Software

Razer devices have gone through a range of different software but over the last few years they have put a big focus on their software. It hasn’t been without controversy; a lot of people hate having to sign into software for a mouse or keyboard. I don’t really fall into the hater category there, but I would prefer to not have to do it. I’m also not a big fan of needed to reboot when I install the Razer Synapse software. Once installed and signed in though the software does have a very Razer look. The software is mostly blacked out and looks a lot like the Razer packaging. The first page we land on for the Mamba gets us right into button programing. You have a photo of the Mamba near the middle with numbers labeling each of the mouse buttons, from there you can click and set each button to do nearly anything you might think of. Here we can also flip through profiles and set button layouts for multiple games or functions. Down at the bottom we also have a small picture of the Mamba, this area fills up with all of the Razer devices you have hooked up, so if you have a mouse and keyboard for example you can flip between them at any time.

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The second page gets into what they consider mouse performance settings. Here we can set the sensitivity, polling rate, and acceleration. Here I also noticed that each page has a small battery indicator for the Mamba.

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The third page gets us into the chroma lighting. We can pick from a few effects as well as set the brightness levels. There is a different option for the docks lighting as well but I preferred to keep it matching the mouse for consistency. There is an additional Chroma Configurator if you are looking to get into fully customizing your lighting effects, the base options cover most things but really the only two options I found myself using was the wave effect that shows off all of the colors or a solid color to match the rest of my peripherals.

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The next tab is the calibration tab. These have been popping up from all of the big manufactures recently. Basically you can tell the software what mouse pad you are using and tune a few settings for best performance. This is also where you can find liftoff range, I personally think that should be in the performance section though as it is an important setting to people who lift their mouse.

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Being a wireless mouse, it’s no surprise that they needed to add a power options page in as well. Here we can set how long for the mouse to go into sleep mode when it’s not on the dock. There are also a few lighting options here, specifically you can have it blink to let you know when the battery is low and you can set the mouse/dock to show you the battery level through the lighting while its charging so you can quickly see when it’s done.

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For macro programing there is an entire section up in the top menu options. Here you can load and adjust old macros or turn on recording a record a new one. You have options to set the delay between actions when recording as well.

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Like I said, Razer has been putting a lot of effort into their software. Part of that has been opening up an SDK and allowing for plugins with the Chroma lighting. Some were specific to keyboards like the snake for Chroma app. I really like the ChromaSync app that syncs lighting with various games, much like what Logitech has been doing as well.

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The other area that have made big improvements is in the stats tab. Here you can actually see heatmaps, mouse movement, and even overall mouse lifetime usage. They break things down by game and date so you can go back and see how you have been using your Razer devise in any specific game to help improve your gameplay. I don’t think this is as important on your mouse, but with a keyboard you can take the information and better layout your keys.

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So with all of that in mind how did the software compare to offerings from Razers direct competition like Logitech and SteelSeries? Well I think the Razer and Logitech software offerings are very similar in most ways. They are both easy to navigate, packed full of similar features like the stats pages, and they both work with the whole product lineup. I like those two slightly more than the SteelSeries software but the difference isn’t far apart. Razer still has issues with needing to login and also the rebooting when installing but past that I think the overall experience is very completely. Even the updates are all integrated into the software where some of the competition will at best let you know there is a new update that you need to download from the website. I think with the Mamba specifically Razer could optimize the pages slightly, it felt like they put things that should be on the performance tab on other tabs just so they would be full.

 

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #37401 17 Dec 2015 15:17
Today I check out the new Razer Mamba, check it out and let me know what you think of it!

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