Gaming mice shoot-up

Razer DeathAdder

Razer is possibly the prince of peripherals and, as the selection of mice used at our offices illustrates, hardcore gamers are usually divided pretty starkly between Logitech and Razer products. A little trend I've noticed over the years is that the Razer mice tend to be more popular with the fingertip mouse users, while those who, like me, prefer to grip the mouse with their whole hand tend to lean towards Logitech.

It may be something to do with the shapes preferred by each company, or it may just be me imagining a pattern where there is truly only chaos. Still, imagine my surprise when I picked up the DeathAdder. Here I was, a flat handed gamer who uses a computer pretty much permanently, using a Razer mouse comfortably.

No, not just comfortably. Enjoyably.

The DeathAdder, despite the needlessly emo name, feels like a dream in the palm of your hand. It's smooth, sleek and the ultra-large buttons seem to float above their sensors. The two thumb buttons are perfectly located as well, high and forward on the left hand side. This obviously makes the DeathAdder only useful as a paperweight for left-handed gamers but, as a righty, I find that bothers me very little.

The mouse is fully customisable in terms of sensitivity and button-action, with macros easily set up and a selection of presets and profiles available in the attached software. Also of note is the option to configure the sensitivity of each axis differently, which is useful for those power hungry players who want to enforce their will on every single aspect of their computer.

The DeathAdder is also very pretty, it has to be said. The matt black chassis is offset with a glowing blue scroll wheel and a pulsing blue Razer symbol on the palm, all of which is connected to the computer with a reassuringly thick cable. The lights on the mouse can all be switched off for those times when each distraction means forfeiting a frag, but by default they are left on.

The DeathAdder's downfall comes when you look at its asking price. It isn't cheap, sliding in at around £40, so less serious gamers may want to just give it a miss and go with a lesser model. Those that are in the enviable position of being able to buy it definitely should though as the DeathAdder delivers a fistful of gaming bliss that stands far above the competition.

Conclusion

We tested the mice above over a number of days and on a number of different tasks. A few quick missions in Command & Conquer 3 quickly showed us that the mobile version of the Equalizer was certainly capable of holding its own against the larger version but, given that they are almost the same price, we'd definitely have to say that the larger one is preferable in the end.

Then there's the Cyber Snipa. It's definitely not bad and has a few little features that'd make it a good gaming mouse for a player on a budget, but ultimately it crumbles when stood next to the DeathAdder.


Oh, the DeathAdder. It is beautiful, efficient and apparently painted in two layers of glorious cool. It fits right into your hand and feels like an extension of your arm as you use it gun down hundreds of nondescript bad-guys. It's too expensive by half, but for a serious gamer it's an investment that offers in return all a gamer could want from a wired mouse and for that reason it stands out brilliantly as the best of the bunch.