With several other polling rate checker programs, I measured an average of 1500 Hz. I could do more accurate testing with an oscilloscope, but Cougar did that instead of me already, and you can see their article byclicking on this link.

Input Lag

Pretty much every single mouse equipped with the PMW3360 has at least +2 ms input lag above 2000 CPI, which is due to sensor smoothing. The Cougar Minos X5 isn't an exception either, so if you are a competitive gamer, I would suggest staying below the 2100 CPI setting.

Click Latency

The click latency is roughly +7 ms compared to the SteelSeries Ikari, which is considered as a baseline with 0 ms. The control subject was a Ninox Venator, once again. Please note that this testing method (bump testing) is not 100% accurate. Most newer G-series Logitech mice have +4.5, while Zowie mice usually sit at around +8 ms. The data comes from this chart.