Performance
Typically, with a mouse I need to focus on two aspects when covering their performance, comfort and performance. With the Mamba I also have to add in battery and charging experience as well. Starting with comfort, seeing that the Mamba takes a lot of its shape from the Deathadder it is up there in comfort. I do wish the angle from the peak of the palm area to the back of the mouse had a slightly different angle as I did notice when I palm grip the mouse and loosen my grip the mouse wants to push forward rather than staying snug in my palm. Beyond that though the mouse fit my grip well and didn’t give me any hand cramps. The size might be a tiny bit large for people with smaller hands but overall the “Deathadder” shape has been historically popular. The thumb buttons were easy to reach with my thumb without being in the way. The scroll wheel was also spot on. Some people may not like that Razer included side scrolling but at no point in my testing did I accidentally bump it so even if you don’t need it you should be okay.
You will notice I didn’t mention anything about the trigger buttons. Well with Razer building in individual adjustability for each of the trigger switches I spent more time testing them. Like I said earlier you can adjust each switch from as low as 45 grams to 95 grams at max. First off my concern with the size of the tool to adjust them was justified, multiple times I lost the tool on my desk and I keep it at least somewhat cleaned up. Hopefully in the future the build in a spot to keep it into the base. As for the performance of the trigger switches. Beyond the range of spring rates, the switches felt exactly like any other mouse switch so you don’t need to worry about that. Having the option to tune the mouse to my preference was nice but it also pointed out that somehow I don’t have any preference in mouse trigger weight. I could tell the difference when I turned them up or down but when I got into game I didn’t notice anymore and it didn’t seem to affect my gameplay in a good or bad way. I bet most people set them and never go back to them, but it is still a nice feature to have, especially when you want the perfect experience.
With 16,000 DPI the Mamba surly won’t lack for resolution. But as usual the DPI races don’t really translate to any improvement in performance. The fact is most people aren’t using more than 2,000 DPI and even that is on the high side. So what I was curious about with the Mamba was just how well the PLN-2034 PTE Twin Eye sensor would perform. In the past I would basically discount the whole mouse due to having that sensor because the z-axis issues caused me issues but I wanted to see if they have managed to work out the issues through firmware updates. So in my initial testing I didn’t run into any issues or tracking issues. Over time I did have a few weird issues with the sensor jumping while using a hard mouse pad. In game I never noticed it but I did spot it when doing much slower mouse movements. As for z-axis tracking issues I did notice a slight bit of movement when initially testing it but when lifting while gaming it never became an issue.
Being a wireless mouse I also had a big focus on any potential input lag and battery performance. Even in the LanOC office that is notoriously bad with any wireless device I didn’t run into noticeable input lag or wireless issues. The good thing about the cord design that can be moved to the mouse itself is if you run into interference at a LAN you aren’t completely out of luck, you just have to go back to wired. For the battery life Razer suggested that you should see 20 hours of continuous gaming on one charge. To put this to the test I set my wife up with the mouse on her day off while she played games all day long. After 9 hours of heavy use the battery was down from 100% to 25% but after that testing I did notice I still had the Chroma lighting turned up to its brightest setting. Dropping that down to a normal level should get you into the 12+ range, or basically more than most people would ever use in a single day. Turning the lighting down to dim or even off would extend that even more. I’m sure the 20 hours is within reach with no lighting though.
Speaking of the lighting, I did think the Chroma lighting running down the sides of the Mamba look good. It might be a little to flashy, but I think people have always gone with Razer for a little flash.
