Razer DeathAdder Chroma + Razer FireFly (Chroma) Review

Testing

Now Mice and Mouse Mats are subjective when testing there’s no way around that. We spent a couple of hard gaming days playing Path Of Exile, a MMORPG that can be played in a variety of ways. We play it stand alone character with no group or clan and your playing against a ruthless AI who could care less if there’s one of you or a team of 5. You have to be at your best, using your head and your gaming gear to stay ahead of Mr Dead.

Testers fall into this trap of taking their hand off a mouse costing $120 that has 30,000 DPI with 16 buttons and it gently calls their name in a sexy voice every time they make a headshot. What really needs to be done for a re-calibration of the brain is stand down and use (or set) a mouse to 800 DPI than game for a few hours with just left click right-click and the scroll wheel for scrolling not clicking. Then and only then can you lay hands on a gaming mouse and appreciate its beauty and functionality.

We did just that we spent 3 or 4 hours chasing the AI on Path Of Exile, a blantant but fun complete Diablo 1 ripoff that’s quite addictive. It’s a sort of cross between a RPG and a shooter. Your RPG a lot and our magic character casts a lot of spells but your clicking and aiming a lot like a FPS. Then We switched out a 99¢ Store mouse pad for the FireFly and the 800 DPI mouse for the Death Adder.

Testing Results

Razer Death Adder Chroma

The Razer Death Adder Chroma is a light mouse and feels a little light for our tastes which run to heavy Mice in the Brick weight class. It’s construction is sturdy and the teflon feet slide easily across the FireFly’s micro-texture surface. For some odd reason once Synapse was installed DPI was set way down to the low-end around 1500(ish) so we had to back out of our game and mess with Synapse.

We were slightly amazed at the functionality and ease of use of the Synapse Software on the Death Adder Chrome so we made a short YouTube (8 Minutes) that might enlighten you a little and surprise you on a few points.

We could scale all the way down to 100 DPI and all the way up to 10,000 DPI which is an insane DPI setting. Most of the time at 10,000 we couldn’t even see the mouse flying across the screen. Fortunately for us right below the DPI setting is a speed setting which goes from Snails Pace to “What The Heck Just Flew By” speeds.

It took a couple of minutes but we reset to about 3500 DPI with the speed scale about 1/3 of its total potential and we had a comfortable Path Of Exile DPI and Speed. The functionality of Synapse gains a few points but the lack of DPI On The Fly on the Death Adder Chroma takes those points away.

Once we had our DPI and Speed settings we set the side buttons to “Keyboard Function E and R” as Path of exile uses QWERTY for quick shot keys. SO we were set with left click firing arrows, right-click throwing a fireball, Mouse Wheel Click throwing wave after wave of Freeze waves, E Exploding Corpses and R calling up 4 skeletons to run interference.

Once we had the buttons set and the DPI and Speed we were full-out gaming mode and took on “Prisoners Gate” with greatly increased ease. The Death Adder Chroma and it’s 10,000 DPI Optical sensor with Synpses easy mouse button setup cut a swatch through the multitude of enemies with an ease we’ve never seen before (without a high-end gaming mouse).

Razer FireFly Hard Gaming Mouse Mat

The FireFly is priced at $59.99 and that’s a hard sell, it’s a great Mouse Mat and it’s the only RGB mouse mat we know of but at 6o clams it’s just a hard pill to swallow. Now performance wise every mouse we tested slid across the FireFly as fast as your date sliding the restaurant bill across to you. THe surface is almost like a hardened yet pliable Teflon and mates with your mouse pads (feet) with so little friction it takes some getting used to.

In a darkened atmosphere it provides that little extra light that you need to see around a cluttered desk. The speed and ease of the mouse sliding across the FireFly will definitely keep hand and wrist fatigue at bay,

All that being said it’s still $60 bucks and doesn’t come with a carrying case, serious gaming mats normally come with a carrying case and that’s a bit of a disappointment. When we travel to Lan Parties we like to use the same equipment we use at home and not having a case is a barrier to that.