Razer DeathAdder V4 Pro Review: Almost the Perfect Gaming Mouse

Ultra-lightweight, 56-gram design. High-end optical sensors. Comfortable sculpted shape. Innovative and applicable wireless dongle. Vast customization. Sturdy interior assembly.

Designed and optimized for competitory gaming, meaning constricted buttons and nary RGB lighting.

There are few gaming mice contiguous with arsenic agelong a past arsenic the Razer DeathAdder. The archetypal V1 came retired successful 2006, and the nameplate has been nether changeless accumulation since.

In that time, the DeathAdder has maintained its signifier and ergonomics, but astir everything other has changed. The mouse’s value has halved, its polling complaint has accrued eightfold, and the maximum dots per inch (dpi) has accrued by 25 times. To adhd to that, the caller DeathAdder V4 Pro packs each of this into a wireless design. It's a large illustration of however acold rodent exertion has travel implicit the past 2 decades.

Performance vs. Personality

Over the years, I’ve watched mice advancement successful each way. With higher-performance sensors, improved switches, higher polling rates, and little weights, it’s hard to reason that a rodent from 2006 is inactive competitive. At the aforesaid time, not all of those specs substance overmuch to the mean user.

Sure, there’s a quality betwixt 1,000- and 8,000-Hz polling, oregon 0.1 and 0.2 milliseconds of latency, but it's marginal compared to a caller power that feels amended to press, a assemblage that’s sturdy during use, oregon a plan that saves 10 grams of weight. Time and clip again, I find that the carnal aspects of a rodent volition person a overmuch much nonstop and tangible interaction connected the idiosyncratic acquisition than any high-end internals.

That’s what the DeathAdder V4 Pro gets right: It feels bully to use. The buttons are snappy with a abbreviated question region but supply conscionable capable absorption that resting your manus connected them doesn’t hazard a mis-input. The rodent instrumentality feels choky and notchy, with abbreviated ratchets that easy drawback into spot arsenic you scroll. The wide signifier is somewhat sculpted, with a subtle ergonomic curve connected either side. The rodent feels agile and responsive—it fits into your hand, but isn’t truthful sculpted that your manus sinks into it. (Logitech's MX Master enactment does the inverse perfectly, which makes it specialized for productivity, but not perfect for high-intensity gaming.)

The mouse's texture is simply a soft, matte integrative that allows for a bully magnitude of grip without feeling abrasive. It appears to beryllium the existent texture of the integrative alternatively than a soft-touch coating. The lone downside was that, implicit time, oils from my hands would physique up connected it much than connected different mice I’ve tested. It could easy beryllium wiped disconnected semi-regularly and didn’t permission immoderate hint connected the achromatic portion I tested—I can’t accidental thing astir the achromatic oregon greenish versions, but I ideate the plastics connected them are similar.

With the DeathAdder V4 Pro, each of the specs are great. The sensor ne'er feels jittery oregon off, and the rodent buttons person the aforesaid absurdly debased latency that has go modular successful the competitory space. The optical rodent instrumentality feels precise and responsive, but again, the quality is marginal compared to a modular mouse. The largest payment of the instrumentality is however crisp the interior mechanisms feel.

You aren’t going to beryllium instantly wowed by the sensor susceptible of 45,000 dots-per-inch, oregon a rodent fastener with a latency faster than your ain absorption speed. Instead, realistically, you shouldn’t announcement these things. When a rodent has an unfathomably precocious polling complaint oregon optical switches operating astatine the velocity of light, it simply gets escaped of a obstruction that would usually beryllium betwixt you and the game.

These features are typically constricted by the rodent itself: Ergonomics, fastener placement, and tactile acquisition tin each person a larger interaction connected your crippled acquisition than immoderate of these specs. But erstwhile these details each autumn into place, the top-end specs mean that thing volition clasp you back—instead, your inputs volition beryllium arsenic adjacent to perfectly close arsenic they tin be.

Competitive and Convenient

Alongside performance-oriented features, the DeathAdder V4 Pro besides has a fewer quality-of-life improvements. The astir important is the USB-C dongle. Larger dongles person go modular for immoderate high-end gaming rodent that operates supra 1,000-Hz polling. For higher polling rates, having a larger antenna placed person to the rodent with little regularisation is the champion mode to guarantee transportation quality. I tin recognize wherefore they exist, but I’ve ever felt that the larger dongle was an inconvenience for some on-the-go gaming and optimizing table space/cable absorption compared to the smaller USB-A dongles communal connected devices with little polling rates.

Instead of the boxy Hyperpolling dongle included with the Viper V3 Pro, the DeathAdder V4’s dongle is semi-spherical with the Razer logo connected apical and 3 RGB lights astatine the front. Each of these tin beryllium programmed to amusement 1 of 4 options: Connection quality, artillery level, polling rate, and selected dpi signifier (or the lights tin beryllium disabled entirely). Since the LEDs are reasonably small, I didn't find them distracting. Having this accusation astatine a glimpse is incredibly helpful, and it makes the dongle consciousness much purposeful arsenic it sits connected your desk, turning what was erstwhile an annoying necessity into thing functional and beneficial.

The largest downside of the V4 Pro is its constricted artillery life. While this wasn’t a immense occupation successful day-to-day usage (it lasts aggregate days per complaint erstwhile astatine 1,000-Hz polling), the artillery went down shockingly accelerated erstwhile acceptable to the maximum 8,000-Hz polling rate. I person to hold with Razer’s proposal of lone utilizing the afloat 8,000-Hz complaint erstwhile you genuinely request it. Having the artillery level indicator connected the dongle besides made it overmuch easier to show and plug the rodent successful earlier moving retired of powerfulness successful the mediate of a game.

I did tally into 1 bug. For immoderate reason, the rodent would commencement flashing the “low battery” alert astatine random points, adjacent erstwhile the artillery was good supra 80 percent. Turning the rodent disconnected and connected again would halt this, but it was decidedly odd.

Alongside the dongle, Razer's Synapse bundle has customization options. Alongside modular adjustments similar dpi, fastener remapping, and adjusting polling rate, the app tin beryllium utilized to alteration the dongle’s LED indicators and set aggregate aspects of the mouse’s performance. This includes settings to set the rotation space of the rodent for antithetic grips, alteration the lift-off and landing region separately, and make dynamic sensitivity curves.

While astir of those are incredibly circumstantial settings, they each assistance to configure a rodent that behaves precisely however you similar alternatively of you having to accommodate however you play to acceptable your mouse. The champion portion of these features is however they are presented. Instead of bombarding the idiosyncratic with countless arbitrary dials with constricted explanation, Synapse keeps each of these settings disabled astatine first, provides explanations of each setting’s function, and has default starting values that tin beryllium utilized arsenic a baseline for immoderate changes.

Going Inside

Taking isolated this rodent is not easy. It has 5 screws underneath the rodent skates and uses some clips and pins to clasp the 2 halves together. In trying to rip the 2 halves apart, I ended up jamming my digit against the lawsuit hard capable to interruption tegument and origin immoderate bleeding. The full time, I was acrophobic that the disassembly process would interruption the integrative clips, but that luckily didn’t look to happen. Instead, the lone casualty was a tiny ace successful the bottommost ammunition adjacent to 1 of the clips—something I tin confidently property to idiosyncratic error.

The interior assembly of this rodent is shockingly analyzable compared to different Razer models. Instead of a singular printed circuit committee (PCB) lodging the sensor, buttons, and everything else, the DeathAdder V4 Pro opts for three. One is astatine the bottommost of the mouse, with the sensor, battery, and a singular micro-switch for the rodent button. A 2nd PCB is located successful the apical housing, held successful by a bracket, with the scroll instrumentality and 2 main micro-switches for the near and close clicks. A 3rd PCB, held successful by the aforesaid bracket, is positioned sideways with 2 micro-switches for the 2 broadside buttons.

Removing the bracket is reasonably straightforward, but it involves bending either the lodging oregon the bracket (both of which are made from thin, ultra-lightweight plastic) to get them apart. It’s not terribly difficult, but it could origin issues if done improperly. The main payment of this plan is that determination is little abstraction betwixt the rodent buttons and the micro-switches. To prevention wealth oregon trim the fig of parts, tons of mice volition alternatively enactment each of the internals onto 1 PCB and usage tiny hinged linkages to link the buttons and switches. While this tin effect successful a simpler design, it creates much nonaccomplishment points and tin negatively interaction the consciousness of pressing a button.

While determination is simply a flimsy hazard for nonaccomplishment with the connections betwixt the PCBs, it’s unlikely. All 3 components are static wrong the rodent housing, and the 2 halves are connected by a ribbon cablegram that doesn’t acquisition immoderate accent during use. While repairability and disassembly aren’t going to beryllium casual connected a analyzable rodent similar this, nary of the internals look apt to acquisition random oregon premature failures. All of the sensors are rated for monolithic amounts of actuations by Razer, and nary of them are connected successful ways that are overly complicated. The artillery looks modular and tin beryllium unplugged easy without immoderate soldering. It is attached to the bottommost of the rodent with an adhesive, and portion this adhesive apt won’t past removal, it should beryllium reasonably casual to instrumentality a caller artillery to the shell.

The DeathAdder V4 Pro is simply a large illustration of everything coming unneurotic connected a mouse. It has some fantastic on-paper specs and a coagulated physique that backs it up. Beyond that, Razer Synapse allows for astir each facet of the mouse’s show to beryllium customized to the user’s circumstantial preferences—a mode to adjacent the last spread betwixt the device’s show and the user’s expectations. It's a large rodent not lone for competitory gamers, but for anyone who wants to customize their rodent to their nonstop needs. And successful the property of ultra-adjustable Hall effect keyboards, having a rodent with adjacent levels of accommodation seems similar the earthy adjacent step.