RAZER DEATHADDER ELITE
When he had pressed the seventh button, there was silence in heaven
NOT A SELF-AWARE calculator from Cyberdyne Systems, but the latest in a familiar line from Razer. The Elite marks the DeathAdder’s tenth anniversary in style, by adding a couple of extra buttons, for a total of seven.
That’s a little unfair. There’s a new optical sensor, too, squeezing an extra 6,000 dots into every inch when compared to the DeathAdder Chroma, and new Razer-made switches under the buttons, now rated for 50 million clicks.
The DeathAdder has always been Razer’s Jack-of-all-trades gaming mouse, aimed at those who don’t like to specialize in one kind of title, but let their fingers wander all over the Steam store. Despite this, Razer has chosen to plaster the promotional material with its eSports branding. For once, however, it makes a bit of sense—the DeathAdder Elite is built around accuracy and speed, two things that might have an effect when a few pixels make a difference between who wins and who’s left crying into their Gatorade.
Anybody who’s not competing for large prize pots will be happy with the mouse, too, unless you try to hold it in your left hand. There’s not even a hint of ambidexterity about the DeathAdder, and Razer produces a left-handed version of the DeathAdder to compensate for those who, according to a study from the University of Montpellier, are better in fights. The strictly righthanded ergonomics means that it’s a good fit for a lot of hands, with the rubber pad below the side buttons providing a particularly grippy surface from which to flick your thumb up to the switches above.
There’s another grippy patch on the other side, perfect for the third finger while your first two are on the main buttons, which are molded into the top of the mouse, and have a cute little cleft in them, so your fingers can slip perfectly into the sweet spot. The back of the mouse is humped, ready to support your palm as you bash away at your games, leading to less fatigue if you’re in the habit of spending hours twitching back and forth before achieving a satisfying conclusion. The two new buttons nestle just above the wheel, which has newly sprouted nodules on it, in a departure from the chunky divisions of the DeathAdder Chroma. We don’t know whether it makes it any easier to rotate, as the Chroma’s wheel was already pretty good at that, but you certainly know when your finger is gently caressing it, with no chance of mistaking it for the body of the mouse and making a horrible mistake. CLICKY QUESTIONS Unlike every other gaming mouse manufacturer in the world, Razer doesn’t use Omron switches. Instead, it creates its own.... in association with Omron. This puts us in a philosophical situation—are the switches Omrons or not? And does it matter? The answer is “not really”— Razer’s switches are responsive, give a decent click (every bank of buttons makes a different noise, the wheel and two new buttons rather muted compared to the bright, trebly clicks of the main buttons, with the side switches somewhere in between), and with the huge lifespan now built into them, could be bothering your online opponents for many years to come.
Underneath, two shiny plastic panels keep the mouse sliding slickly over the desktop, while the sensor sits behind a very understated rectangular window. As this isn’t the kind of customizable mouse that keeps weights handy, there’s no removable panel to go poking around behind. Customization comes from the 16.8 million color Chroma lighting system and the programmable buttons, all controlled through the usual Synapse software.
This is a reasonably priced mouse in a world where you can spend a great deal more money and not get such a wellmade product. What it lacks in bells and whistles, it makes up for in subtlety and class, and by concentrating on accuracy and speed, it zeroes in on the things mice are meant to do.