Top critical review
2.0 out of 5 starsGood design for 'finger grip' style, high polling rate a must for most gamers
Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2018
I rolled my eyes at the concept of gaming peripherals, especially the Razer brand, for a long time. Never really felt like they offered anything that justified the increased price that slapping "gaming" or "esports" onto the box typically comes with. However, this mouse actually costs loss than more contemporary mice you might see at an office store without the "gaming" label, and has many features that will actually be beneficial to a gamer.
First thing I want to talk about is polling rate. A USB mouse will by default poll at 125hz. This means, 125 times per second, your computer is receiving movement input from your mouse about its current location, which is then used to move your cursor around on the desktop or in a game. Simple. For a 60hz display, this means that it has just over 2 inputs to look at before it has to decide where your cursor belongs on screen, and this feels nice. But for someone that has a higher refresh rate display, a traditional mouse at the default polling rate may be insufficient. I have a 144hz display that I use primarily for FPS gaming. With a standard mouse at a 125hz polling rate, this means that for 19 frames per second, an input is either duplicated, ignored, or something is interpolated (made up entirely) to decide where my cursor should go. This leads to jitter and overshoot problems depending upon how the software or your drivers decide to handle this. On the windows desktop with a suitably fast display, you can actually see the cursor jitter if you focus on its movement. No good for gamers, impossible to unsee once you've spotted it.
This mouse offers 500hz and 1000hz polling rates in order to rectify this. While it's probably a completely unnecessary feature for someone that's still playing on a 60hz or 75hz display, this is an absolute necessity for someone with a 100hz+ monitor. Moving the cursor around finally feels as smooth as it should both in-game and for standard use in the desktop environment.
The physical design is nice (but could've been nicer, see the update at the end of the review). There are rubber grips on the left and right side, exactly where they should be for someone that uses a finger grip to hold and move the mouse around. They acknowledge that the mouse is not large enough to be palmed by an adult and have designed it accordingly. The silly RGB LEDs can be turned off. The materials used on the bottom of the mouse drag less than most mice, and its light size makes it easier and smoother to move around. I no longer feel like i'm fighting against my mousepad to move the mouse around.
I would definitely recommend this mouse for anyone with a high refresh rate display. While this does appear to be one of razer's 'budget' mice, they did not skimp on any of the sensors. The software could use some tweaking, I'd have liked to see more options for rebinding mouse inputs, but that's not anything that can't be corrected with other free software.
update: The "mouse 5" button has begun sticking. I've also discovered that the rubber grips on the outer shell are thin strips held on with an adhesive pad, and the pad near mouse 4 / 5 has begun slipping off. The pad is still slightly sticky, but not enough to firmly hold the grip in place. It slides around and needs to be repositioned on a daily basis. I find it strange that these parts of the mouse have worn out first - every other mouse I've owned I've had to replace because the left or right click has worn out and started missing clicks or double clicking in response to a single click. I still love the feel of this in my hand but I find it harder to recommend given the ways in which this has worn out on me.
