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MaximilianKohler
n00b
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2010
- Messages
- 46
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjCkqMR-ppU
I've been happy with my $60 HTM Hati from G-Wolves, but the right click started failing and I didn't want to have to keep opening it up to mess with the switch. The feet were also not great (the mouse was imbalanced).
I wanted optical switches so I didn't have to worry about this issue with the buttons failing. Light weight, good shape, and good sensor performance were my other preferences.
The weight and build quality are better than the Hati. The main factor is how wobbly the Hati's two main buttons are in comparison to no movement at all with the Viper. I was initially satisfied with the Viper, but if the battery dies it's basically impossible to use with the cable because the cable is not flexible and seems to weigh more than the mouse. I was originally thinking that I'd mostly just use the mouse wired, and unplug it on rare occasions.
Oddly, my Hati came with an extra cable, but the end is not USB-C and I'm not sure if it can be changed to USB-C. https://hardforum.com/threads/use-g-wolves-hati-cable-for-razer-viper-v3-pro-mouse.2035093/
I don't care much for wireless but the Viper v3 pro seems to be better all around than earlier Viper mice. The Viper v1 isn't even on sale anywhere, and I couldn't find a similar wired mouse with optical switches.
My concern is the battery dying being equivalent to having to open up the mouse to fix the switches.
The manual says not to replace the battery yourself and take it to an authorized outlet, but I don't see any info about that on Razer's website. I also noticed that Razer doesn't even sell replacement mouse feet on their website.
I found this unhelpful info on their site https://mysupport.razer.com/app/ans...ix-a-razer-mouse-battery-that-does-not-charge.
I found a forum post about it https://insider.razer.com/razer-support-45/razer-viper-ultimate-battery-no-longer-charging-36802, which sounds like you have to send them your mouse, and if it's beyond the warranty period they'll probably charge you.
There are 90 results for "battery mouse" https://insider.razer.com/search?q=battery mouse so I'm not going to look through all of them. I narrowed it to "battery mouse dead" or "battery mouse replace" and don't see anything relevant.
This guy gets no answer: https://insider.razer.com/mice-and-...s-there-some-sort-of-battery-protection-60414
This guy says that after the warranty period (2 years) you have to pay to even get support to talk to you https://insider.razer.com/mice-and-surfaces-9/razer-deathadder-v2-pro-doesn-t-turn-on-46730
Razer support answers questions on bestbuy.com, but they didn't answer mine https://www.bestbuy.com/site/questi...question/0d7ba131-a6c5-3434-8369-b59b16b8619e.
The coating + shape is pretty slippery with dry hands. Thankfully it comes with optional mouse grips. Grips add weight and bulk so I'm not happy that I have to add them. I cut little strips off them instead of using the whole thing. Thankfully, the rubber grips that come with the Viper are much better than the ones that came with my Hati. They're grippier and thinner/less bulky. They're also high-quality and can be removed and replaced multiple times. For sweaty hands the default coating is great.
The two main buttons are too loud for my liking, but other than that the build quality is good. The scroll wheel is silent and the middle and side buttons are quieter and feel fine/good.
The mousetester graphs are worse than my Hati. The polling rate is fairly unstable. When moving it fast/consistent it jumps around between ~300 to ~1300 instead of staying consistent around 1000.
You can compare the graphs to the Hati graphs in my previous video. All the hardware and settings are the same.
On the desktop it has worse control and precision than the Hati. In counter-strike it seemed ok.
Overall, I was "satisfied" with the mouse, but given the high cost, merely being "satisfied" did not leave me with a good feeling about it. I'm not thrilled about paying $100 extra for wireless which I don't even really want/need.
Switch vs battery:
I don't want to have to open my mice and mess with the switches or battery. I was considering buying a new Hati when the switch starts to fail and give away my previous one. The alternative is to give away a much more expensive mouse when the battery dies, but perhaps the Viper battery will last longer than the Hati switches. Or perhaps the Hati cable can be changed to USB-C.
The mouse doesn't seem to use up much battery power on 1000hz, so I expect the battery to last longer than my phone battery, and I've never had to replace my phone battery in ~10 years. Whereas, the right click on my Hati has been failing multiple times in the past 4 years. I see other people saying their Viper v2 pro could last a week on 1000hz but not the v3.
It charges super fast though. I plugged it in during dinner for ~30 minutes I think and it charged from 43% to 100%. My phone would take many hours to do that. Regardless, I don't really want to have to bother with charging my mouse, especially given how unusable it is with the cable connected due to the heavy & stiff cable. The Hati cable is nearly as good as wireless, so wireless seems like extra hassle for very little benefit.
Phones now have an option to limit the battery charge to 85% because it's not good for the battery to be charged to full capacity. The Razer software could use an option like that.
Software:
The default settings are pretty good: DPI steps of 400, 800, 1600. 1000 hz. Very low lift-off distance. 5 minutes for mouse to turn itself off. But it defaults to "low power mode" at 30% battery. It says that mode lowers "tracking speed and sensor acceleration".
I wanted to install the software to tweak the DPI but the website says it requires an email and registered Razer ID https://mysupport.razer.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1834 which seems very intrusive, and a privacy concern. I downloaded it to test and it lets you bypass that as a guest.
You can change the DPI in increments of 50.
The mouse turns itself on seemingly instantly when you move it, so I lowered the default 5 minute timeout to 3, but even 1 minute should be fine.
There are two types of "lift-off distance" adjustments. One of them (Smart Tracking) seems to detect the surface you're using and is default. "High" is default and I found that too low, so I set it to manual (Enable asymmetric cut-off) and turned both sliders from mid to high. It causes the cursor to move more when you lift and lower the mouse but I found that the low setting would stop tracking when I didn't want it to.
After more testing, it wasn't an LOD issue. The mouse does seem to randomly stop tracking. It might have to do with some delay after lifting it off. I started noticing it after upgrading to firmware v1.10.5.0, but it may have had to do more with my battery running lower. I found that many other people are having the same issue. Someone said setting the poling rate to 8k fixed it for them, but that didn't work for me.
I contacted Razer support about it and they acknowledged the issue but didn't have an ETA on fixing it.
DA v3:
I decided to give the DA v3 a go. Everything (build quality, coating, buttons) is about the same as the Viper v3, but the viper clicks and scroll wheel are slightly better. The coating seems a bit different but practically the same.
The default LOD seems much higher than the Viper and more normal. This makes me think that the Viper tracking issue is related to the very low LOD.
The DA v3 has a better shape, coating, weight, etc., than the earlier DA versions but I still prefer the viper v3 shape. The older DAs would flare out at the front so you couldn't use it in palm grip, so they were basically claw-grip-only mice. Now that they changed that and lowered the weight and improved the coating, you can use the DA with any grip, but I'm still not a fan of this shape. The idea seems to come from this being the natural shape of your hand when you set it down, but the problem with that is you're not just resting your hand on the mouse; you're constantly picking it up slightly to readjust it, so you have to be able to grip it well. And the shape of this back part here doesn't let you grip it with your palm unless there's heavy friction and it's basically sticking to your skin.
The Viper comes with a set of very good grips; much better than the ones that came with my Hati. They're thin/light and grippy. The DA doesn't come with any grips but needs them much more so than the Viper. I put the viper's grips on the DA and it made it usable, but I'm still not a fan.
I have large hands so I'm probably one of the few people who can use this mouse in fingertip grip. And the shape of this mouse has both positives and negatives for fingertip grip. The negative is that it's so large and not a balanced shape & weight, but the mouse is light enough that these aren't deal breakers. Though I would still prefer an even lighter mouse. The positive is that parts of my palm and ring finger come into contact with the mouse more, while still providing enough leeway to move it around in the full range of motion. More contact points means I have more control over the mouse. Palm grip gives you the most contact and control but the least amount of vertical motion range.
The left side of the mouse is higher than the Viper, and they moved the buttons higher too. So even with my large hands the side buttons are too high up. It's not a huge deal for me since I don't rely on them that way, but I can see how others would have a problem with it.
The DA cable is worse than my Hati. Razer is one of the largest gaming peripheral manufacturers and they can't make a cable as good or better than G-Wolves?
I noticed some instability with the mouse in fingertip grip, similar to how the Hati wobbled until I changed the mouse feet positioning. I didn't notice it with the Viper so perhaps the larger viper feet are better but I think it might be largely due to the asymmetrical shape of the DA, but possibly also the positioning and small size of the front skate, since I notice it mostly when left clicking. It looks like with the DA it would be harder to solve.
Using these Razer mice made me fed up and wanting to go back to my Hati, so I just fixed the Hati switch and returned both of the Razer mice.
Maybe if a wired Viper v3 gets made I'll buy it. But otherwise, I'll probably just pay someone to solder the buttons on my Hati. If there was a wireless mouse that could charge wirelessly I might buy that.
I don't want to have to open my mouse to mess with the switches or replace a battery, and after testing the Viper I realized that I don't even want to have to worry about battery life and have to regularly charge my mouse. I didn't even want to make this video. I just want a working mouse that I don't have to think or worry about.
I like that the Razer packaging is close to zero waste. It's just cardboard, which is very recyclable and compostable. I don't think the carry bag is cotton though. It feels like polyester, which is made of plastic and leaches microplastics.
Sensor performance:
The sensor performance of the Viper and DA in game seemed fine, but the Hati seems a little better. I can tell on the desktop too -- I have better control over the cursor, but that may be partly due to the Razer feet being more slippery. New sensors with higher DPI mean very little. What matters more is how each manufacturer implements their sensor. For example, firmware seems to be one of the main factors.
There seems to be something that most mouse manufacturers are doing to ruin the performance of their sensor, and the mousetester graphs may be allowing us to visualize it. The Razer mice performing worse than the Hati is entirely in line with my past experiences, which includes other major companies like Zowie, SteelSeries, and Logitech. The vast majority of mice I've tested have been absolute garbage. https://github.com/MaximilianKohler/Archive/wiki/Mice,-keyboards,-gaming
We used to have long discussions about this on the Overclock.net forums.
When I first switched from an Intellimouse optical 1.1 to a Razer copperhead some 10 years ago, the Copperhead felt like an aimbot, and other people told me they had the exact same experience. I haven't experienced that again other than to a large degree with the Intellimouse 3.0. It's frustrating that there are so many companies making gaming mice now, and many of them have been doing it for well over a decade, and they're still putting out significantly flawed mice.
I saw RJN say in a recent video that sensors were all flawless now so shape is the only frontier left to explore. I wouldn't disagree completely, but it's not entirely accurate either.