Got mine in the mail a few days ago after having done extensive research on mice before making the decision. Just happened to be very fortunate timing that I was looking for a mouse right when this was announced.
My previous mouse was a
Razer Pro|Click which was basically a white & grey Diamondback targeted at Mac users, and before that I have had various other "high-end" gaming mice from Logitech and others. I have tried the highest DPI laser mice, "lag-free" wireless mice (they are not) and everything in-between. As much as I wanted to get rid of the cord, I've yet to find a wireless mouse that didn't have some kind of glaring issue.
My biggest complaint about the Pro|Click was the build quality - specifically the cord used - and ultimately that is where the mouse failed. The rubber coating on the buttons also started to discolour over time (not an accumulation of dirt, it seemed to be age related as you see with some plastics) and eventually the coating started wearing off. I loved the low profile, light weight and overall shape of the mouse, though the side buttons on it were fairly useless. I also really disliked the extremely bright blue LED inside it, and there was no option to turn it off.
As I said at the beginning of my post, I did a lot of research before making this purchase, and the end result was that there are almost no mice out there that do not have sensor problems. There are
no laser mice out there that don't have tracking issues of some kind, and the majority of newer ones either suffer from the sensor itself having 5-10% acceleration built into the hardware, or negative acceleration. This might be tolerable for desktop work (though I would argue against that even) but it is totally unsuitable for gaming where you need 1:1 control. Laser mice still also seem to have problems tracking on some surface types. I had started out planning to get a Steelseries Xai (or possibly Ikari) but they both have acceleration due to the sensor used.
In the end, it seemed that if you want a mouse with good performance, it
must be an optical mouse, and of the optical mice that don't have any tracking issues (surface problems, positive/negative acceleration, prediction, ability to cope with high speeds etc.) the Deathadder with the latest firmware (the earlier firmwares did have issues) is the highest DPI by some margin. The majority of others were 400 DPI or 800 DPI.
I had initially set out to
not buy another Razer mouse - I was happy with the performance of the Pro|Click, but not the build quality. I was put off by the looks of the Deathadder - shiny black plastic is something I despise, despite its popularity on electronics in recent years, and while I believe you now get the option to disable the lighting, I'd rather the mouse did not have it to begin with, so the Deathadder Black Edition seemed perfect:
- The rubberised coating on the top is gone, so there is no chance for that to wear off over time as it did on my Pro|Click.
- The glossy black plastic on the sides has been replaced so it will not show up fingerprints and grips better.
- No LEDs, and a nice black scrollwheel rather than the cheap looking clear rubber that is prone to discolouration over time. Unlike most optical mice, Razer use infra-red LEDs for the sensor, so there is no visible light from the bottom of it either.
- A thicker, braided cord that will hopefully be more durable.
So now that I have the mouse in my hands and have used it a couple of days, here are my thoughts on it.
Firstly, it looks
really nice. It's a far more refined design than anything that has ever come from Razer, rather than looking like a traditional "gaming" mouse with too many buttons, crazy designs and glowing lights.
I love the surfaces of this mouse. The top is painted plastic which has a nice feel to it. It's a matte finish which almost seems like a soft-touch finish. Razer have been doing this for a while now, but I really like the fact that the top of the mouse is a single surface rather than having the buttons made out of separate pieces of plastic. That said, there are a couple of
slight bumps in the surface of the buttons that feel like either slight paint defects or perhaps from the moulding process that wasn't properly cleaned up. It's too small to photograph, but it's just a couple of points where your fingers "catch" if your move them over the surface slowly.
The "rubber" on the sides is not the same as the grippy rubber that Razer normally use on the top of their mice/buttons, but rather it is a thin soft-touch coating that is better than I was expecting - I would have been disappointed if it was the more grippy rubber that they normally use, as I don't think it holds up over time.
The wheel has solid detents which I personally like, and I feel like they have the tension just right on it. It's more suited for gaming where you usually want to know exactly how many positions it's moved when you rotated the wheel, rather than desktop use. I know a lot of people prefer free-scrolling wheels, and while they're nice for surfing the web or reading documents, I hate them for gaming. Personally I use a middle click when scrolling web pages or documents rather than the wheel.
The buttons all use mechanical switches, and I feel like they have the position/tension just about perfect on all but the right mouse button.
There is enough tension on all of them that you can rest your fingers on any of the buttons and you are not going to accidentally press the button. On the left mouse button it takes almost no force beyond that to actuate it, which lets you keep clicking
extremely quickly. Of course it's not important for desktop use, where I can't think of any reason to go beyond a triple-click, but it's great for gaming.
I feel like there is perhaps slightly too much tension on the right mouse button though, as I find it difficult to keep up with the speed that I can click the left mouse button unless I'm lifting my other fingers and actually focused on it.
The middle click is solid and is not really tuned for rapid clicking - it's set so that there is a solid click there and you will not accidentally click it when scrolling quickly - a problem I have had with previous mice including the Pro|Click.
The side buttons are a great size & shape, in the perfect position for your thumb. Again, these are tuned to avoid accidental clicks rather than rapid clicks in succession, which may or may not suit you. (for me, I only really want that on the LMB/RMB)
I realise that this is supposed to be an ergonomic mouse rather than an ambidextrous one, but I feel like they could have put a single button on the right-hand side of the mouse without interfering with the design.
With the Pro|Click there was a forward/back button rocker on either side of the mouse, and they were really only there to make the mouse ambidextrous, rather than all seven buttons being usable in either hand, but I think a single button would work here.
Something else that I think they should be praised for is that the mouse seems very well "balanced". While I generally prefer ambidextrous mice (for what it's worth I'm actually left-handed but use my right hand with mice) and I especially don't like overly sculpted mice like a lot of Logitechs and the Steelseries Ikari, it fits nicely into your hand and while it's a minor thing, even at 3500 DPI where the mouse is at its most sensitive, I can press any of the buttons on it without the cursor moving at all. On a lot of mice either the tension on the buttons is wrong, or the grip isn't quite right, and when you press at least some, if not all, of the buttons, the cursor jumps a bit.
The software for the mouse seems fine, though I should point out that I have only tried the mouse out on Windows 7 so far, I have not tried it on a Mac.
1000Hz "ultrapolling" seems to work just fine, which was a nice surprise for me. (note: if you are using a 32-bit OS, it is best to use 500Hz) When my Pro|Click died a few weeks ago, I was back using an old Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical. This is a 400 DPI mouse (which was painfully slow) that has serious tracking issues when moving it quickly if it's running at the standard 125Hz polling rate of USB. I tried overclocking the port but when running at 500 or 1000Hz, the mouse wouldn't report anything over 200Hz. When set to 250Hz that worked correctly, but wasn't enough to fix the tracking issues I was having. (the mouse couldn't keep up) I assumed that this meant either my USB ports couldn't do anything over 250Hz, or it was a result of the active extension I'm using. (the PC tower is kept outside this room)
The Razer software is a little confusing with the way they lay things out though.
There is an acceleration option that always says "Acceleration On" and I thought it was permanently turned on but actually what happens is that when you click it, the "On" glows, and only then is it enabled.
There is also a sensitivity option that ranges from 1-10 in addition to the Windows sensitivity options. For 1:1 tracking, you
must have Windows sensitivity set to the mid-point (6/11 in the Windows control panel, I didn't touch it in the Razer one) with "Enhance Pointer Precision" disabled. (also in the windows control panel) I would also recommend installing the
MarkC Mouse Acceleration Fix if you are on Windows 7. This simply removes the acceleration curve that the "Enhance Pointer Precision" option enables, as some older games will turn on that option even if you have it disabled.
In the Razer drivers, the sensitivity setting should be as high as it can go, and you need to make sure that acceleration is off. (no glowing text)
To adjust the speed of your mouse, you change the DPI setting. (really, it should be labelled CPI, or counts per inch) If you change any of the other sensitivity options, you lose 1:1 control. (1 mouse count = 1 pixel movement)
This might seem limiting, but you have 450, 900, 1800 and 3500 DPI to choose from, and usually one of them is fine for most people. Some mice offer more variability - some Steelseries mice allow you to go from 100-5001 CPI (DPI and CPI are interchangeable) in 1 CPI increments, but those are not
true CPI adjustments, and are interpolated which means you do not have true 1:1 control. (the only "real" CPI settings on them are at multiples of 90 CPI)
There are five profile settings you can configure in the drivers as well, and these can be switched by a button on the bottom of the mouse. As far as I can see, this only stores your polling rate, DPI, and button config settings, not any of the sensitivity options.
I don't know if this is stored on the mouse itself (it would be great if it was) or if it is simply a software feature. I haven't switched between machines to try this out yet.
When set up like this, mouse tracking is essentially perfect. You have true 1:1 control and there is no positive or negative acceleration, no skipping/jumping on any of the surfaces I have tried. I have stuck with the smooth side of the
Razer Pro|Pad as my surface of choice, though I am considering something like
Goliathus mat if I can find something of a similar size that can take my keyboard and mouse, without all the branding on it, as I'm hoping it will help dampen the noise of the keyboard.
The only potential issue for some people is that the lift-off distance is higher than some of the older optical mice out there (specifically the 1800 DPI Deathadder 3G) though it is still lower than any laser mouse I have tried. Personally though, with a 3500 DPI sensor, I have not found the need to lift the mouse, and I generally find that less comfortable to do with ergonomic-style mice rather than ambidextrous ones. I found myself doing it all the time with the 400 DPI WMO, and have never done it with this so far.
I must say that I am surprised at
hfcobra wanting one of these with a 5700 DPI laser sensor. Laser sensor issues aside, 5700 DPI is
extremely sensitive when the mouse is properly set up for 1:1 control. With the Deathadder set to 3500 DPI, It only requires just over half an inch to go from one edge of the screen to the other at 1920x1080. When I first got it, I wasn't sure about even using it at 3500 DPI because of this. It's so sensitive that it can be difficult to move the mouse with a high degree of precision. That said, I am adjusting to it after a few days of use, but at 5700 DPI you have a third of an inch to go from edge-to-edge with the mouse.
As mentioned previously, I would actually have liked to see a button for less-frequently used actions on the right of the mouse, and I think a button to toggle between a high and low DPI setting would have been great there, rather than the button on the underside that toggles between five profiles. (if only it had been an even number and I could have just duplicated the settings so it would go high/low/high/low)
In summary, it isn't quite perfect, but this is definitely one of the best mice on the market, and one of a very small number that has essentially perfect tracking. I love the look of it, and I hope it does well so that Razer will consider making more products that have a more under-stated look rather than the traditional in-your-face gaming style they normally use.
And now, after suffering from using the Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical for a few weeks and seeing how much of a difference it has made, I think I owe it to myself to start looking for a nice mechanical keyboard to replace the
horrible Microsoft Wireless Multimedia Keyboard this PC has been stuck with for years...
