When it was first announced, the Razer Lachesis turned heads in the gaming mouse enthusiast community — but was met with significant skepticism on many e-Sports boards.
Razer mice, lately, have tended toward the ultra-sensitive, with large buttons and extremely high DPI. The Lachesis is no exception; it sports a max DPI of 4000, with a 1000Hz refresh rate and super-slick mouse feet. I spent quite some time playing first person shooter games with the Lachesis, so let’s dig in to see what I found out.
Laptop specs:
Intel Core2Duo 2.16Ghz
1GB RAM
ATI Radeon X1600 mobile
Razer Mantis Speed mouse mat (re-branded Everglide Giganta)
My test system is a decently powerful Macbook Pro laptop running Boot Camp and Windows XP. I’m happy to report no problems whatsoever with this unconventional setup and the Lachesis, which is a testament to the Boot Camp drivers and setup more than anything else.
The Shape and Feel
At first glance, the Lachesis reminds me quite a bit of the old-school Razer Boomslang, when viewed from the top. it has the same flared-out front end with a rounded backside.
When you grab it, though, it feels totally different. The Lachesis is a bit smaller than the Boomslang, and fits nicely into the palm. The rubberized plastic on top does a good job of keeping your grip intact. If you prefer, the Lachesis can also be used with a finger grip, making it one of the few mice in recent history that’s good with both grip styles.
Underneath, a generous amount of teflon — not too much, mind you, but slippery enough — adorns the three main corners of the mouse. Unlike some other Razer mice, the teflon on my review sample doesn’t scrape along the mouse pad.
The Lachesis is also very light, perhaps too much so. The combination of slippery mouse feet, a light mouse and (potentially) extremely high DPI means that you may need the reflexes of a human cyborg to control it. There are ways to minimize that sort of inaccuracy that we’ll get into soon enough.
Buttons
Razer’s trademark buttons return on the Lachesis, featuring the distinctive long buttons on top that don’t require too much pressure to trigger. Overall, you won’t press the top buttons by accident, but they’re not difficult to fire.
I wish I could say the same about the side buttons. Unfortunately, I found myself accidentally clicking the Lachesis’s side buttons quite a bit. The buttons on the right side (pinky) were especially troublesome. Those buttons are bound to change your profile by default, which causes the mouse to freeze up momentarily. Combine that freezing with ten people shooting at me, wanting desperately to kill me, and you can imagine the result.
It may be that I just hold the mouse too forcefully and cause all this unintended clicking madness, but I had to unbind all the side buttons so they wouldn’t be a problem in games.
The mouse wheel clicks without fuss, and unlike my usual office mouse (a Logitech G9), detented scrolling is smooth and uncomplicated. (The G9’s wheel vibrates and shakes a little while using the detents — highly annoying.)
DPI switcher buttons sit directly behind the mouse wheel, mostly out of the way. I never hit them on accident in-game, which is a boon. I’m still not convinced that serious players switch their DPI in and out during the course of a game, but hey, they’re there, and they’re not in the way, so the overall consensus is fairly neutral.
Of all the buttons, I found the side triggers to be the least useful. While they are large (in length), there’s more danger of hitting them accidentally than not using them at all, so I just don’t use them.
Drivers
The Lachesis drivers feature everything you’ve come to expect from gaming mouse software: binding keystrokes and macros to buttons, individual X and Y-axis sensitivities, mouse acceleration, and configurable DPI levels. I’m glad to report that all of these features work without issue on my test system.
As always, players with certain types of hardware may not be able to run the Lachesis at 1000Hz for hardware reasons unrelated to the mouse. I had no trouble reaching 1000Hz (tested with mouserate.exe), but your mileage may vary.
Overall, I’d say that the Lachesis drivers are a very stable iteration of the Razer software, and we may be seeing the company turn over a new leaf here.
Courage Under Fire
After spending a week playing with the mouse, I’d decide against using it if you’re primarily a first person shooter gamer.
Don’t get me wrong. The mouse does everything it’s supposed to. It’s billed as a super-high DPI, high sensitivity device, and it delivers. The problem is that FPS games (and FPS gamers) don’t really benefit too much from that sort of technology. It’s got nothing to do with the quality of the mouse, which is high.
It’s just that you can only do so many full 360s before someone puts a rail slug (or AWP shot) in your forehead. FPS gamers still use what works: low to medium sensitivity devices with varying amounts of friction on the mouse mat.
Real time strategy gamers, on the other hand, will have a field day with the Lachesis. The speed of the mouse can be jacked up to insane levels, the slippery feet are made for flicking the cursor every which way, and the buttons are made for a high actions per minute rating (not that that alone will win you a game of StarCraft).
The Lachesis is comfortable enough that those with average size hands can use it for extended periods. But as far as FPS games go, a less-sensitive device is definitely the path.
At $80, the Lachesis definitely falls on the premium end of the spectrum, but may be worth it if you want to kick your sensitivity up another notch.
2 Comments
I used to shaft like crazy on a Boomslang. I may have to try this one.
well, it is a low sens shaft beast..