What looks like an ordinary mouse with some flashy lights is far from ordinary. It cranks out 1200 actions per minute with a 1600 dpi optical sensor and glides on Teflon. The buttons are exactly what we’ve come to expect from Razer: hyper-sensitive. The cursor will move perfectly over your screen over most surfaces. This is a great three button mouse, which of course could be seen as a negative.
Packaging: As is typical with Razer products, it comes in a ‘look at me’ type box that opens up to reveal the product inside. The mouse itself looks pretty sleek, almost like some sort of strange deep-sea creature. The box boasts tons of performance increases and that it is optimized for RTS and MMO play. We’ll get to that in a sec.
Design: The mouse itself when plugged in looks neat, but its ergonomics are the same as any other three button mouse on the market. That said, the buttons are shaped such that both the index and middle fingers rest comfortably on them without constantly worrying about ‘Razer error’ (ie. hitting those crazy hyper-sensitive buttons accidentally).
Installation & Software: As is the case with any of Razer’s products, installation was a snap. The drivers loaded up right away and the mouse was recognized instantly. The box notes on the fly sensitivity comes ready to go, but I had to update the drivers in order to get that to work from Razer’s website. The control panel is very similar to other Razer products we’ve reviewed so far – simple and straight to the point.
Performance: As I said earlier, for an entry level mouse, this thing packs quite a punch. The feel resting your hand on it is near perfect, the mouse wheel screams and the middle button is just as sensitive as the two main buttons. The optical sensor picks up beautifully even used ‘naked’ on my wood desk without skipping around. Even slow, methodical pixel removal in graphics programs was great. Pair this mouse (and any Razer mouse) with their new Destructor surface and you’re in a whole new ballgame. I really wish I could leave it at that, because this is a fantastic FPS mouse that could be used with pride at a competition. There are two major problems that could have been easily fixed. First, the marketing of the mouse as a RTS and MMO designed product. Frankly, I find that almost funny. Your average RTS and MMO gamer needs more than three buttons. Personally I use all five all the time when playing WoW. Second, Razer’s on-the-fly-sensitivity which I think was included with this mouse just to add one more thing on the box. I can see that using the same drivers as the other mice makes it easier, but on-the-fly-sensitivity is basically useless on this mouse. Once you set a button up for that function, you loose that button for all other functions. No left click or no right click, you choose. What about the middle button? You try holding down that middle button and rolling the wheel while you’re trying to frag someone. Even without a fourth button, it might be possible to update the driver software to allow a keyboard button to use the on-the-fly-sensitivity, because it can come in handy. Going from sniper mode to mow-down mode could have been just the push of a button.
Conclusion: For the price, this mouse is really amazing. For what it was designed for, it delivers and then some. Just get those marketing people in check, tell everyone it’s really made for FPS and standard computing. Get rid of that on-the-fly-sensitivity or give it to me with more options. Other than the gripes, I’d definitely recommend this for any user that doesn’t need more than the three standard buttons, it’s probably one of the best such mice for its price on the market.
