Razer Viper Gaming Mouse Reviewed

Razer originally sent us the Razer Viper a few months back, and I was excited to start digging into it. Since then, health issues-with my wrists in particular-have made it difficult to spend time with the mouse. Our review is late, but this is still a stellar mouse worth checking out.

The Razer Viper is firmly focused on e-sports right down to the mechanics of the mouse switches.

Design

To suggest that the Razer Viper has an iconic design like the Logitech G502 would be a lie, but that's far from a dig on it. This is a simple, straight-forward mouse meant to fit many hands, both left and right.

The Viper has an ambidextrous design with back and forward buttons on either side of the mouse. The buttons are separate from the rest of the body, and the clean lines give the mouse a sleek cybernetic look. Aside from those, the only other button is a bottom-mounted button set to switch DPI settings by default. This button can be reprogrammed in the Razer Synapse software and other buttons can be set to serve the same purpose. The bottom-mounted RGB LED light that cycles with the DPI setting makes its original intent clear, though.

The only real standout visual feature is the RGB LED Razer logo on the palm of the mouse, and that's by design, I think. Razer tends to go for a stealth aesthetic and that's no different here. The mouse almost disappears into my black non-stick mousepad when I turn off the Razer lighting. Even the mouse cord, wrapped on matte-black nylon, tends to disappear when I'm using the mouse. The only time I even noticed it was when I was running tests in MouseTester.

I love the ambidextrous aspect of this mouse. I'm right-handed and my daily driver is a right-handed Logitech MX Vertical mouse, but I know enough lefties out there to know they appreciate any concession in mousing. Thanks to those low-profile buttons on each side and the ability to reprogram or disable them, most anyone can use this mouse. I have heard complaints that people with big hands might struggle with the Viper, but my adult-sized hands were plenty compatible.

Features

It's much more the technical aspects that will stand out. This is a really light mouse. It's just 69 grams light. There's so little to it that it feels like I'm holding nothing. I don't have strong opinions about how much my mouse ought to weigh, but I'm glad that we have ultra-light and extra-beefy mice out there to let any gamer find the right mouse.

The other big feature on the Viper is the optical switch design for the two primary mouse buttons. Instead of detecting the mouseclick through direct contact, the mouse generates little lasers. Clicking the mouse opens a gate to let the laser light through for the duration of the click, and then closes.

Razer explains the benefit of these optical switches:

"Traditional mechanical switches send electrical signals via metallic contact. When these contacts strike each other, they create a residual bouncing effect that can result in multiple signals. A debounce delay software is used to overcome this bouncing effect so that only a single click is registered. With the Razer Optical Mouse Switch, no physical contact is needed to send an electrical signal, eliminating the need for a debounce delay. Any click is actuated instantly with no unintended clicks."

Razer says that this also results in more durable switches since there's no metallic contact to wear down. The latency on these is a third that of standard mice, too, down to 0.2 milliseconds. In other words, if there's a late click, it's not the mouse's fault.

Software

Razer's Synapse software is extensive enough to mention here as a feature, too. If you're already a Razer fan, this is nothing new, but if you haven't picked any Razer hardware up yet, you'll want to know.

While the Viper doesn't require any software to use-the button and DPI settings you create are stored onboard the mouse-you can get pretty deep with configuration. The customization tab lets you set any of the buttons on the mouse to behave with a number of different functions, as well as the Razer Hypershift key. This option lets Razer keyboard owners assign a second set of mouse functions that they can activate by holding down a key on the keyboard.

You can set anywhere from one to five levels of DPI sensitivity, which you can then toggle through with that aforementioned bottom mouse button, as well as polling rates up to 1000 Hz. The software also lets you set and sync lighting across Chroma-compatible Razer devices and calibrate the mouse for the surface you're mousing on.

Using the mouse

As I said before, this is an incredibly light mouse. It's easy to use. This mouse is as easy to set up and start using as any other despite the more advanced features. While playing shooters it behaved as I expected, though the aforementioned hand issues kept me from playing those shooters for extended periods. There doesn't seem to be any smoothing turned on, and I had no issues using it in image-editing applications like Photoshop and Lightroom with precision.

I tracked the Razer Viper in MouseTester 1.5 versus the G502 Lightspeed and versus itself at different DPI.

There's not a whole lot of variation, though the variance increases at higher DPIs. The mouse does seem to have a little more variation than the G502, but it doesn't seem significant.

Conclusion

The Razer Viper hit shelves back in August with a $79.99 price point. It's holding steady to that. While it's far from the cheapest mouse out there, the Razer Viper offers a lot of customization and a good set of featuers.

The part I can't speak to is how it performs in fast competition. I'm not a competitive player, and I don't fare well in intense competition. I'm not going to know if the mouse falls apart at those degrees of use. But I can say that it seems to hold up well to normal use. It should stand up well over time thanks to those optical switches. Even if you're not playing top-level competitions, it's nice to have a good piece of hardware at hand that you can depend on. The Razer Viper is exactly that, and you don't have to break the bank to get it.

The post Razer Viper Gaming Mouse Reviewed appeared first on The Tech Report.