Editors’ Picks: Digital Discoveries

Bo Moore, technology editor, and Alan Dexter, executive editor, ponder their favorite peripherals

RAZER BASILISK

There’s hasn’t been much in the way of mouse tech that’s gotten me excited in a while. Sure, DPI sensor numbers are hitting astrological levels, but for FPS precision, I tend to keep everything more reasonable. Luckily, sensors aren’t the only place mice can improve themselves.

Lately, I’ve been playing with Razer’s new Basilisk gaming mouse. It has all the high-performance sensors and such you’d expect, but also comes with some nice bells and whistles specifically for FPS players. The marquee features include a scroll wheel with adjustable resistance and a DPI clutch that lets you swap to a second DPI setting on the fly—then go right back to your primary number. The clutch is a removable magnetic paddle, meaning you can swap it out for whatever size you like (or remove it altogether), and while its default behavior is a DPI clutch, you can change its functionality to whatever you choose.

Of course, on-the-fly DPI swapping and scroll-wheel resistance adjustments are nothing new, but it’s nice having all these FPS-focused features in one package. The Basilisk also uses Razer’s new Synapse 3 software—I haven’t dug into it too deeply yet, but it seems to be a nice update to the utility. $70, www.razerzone.com

G.SKILL RIPJAWS KM780 MX

We often wax lyrical about the latest and greatest hardware, but I’m often more interested in the gear that we use day to day. This G.Skill keyboard has been serving me well for nearly a year, and while the red key glow picks up some of the inevitable dust that it has collected over time, it still looks and acts like a premium piece of equipment.

The keyboard is available with the usual gamut of Cherry key switches, but mine employs the Cherry MX Brown switches. These aren’t “clicky” like the blues, but require a bit more force than the reds. They’re a happy middle ground that work as well for gaming as they do for typing, which is good, because that’s exactly what I use my machine for: lots of work and plenty of play.

There are numerous features on offer, though I don’t tend to use many of them on a regular basis. The lighting is set to a barely perceptible glow ( no RGB lighting here, just “crimson” red), the macro recording has hardly been used, and the custom gaming keycaps survived a day before being swapped back for the standard caps. The media keys and volume control are much more welcome, though, and the general comfort means I’m not in a rush to replace it. $103, www.gskill.com