Performance

For performance testing, I have been using the Deathadder Elite for the past few weeks with the Firefly and without it in a few situations as well to get a feel for its overall performance. Given my history with the Deathadder, adjusting to the Elite wasn’t too big of a deal. I haven’t been using a Deathadder on my main PC for years now, but after just a few minutes I was already adjusted back to the shape and ready to game. Before getting into the game performance, let's run through its shape and comfort, though.

So like I touched on earlier, the overall shape of the Deathadder has always had a lot of similarities to the Microsoft Intellimouse only with a little extra Razer flare. This means the Elite isn’t a small ambidextrous mouse, it is a little larger and it is only for right handed use. It fits in your hand and the arch of the top of the mouse is shaped in a way that it does a good job of centering itself in your hand without you having to work to find a good grip. Its larger size and shape lend itself to a palm grip but you can claw grip it if that is your preferred grip type. It also depends on the size of your hand as well. Overall, for me I found the shape to be comfortable and fit my hand well. The mice shaped like the Sensei are still a little better fit for me, but the Deathadder shape is in a close second. The flat black finish feels good in hand and the grip on the side of the mouse helped a lot for when I pick up my mouse when playing shooters. The grip isn’t new to the Elite, but it is new compared to the older Deathadders that I typically use.

For my sensor testing, I focused on gaming and I also did some work in photoshop as well as paint to test things like angle snapping. The PMW 3389, like the 3360 that it is similar to has good tracking and is an improvement over a lot of the laser sensors that a lot of companies use on their “premium” mice. The 3389 isn’t considered a perfect sensor as there are some small issues at extremely high DPIs, but the average user or anyone really is going to need to be running the DPI that high so most should like the performance of the Elite. The new switches in the mouse have a nice defined click just like the last few Deathadders I have tested but what about their claims of faster response times? Well, the new switches actually seem to go the other direction altogether and add a few ms of latency to improve their debounce performance. In the end, this should help cause fewer issues, but it’s a little weird for Razer to promote faster response times when they really went the other direction there and improved misclick issues.

While it doesn’t really change mouse performance, I did want to touch on the lighting as well. The Elite has the same Chroma lighting that the Deathadder Chroma had last year. It is still a great option to have to be able to tune the lighting on your mouse to match the rest of your build, even if a lot of hardcore enthusiasts could care less about lighting. Having the option to turn the lighting off or tweak it to what you should cover everyone’s preference. The Elite only has lighting in the scroll wheel and under your palm in the logo, so really the lighting is only a concern when you aren’t using your PC.