Comfortable and light: the way gaming mice are meant to be
"The Chroma delivers with price, weight and comfort. With customizable
lights and intuitive software, it's easy to recommend Razer's latest
gaming mouse."
For
Great ergonomics
Great price
Chroma UI is neat
Against
Frustrating drivers
Nothing revolutionary
Razer has become a name ubiquitous with PC gaming hardware.
Some players swear by the name and buy nothing but their products. But
not everyone is in love with the snake-inspired product line, offput by
Razer's often garish, neon-green designs. But the latest
mouse from the peripheral manufacturer, the Razer DeathAdder Chroma, is a
mouse that anyone could love. Whether you're a claw-grip gamer or you
prefer palming your peripheral, it's wonderfully designed. The biggest
style addition to this iteration, though, is the subdued, customizable
lighting system that sets the Chroma apart from the competition.
Design
The
Razer DeathAdder Chroma shares the same dimensions as the regular Razer
DeathAdder - 5 x 2.76 x 1.73 inches (L x W x H) Don't worry about
slipping with this mouse, as it's made out of a nicely textured hard
plastic with grippy rubber on the sides, as well as the scroll wheel. The
front of the mouse is formed into a concave, natural "W"-shape that
allows for the perfect amount of finger space and does a great job of
supporting the palm without fatiguing the wrist. On
the mouse you'll find five buttons: the standard right and left click
buttons, a scroll wheel that functions as a third button, and two
programmable buttons located on the left side of the mouse. The
programmable buttons feel quite natural, and have been designed to have
the same actuation as the main left- and right-click buttons. Last but not least is the the IR optical sensor that delivers an outstanding 10,000 dpi.
Software and customization
While
the mouse itself is outstanding, the software (while being fairly
intuitive) can be a bit slow, and the use of cloud computing instead of
native memory for the mouse is a bit questionable. Although the mouse
doesn't necessarily need the proprietary Razer drivers to work, you will
need them to customize any function on the mouse. Worse, finding the
drivers on Razer's website is convoluted and could really use an
auto-detect feature. Synapse itself is a fairly robust
customization program. It features Razer's typical design structure, and
allows multiple users to each create their own profile, which is handy
for those who have to share a computer. Razer also uses the cloud so
users can access their settings from different computers. However, it
seems a bit intrusive to expect users to install Synapse on every
computer that they want to use the DeathAdder Chroma on if they want to
keep their customized settings on the go; built-in memory would've been a
better way to go. Synapse offers plenty of options for
users to change their sensor sensitivity, pointer acceleration and
polling rate as well as the lighting for the mouse. Each LED can be set
either together or independently and colors can be set to cycle through a
set of hues with Spectrum Cycling, set to a single shade which can
pulse or remain steady, or synced to other Razer Chroma devices for
uniformity. Synapse
can also be used to calibrate the mouse's optical sensor to be
optimized to a particular surface, including a Razer mousepad or another
surface, a function we first saw on the Logitech G502.
Synapse is also used to set macros which can include any combination of
keys or mouse clicks and can be assigned to one of the two customizable
side keys.
Final verdict
The Razer DeathAdder
Chroma isn't revolutionary or a huge improvement over the previous
entries in the DeathAdder series, but it is a great barebones mouse for
those who wish to have the quality, comfort and accuracy of a gaming
mouse without all the flash. The software is usable and
for the most part fairly unobtrusive, but suffers from a bit of
slowdown. The cloud computing features could be taken either as a pro or
con depending on the user's preferences and usage - though, in all
honesty, on-board storage would've made more sense. It won't affect
those who only use their mouse on one computer, but those who game or
work on various computers may find having to re-download and install
Synapse multiple times to be a bit of a hassle. Overall,
this DeathAdder Chroma is great for the price ($69.99 about £40, AU$80)
and is a fantastic entry-level gaming mouse for those who are either
just getting started with PC gaming, or those who don't need or want the
glitz and potential headache of the more expensive gaming mice.
