Razer DeathAdder Review - PAGE 1

You might have been in this situation: you are finally going to build a new home gaming PC. You've saved up a wad of extra cash from your night job, school bursaries or loan sharking, and now you are all set to finally build that proper gaming machine you have always wanted. So you budget it out: fast CPU, check, high-end video card, check, mounds of RAM, check; and check and check down the list. 

Then you get to the hardware store. (Or you ordered it online and that package arrives the mail.) And finally, you realize, that you forgot all about something important. You forgot about the mouse. 

While the mouse isn't the first thing that may come to mind when they think about upgrading, it is arguably just as important as any other considering in your gaming PC build. A cheap $10 mouse may get the job done, but for the amount of time you may be spending with your mouse, investing in a quality mouse can be a worthwhile idea. Today we'll be looking at a possible candidate you could consider: the Razer DeathAdder.

Razer products have been around for just over a decade now. While the company sells keyboards, headphones, and a few other assorted products, the company was built on gaming mice, and that is their primary focus. From the get-go, all of Razer's products have been made and marketed to gamers. With the company motto 'For Gamers. By Gamers' they've been focused on PC gamers from the get-go. The company started things off with a bang in the late '90s with their first product, the Boomslang, the world's first mouse featuring a 1000 dpi mouse, and since then, they've become a regular sponsored of a wide berth of gaming competitions, and pro-gamers themselves.

Before we get to look at the DeathAdder, let's take a look at the Razer's line-up briefly, so we can see where it fits in. Razer has kept busy over the years, releasing special and limited editions of their mice. Let's put those aside for now and just look at the main line-up -- including the newest model, the Imperator, which just came out this week:

As you can see, Razer endeavors to have an option available for anyone after a gaming mouse, whether they are looking for something on the lower-end, or the higher-end. What you can't tell from the chart above is the details concerning the various specializations each mouse features. For example, the Naga is aimed at the MMO crowed, with a massive amount of customizable buttons. Whereas the Imperator specializes in ergonomics, and pursues this with adjustable buttons. Almost each Razer mouse has a feature or two that separates it from the rest of the line-up.

So where does that leave the DeathAdder? Well, as you can see, in broad terms the DeathAdder is mid-range, all-around'er; along with the Copperhead and Diamondback. Of these three mid-range, all-around mice, the DeathAdder is priced in the middle. So in the simplest terms the DeathAdder can be considered the quintessential all-purpose mid-range mouse in Razer's extensive line-up.

Let's take a look at some of the features now. On the next page we'll take a look at this rodent and then we'll get into some hands on testing.

First off, the sensor. The DeathAdder features Razer's 3500 dpi Precision™ 3.5G infrared sensor. Your common every-day office mouse has a dpi (dots per inch, the most common metric measuring mouse sensor sensitivity) of probably between 600 and 800. So with a 3500 dpi sensor, you have the potential for over 4x the accuracy when you are trying to line-up headshots, the right angle for your 'cone of cold' spell, or trying to nail that Mig on your six (or what have you).

This 3500 dpi sensor is actually a recent change to the DeathAdder. Up until recently, the DeathAdder had a 1800 dpi sensor -- which is still a very capable sensor, but not as impressive when compared to the higher-end stuff like the Lachesis, or other competitors. (By the way, if you are looking for a good deal, you might consider tracking down the 'version 1.0' of the mouse, with the 1800 dpi sensor -- many online stores seems to be selling it at a discounted price now.)