Hands-on with Razer's new wired/wireless mouse, the Mamba

I had a long and interesting chat with Razer’s president about the development of the first wireless mouse the company has put out. Of course, it’s not just wireless, it’s also wired, making it what he termed the first “convertible” mouse. At last, you can use a mouse while it’s charging!

You may remember that Razer was one of the die-hard ball-mouse proponents. They were making ball mice for ages after everyone else had moved to optical, because they felt the technology wasn’t good enough for gaming input. Now most of their mice are optical, but they’re transitioning now to the 3rd (and a half) generation laser sensor. And this whole time they’ve been weighing whether to try wireless; actually, it’d be more accurate to say they’ve been trying it for years and only just recently decided that the device they could put together was good enough. And now they have what they feel is the best mouse in the world, and a first in several categories.

[blip.tv http://blip.tv/play/grEx5bppieRU]

You can see the tour of the Mamba in the video, but it’s worth mentioning here that the grip is very comfortable and they’ve tweaked the shape of the Death Adder to make it more comfortable, as well as repositioning the thumb buttons, adding some extras at the tip, and coating said buttons in the grippy finish, which I love. The base is also the charger, but you can detach the cable (appears to be a modified mini-USB interface) and put it in the mouse, so it’ll charge while you’re using it. There is no performance difference, they say, between wired and wireless; they were only satisfied with the product once the wireless firmware could support the same 1000Hz polling rate as their wired software. And now they say they’ve squashed most of the bugs and we’re going to get a really solid product.

I like Razer’s design philosophy, and I like their mice. I’m really looking forward to putting the Mamba through its paces in a month or two.

[blip.tv http://blip.tv/play/grEx5bsZieRU]
Is that video choppy for anyone else?

They also showed off the new “Carcharias” headset, which is the headset that will be coming in the Megalodon package; the package will include a little amp/mixer that they’re still QAing. They were really light and very comfortable, I can see myself wearing them for way longer than the Piranhas, which, though they sounded great, tended to crush my head a bit. I didn’t get to use them for anything, but I’m hoping they sound as good as their cousins.

Anyhow, these are definitely winners from what I can tell, and I’ll have a full review of them as soon as they’re available — should be a couple weeks.