Razer has a wireless breakthrough

The Inquirer | 21 Jan 2009

The Razer Mamba mouse is the first wireless rodent that is done right. It may look like an ordinary mouse with a docking cradle, but it isn't.

At a trade show, most companies will talk your ear off over a USB dongle that does nothing in particular and that 17 other companies have done better already anyhow.

You quickly zone out and don't care, contemplating biting your tongue off to end the pain if you can't make it to the door. At CES, we chatted with the Razer people for about an hour, and it was very interesting. That is when you know they have a good product.

The Razer Mamba mouse is the first wireless rodent that is done right. It may look like an ordinary mouse with a docking cradle, but it isn't, Razer thought this thing through from the ground up, and came up with several unique features that really add to the mouse. At first glance it looks just like several other Razer mice, but there are subtle differences.

First up is that it is slightly asymmetrical, made for right handed players, but just barely. The top is the same high quality rubberised material that you expect from Razer, and there are a few more rubber covered surfaces under the buttons. It feels good in your hand, but as is normal with this type of thing, your tastes may vary. The top rubber is one piece, so there are no seams to dig in after a few hours of play.

A sleeping Mamba

In terms of the hardware, the Mamba is 'next gen', with a 3.5 generation laser sensor capable of 5600DPI and 1000Hz polling. As you would expect, you can set the resolution in the drivers from 800-5600DPI in 125DPI steps. There are five preset levels you can switch between, and each axis is individually settable, but all mice have that now. So far, so solid, but nothing groundbreaking.

The magic comes with the cord, or lack thereof. One of the problems with wireless devices is when the battery starts to die, things get flaky. Worse yet, you have to leave it on the cradle while it charges and plug in your wired backup. Pain in the butt unless you have a backup battery, or actually charge it regularly. In the real world that rarely happens.

A Razer Mamba or two

With the Mamba, that is a thing of the past. The USB cord that goes into the cradle/transmitter will pull out and plug into the mouse. Not only does it become a wired mouse instantly, but it will recharge the battery in a few hours while you play. Simple but genius.

If you look closely, you can see a hole above the scroll wheel on the wireless ones, and it is filled on the wired version. That is the USB cable, and you can just pull it out of the cradle and plug it into the mouse. It solves nearly everything, and when the battery eventually dies, you end up with a good wired mouse.

The other thing they did right was make the Mamba as light and responsive as a normal wired gaming mouse. It has a 1ms response time, and should act the same as their wired brethren. It is also very light, only 129g. You can fling it around easily, and better yet, pull the battery to save weight, 108g without it. How Razer did this while including the charger is beyond me.

Moving back to the realm of the ordinary, we have a few other nice touches. The first one is that the mouse and base station are hard keyed to each other, and hop over 21 channels. The idea is that you don't get interference in a lan party environment, even if you are on the same channel, you won't step on the other guy's toes.

Razer is famous for putting macros in their mice, and the Mamba has 'next generation' macro capabilities. The internal memory has been upped from 32K to 64K, and the 11 character limit has been upped to 500. If you need more, well, you should try to venture outside the house, there is a real world out there. Honest.

After being told about the Mamba for about an hour, I didn't wish for death's sweet release, I actually still cared. They did things right for the right reasons, and I found it hard to disagree with any points they made. The only problem I found was that it won't be out until April, and will cost $129. Then again, you do get what you pay for, and in this case, I think the Mamba is very likely worth it.