The Cougar 600K Mechanical Keyboard & 600M Gaming Mouse Review

Conclusion

The Cougar 600K mechanical keyboard left us with very mixed feelings. It is more than just visually similar to the more advanced 700K, retaining every bit of the exceptional quality we encountered while testing Cougar's most advanced keyboard. The aluminum plate both increases the structural integrity of the keyboard and it adds toward a stylish aesthetic appearance. The Cherry MX keys are, as with all of the keyboards that we tested to this date, very stable and consistent. There is virtually no key wobbling or any feeling of ricketiness about the keyboard, including the flat keys across the top.

On the other hand, the Cougar 600K has been stripped of essentially all of the functionality features of the 700K, going way beyond the missing macro keys. It lacks any programmability options, reducing it to a simple, typical 104 key keyboard and a few pre-programmed macro keys. Meanwhile the selective backlighting behind just eight keys appears strange and lacks any true functionality. Even gamers that actually use just these particular keys are just a fraction of the whole gaming community.

The major issue here is that despite all those functionality reductions, the retail price of the Cougar 600K significantly lower than the full-featured 700K. With a retail price of $130 including shipping, the Cougar 600K is directly competing with its more advanced sibling, which is retailing for just $20 more. I expect that very few users will want to give up the full board backlighting, the ability to reprogram any key to perform any desired function and the creation of multiple layout profiles just to save $20, even if these features seem virtually useless to them at the time of the purchase.

On the other hand, the Cougar 600M is an entirely different story that, depending on your preferred grip, is somewhere between a success story and the same tragic ending as the 600K. Where the 600K kept the appearance and ditched every advanced feature of the 700K, the 600M does the exact opposite, ditching the design and frame of the 700M while maintaining most of the functionality and all advanced features. It is a very well made product, it feels great inside a palm and is very comfortable for long-term usage. We found it to be just as versatile and accurate as any advanced gaming mouse, without any performance or quality issues.

The catch - if not outright flaw - of the 600M is its design, which in favoring palm grip users also hinders claw grip users. At a personal level, as someone who is accustomed to a claw grip, the 600M feels far too lightweight, strangely shaped, and the 45° button is very difficult to use. This lack of "universality" reduces the potential buyers of the 600M.

However the bigger issue is that even for palm grip users who would be right at home on the 600M, the pricing of Cougar's mice is in an odd place right now..The Cougar 600M is currently retailing for $55 + $6.7 shipping, which is not an especially high retail price for a good gaming mouse. But with the company's best mouse - the significantly better Cougar 700M - retailing for $60 including shipping, the 600M is not a cheaper alternative in any way. At best it's a lateral, offering a mouse with similar functionality to the 700M in a different design for roughly the same price. Ultimately this pricing robs the 600M of any real niche of its own and makes it hard to recommend the mouse over what I feel is the superior 700M, even if we neglect the existence of half a dozen products from competitive companies.