Over the past year or so, Cougar has been getting itself in to the gaming peripherals market with various offerings. For keyboards, these range from the high-end 700K to the entry-level 200K, with the 500K currently in between. For mice, they include the 700M, 600M, 550M, lower-end 250M, and others.
Today, the company introduced a new series – the 450, which consists of the 450K hybrid mechanical gaming keyboard and the 450M gaming mouse.
The Cougar 450K keyboard is marketed as having “Hybrid Mechanical Switches.” Exactly what those are remain unknown (we’ve reached out to Cougar for clarification), but we do know that there is a membrane layer underneath the switches that makes it splash proof. The keyboard’s layout is very straightforward: it has a plain 104-key design with various function-features such as media controls and volume levels on some of the standard layout switches.
Gaming-feature wise, the keyboard has 6-key rollover and anti-ghosting, and it communicates with the PC at a 1000 Hz polling rate. Cougar’s UIX can be used to set up different profiles, which are stored on the onboard memory. The keyboard also has three-color full backlighting, with yellow, green, and red options. Mind you, this is full-cover lighting, not per-key.
The mouse in this set, the 450M, is an ambidextrous mouse, meaning that it should work effectively for both left- and right-handed individuals. It has the standard buttons, a second set of forward and backward navigation buttons on the right side, and a DPI switch. A shiny plastic top makes the mouse look well-polished (but will inevitably attract fingerprints), and the green accents on the mouse are complemented by the RGB lighting. Connectivity is handled by a braided USB 2.0 cable.
The mouse has a 5000 DPI sensor, 1000 Hz polling rate, and 512 Kb of onboard memory for storing profiles.
Both the 450K and 450M will be available in Europe in December, with U.S. availability following in the first months of 2016.
