Dream Machine DM1 Pro Review

Dream Machine DM1 Pro Review

6.6

DESIGN/QULAITY

4.0/10

PERFORMANCE

10.0/10

BUTTONS

7.0/10

CONNECTIVITY/CABLE

4.0/10

PRICE

8.0/10

Pros

  • Decent Shape
  • Sensor

Cons

  • Extremely Stiff Cable
  • Finger Print Magnet
  • Build Quality Issues
  • No Software
  • Stakez High Friction

I decided to take a look at the Dream Machine Mouse Series. I’m starting from the earlier model which is the DM1 Pro as I want to understand the journey and to see/feel the improvements they have made from listening to the community feeback, well so it seems on the surface :-). I’m going to cover over the next few weeks the DM1 Pro, DM1 Pro S and the DM1 FPS and go over each one comparing the differences. To give you an idea of how this mouse would fit your hand mine is 18cm by 9cm with a 5cm thumb.
The brand isn’t that well known outside of niche communities like r/mousereview which is worth checking out if you want to know anything about a mouse and they are always helpful over there. I’ve been doing a lot of reviews on major brand mice for a while and wanted to see how some lesser known brands like Dream Machine compare, so let’s get it ball rolling with this DM1 Pro.

PRICE – at £40 on amazon in the UK or $43 in the US its certainly place at a decent level and should be accessible to a wide range of gamers.

DESIGN/SHAPE – It’s a traditional fps shaped mouse with a hump three quarters of the way towards the back and has a sloping front. It’s shaped very similar to the Zowie FK series and has three pads on the base which are C shaped and are a decent size. There is a LED logo on the rear saying DM which changes colour depending on the dpi profile selected while fading in and out in a breathing motion. It has six buttons + a scroll wheel press and it’s aimed towards right-handed players though with it’s even shape it could be used by left-handed players if they don’t mind the buttons on the left side.

BUILD QUALITY – Well I wasn’t off to a good start with this mouse as it rocks on a flat surface and I originally thought it was because of the feet having plastic on them to protect them but once removed it was still rocking. This could just be a one off and sorted with some sand paper and a gentle rub. The mouse is coated with a soft matte black finish which feels nice to touch but does show fingerprints super easy and is especially obvious on the main buttons. It is well-built bar these few issues which could be resolved with a few tweaks as there are no rattles or creaks in the main shell when under pressure.

CABLE – This is where for me it’s a deal breaker. The 1.8m braided cable is the most inflexible cable I’ve come across on a mouse it’s ridiculous. It could be mitigated with a bungee but even then I would expect the cable to push out of the bungee and the only fix for this would be a Paracable mod.

SENSOR – Is the well-known PMW3310 optical sensor with a fixed 1000mhz polling rate. It has five switchable dpi settings via the button on the top with 400/800/1600/3200/5000. During the tests I didn’t find any issues with the mouse as the 3310 sensor preformed as reliable as ever.

GLIDE – When running the sensor tests on the cloth surface it felt that it was affected more by the feet dragging/friction rather than on the hard surface. It could certainly benefit from some new skatez giving it even more control and a little speed boost.

SCROLL WHEEL – Is nice and smooth with a light flick required to make it move, though I’m my opinion to light if you want to be precise. There are some notches but these aren’t easy to feel and require little work to go past them. At high speed when gaming I missed a lot of weapons when trying to use it for switching due to overshooting. The centre click is ok, nothing good nothing bad and I didn’t get any miss clicks. The Wheel is surrounded in rubber that has some arrow shaped groves making it decent and stops you from any slippage.

BUTTONS – It has six 6 buttons and a press down scroll click. The main left and right buttons are using the Omron 20m click switches that have that lovely crisp click. The left side thumb buttons are easy to find and have a cut out between them so that you don’t get confused and mess up. Although this is a nice touch it means that for my hand size the front button is a little far and requires me to readjust my hand to reach it. The switches under these are rated to 3m clicks and combined with the button cap these do feel spongy.

WEIGHT – The specs say this weighs in at 89g and when I weighed it I got a surprising reading of 83g.

SOFTWARE – There is no software provided which is disappointing so the best option for remapping the side buttons is to use x mouse buttons.

IN THE BOX – You get a manual, Spare set of Skatez which is nice and that’s it.

CONCLUSION – The overall built quality could be improved with a few simple fixes but at this price, it shouldn’t be there. A deal breaker is the stiffness of the cable which makes it a real hindrance for any average gamer upwards and for general desktop work would just be annoying. I would certainly not recommend this mouse but the overall brand has potential so I would certainly look at the DM1 FPS.