HWM (Singapore)

RAZER ABYSSUS ESSENTIAL

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The Abyssus Essential comes from a line of no-frills mice that’s as simple as they come. It is small, ambidextro­us, has just three buttons, and the only luxury it offers is support for Razer Chroma lighting.

A good thing too, as lighting implementa­tion is excellent, and when combined with the easy-to-use Synapse 3 software, this is probably one of my favorite mice in this shootout in terms of

RGB lighting.

That aside, the shape of the Abyssus Essential takes some getting used to. Its lowpro le doesn’t provide a lot of support, and it forces your hand into a claw grip. That’s good news if that’s your preferred grip style, but those who favor the palm grip or have large hands will probably be happier with another mouse.

The matte plastic surface feels grippy enough, but the Abyssus Essential loses the rubber side grips the V2 had. However, the 5,000 DPI optical sensor on the V2 has been upgraded with a 7,200 DPI sensor on the Essential.

The rubber cable on the mouse is also soft and exible, and I didn’t experience any problems with cable drag. The buttons and scroll wheel on the Abyssus Essential offer decent feedback as well, and there’s little to complain about.

Unfortunat­ely, the mouse also commands a $79 price tag, which is more than a little stiff considerin­g what it offers vis-a-vis the competitio­n. With the exception of the ASUS ROG Strix Impact, the other mice either cost the same or are cheaper, but they still offer side buttons and a DPI switcher. In the case of the Logitech G304, it even manages to pack in wireless technology, which only shows how little you’re getting per dollar for the Abyssus.

The Synapse 3 software only further highlights the limitation­s of the mouse. It supports Razer’s HyperShift technology that lets you assign secondary functions to the mouse buttons, but with only three buttons to work with, you can’t really use this without sacri cing core functional­ity.

You can also set up to ve DPI stages in 100 DPI increments, but without any easy way to toggle the sensitivit­y, there doesn’t seem to be much point to this.

 ??  ??
 ??  ?? The lighting on the mouse is bright and even.
The lighting on the mouse is bright and even.
 ??  ?? Gone are the rubber side grips that the Abyssus V2 had.
Gone are the rubber side grips that the Abyssus V2 had.
 ??  ??

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