So somewhere I had heard good things about this mouse. Yesterday I stopped by a Best Buy to see how the MX Blue switches on a a Blackwidow keyboard felt compared to the MX Green keyboard I recently purchased (their display model still had the Cherry switches though the boxed ones for sale all used the Razer switches which IMHO felt awful in comparison), and while there, I decided to buy a BlackAdder and give it a shot. It looked nice enough in the box.
TL;DR: I really don't like it. I think it's price should be $10-20.
First off, the Synapse software simply DOES NOT WORK, at least on OS X. I was so happy to see there were options to disable the annoying device lighting (particularly the constantly-strobing-on-and-off logo is very aggravating), until I discovered that changing the settings to "off" did absolutely nothing. Also trying fruitlessly to reboot and create different profiles led me to learn that half the time the Synapse software fails to connect to the cloud and the other half of the time fails to recognize that there's a Synapse-compatible device plugged in. I thought maybe the failure to recognize the device was because of an intermediate USB device I'm using to plug the mouse into, but plugging it directly into the computer yielded identical results. Sometimes I could not get it to recognize the device again no matter how many times I restarted, but reinstalling the software would magically fix the problem, not that it meant there was any advantage, since I could still not change any device settings.
The ergonomics might be called okay, IF you like using your middle finger on the right button AND like having your two button fingers spread apart more than feels natural. The buttons depression areas help force your fingers into the "correct" positions, which to me feels unnatural and a strain on my hand. Naturally my fingers want to be closer, which barely leaves adequate room for the scroll wheel in between, but Razer wants me to nearly triple that distance. My last mouse that I used before using a temporary stopgap one was an Apple Mighty Mouse, which I wouldn't call phenomenal, but it was better because it didn't try to force my fingers into any particular spread - I could place them as I pleased. My favorite mice in the past have been those that laid out the buttons such that your first and third finger rested on the two buttons, and your middle finger rested either on a third middle button, or a scroll wheel. I haven't used/seen anything that fits this bill in a number of years though. One that I have very fond memories of was the Logitech Trackman Marble T-CH11, and the one that immediately followed it with a scroll wheel put in place of the middle button. The later grey models that went to a more modern two buttons with a wheel sandwiched in the middle were not as nice. Those aren't "mice" but they are the models I can remember. There were other early mice that followed the same button design (particularly those designed for UNIX systems which utilized 3 buttons before other platforms). Sun Type 5 and Type 6 mice had a nice 3-button arrangement, but I wouldn't call them great mice.
Another thing that I really don't like about the Razer - the surface feels very gritty and rough on the hands. I don't know what it is exactly, but it feels like paint to me, rather than a nice lightly-textured plastic. Grabbing the edge of my sharp-edged WASD keyboard's textured plastic feels a whole lot nicer than touching the Razer mouse. I think that textured is the way to go rather than glossy, but they missed the mark pretty badly here if you ask me. Maybe it was necessary to pull off that stupid strobing logo thing, which doesn't even look good as the light is somewhere far behind the surface with no light channeling so which part of the logo gets illuminated depends on viewing angle.
How about that scroll wheel? It's illuminated which isn't necessary and I would prefer to be able to turn off, but it's not so annoying as it's more subtle and doesn't strobe. Rolling the wheel downward feels very nice - just enough tactile feedback and nice smooth silent operation. Much better than the crappy Wyse optical mouse I was using temporarily that was difficult to roll due to being completely smooth on the surface and having too much resistance. That's where the "nice" ends. Scroll upwards, and you get a loud clattery sound, unless you are pressing *just so" at a particular unnatural angle with steady pressure. This actually makes the problem worse, because instead of the sound being awful 100% of the time, it's awful 90% of the time, so it's both awful and inconsistent. Then you go to click the wheel as a third mouse button. WTF? It's hinged on the left, VERY OBVIOUSLY, so when you click, the wheel moves to the right. It's so bad that it's actually easier to press the wheel from the left to the right than it is to put your finger on the top and press down. I might think that was a design feature except for the fact that it's difficult to press it from the left without also clicking the first mouse button.
Which leads us to the sensitivity issue... The buttons are not at all consistent in how much pressure they require to activate. The right mouse button is the most sensitive, the left one is noticeably more sensitive, and the middle mouse button takes many times more force to depress. No consistency at all. This makes even less sense when you consider that this mouse layout is designed for the user to use the same index finger to press the left and scroll wheel buttons, so at least they should be consistent. Straight out of the box, one of the first things I noticed before even plugging it in was that the right and left mouse buttons have a totally different sound. Yes, the middle button is yet another dramatically different sound from either of the other two. The 4th and 5th buttons also sound different from one another, though they feel about the same.
Last complaint - the lift-off distance is rather high. What's the point of a high-precision mouse if every time I pick up the mouse to move it the cursor moves 2 inches across the screen? I guess I just expected that any "gamer" mouse would have a near-zero lift-off distance. I'm not a gamer but do value precision. Not really that important to me but I was surprised by it and thought it worth mention.
So what's good about this mouse??? Well, it's probably the best of the Razer offerings, at least compared to the others I was able to see at Best Buy. I'm not sure that's saying much... The rubber grip areas on the left and right are nice. The 4th and 5th (thumb) buttons are perfectly situated. I also can't complain about the tracking. I like the black braided cable. That's all.
I bought this mouse expecting it to be a much better experience than a cheap Dell mouse. I didn't really find it.
So before I return this and go buying something else blindly off the internet, I thought I'd ask for advice for a replacement based on my preferences. So here we go:
* The BlackAdder is a reasonable size, but it doesn't feel very ergonomic in my hand. I would like something the same size or slightly larger, nothing smaller, nothing flatter like the horrible Apple Magic Mouse.
* I don't want some weird monstrosity-looking device. Clean and simple wins.
* Does anybody still make mice optimized for using three fingers for buttons? That would be nice though not a necessity. What is a necessity is the mouse not forcing my fingers apart which will cause strain.
* No lights, or if there are lights, let me turn them off.
* Settings should be stored on the device, not in the cloud.
* I like to have 3 main buttons (including scroll click) and a 4th button. 5th is okay but I don't need a huge plethora of buttons like the 12-thumb-key model Razer makes.
* Does any mouse except the Apple Mighty Mouse have an omnidirectional scroll ball? Not that important really but a nice feature if available
After reading a little bit here, I am thinking the Zowie FK1 may be a good alternative? Could somebody who has one speak to the above concerns about the Razer? Any other recommendations?
