IMG_9655-2 by ChongKiat, on Flickr

more on showcase : http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/2263312


IMG_9659-3 by ChongKiat, on Flickr

First of all, I'd like to mention this is m first Razer mouse and also my first very high end mouse. My personal experience with mouse is as follows:
i) Cheap rm 1-10 wired mouse (5 years)
ii) RM 50 ATake wireless mouse (3 days)
iii) RM 3x-5x Gigabyte GM-M6880 wired mouse (6 months)
I've been using a normal average mouse everyone have been using for about 5 years until I had a wrist injury that I decided to switch to some other mouse. Saw ATake wireless mouse in PC Fair and decided to give it a try... It was shit, slow and unresponsive mouse, too thin and hard to hold the mouse. Decided to do some research and found out about ergonomic mouse, Razer Mamba and some other mouse but it was quite expensive. Saw Gigabyte GM-M6880 in Low Yat and really love the sensation and how big it was. Used it for half a years and no problem with my wrist anymore but decided to opt for a better wireless ergonomic mouse.... Razer Mamba 4G.

Ok here is the full story:

My drama :
I've ordered my Razer Mamba 4G/2012 on Thursday from my friend and plan to get it on Saturday but I was urgently admitted into hospital to undergo a surgery due to critical situation. It wasn't a big surgery and I was discharged on Saturday and went back home but I'm seriously wanted to see my Mamba as soon as possible so I asked my mom to go get it for me from my friend. It was night, around 8 o'clock and my mom was back with my beautifully cased Razer Mamba 4G/2012. Seriously, you won't understand my feeling being able to get it after I've went through a life or death situation (3% - 56%, just a numbered probability)...

My Unboxing experience:
I unbox it while still lying on my bed, unable to sit because of my injury and refuse my mother offer to open it for me. The casing is really solid and you can feel the quality of it .... till I managed to open it and really disappointed with the plastic/leather bag used to contain the peripheral... I mean are u kidding me? I paid RM 4xx and u gave me something like this?. It wasn't really a big deal but yeah it was quite a disappointment... Nothing much to talk about the peripheral, it includes your standard manual, cable and bla bla bla... oh the box with the standing where the mouse was placed was indeed really cool and I'm gonna keep it. All the parts was pretty much straight forward and I was able to assemble it without reading the manual. After finish assembling it, I asked my mother to place it next to my laptop so I can try it out the next morning because I'm still unable to sit yet.

Basically a performance Test:
The next morning, which is Sunday I tried out my Razer Mamba all the way I probably could with all the surface I could use which includes soft, hard, flat, curve surface with different material and colour while enduring the pain to sit on the chair (It doesn't pose any risk to my health)... I was really impressed because it was the fastest and accurate wireless mouse I've used and the on-the-fly dpi really made my day (Pretty much standard for all higher end mouse). I don't see much difference between wired and wireless mode and the mouse recovered from sleep mode almost instantly. Not much to complain over the performance. As for the overall build, the base teflon was not thick enough which caused some scratch on the glass-like base from my previous test. It hurt my heart so much to see my new RM 4xx mouse got a scratch so easily. Overall, I was really satisfied.

My impression on the dock and cable:
As for the wireless/charging dock and the cable... In my opinion the dock was really a beauty, especially when you placed your mouse on top of the dock. However, it's really hard for me to bring out a giant wireless receiver whenever I'm going out just to use the wireless feature. You might say, I can opt for the wired mode but it would defeat the whole purpose of it being a wireless mouse. I really wish razer would include a separate small wireless receiver without charging capability. Another thing about the dock, the bottom is made of rubberized material which make it stick to surface but at the same time a good dust collector... No big deal, you can simply wipe it easily with something wet. As for the cable, it was a braided cable ... my first braided cable but it's something standard in the industry for something so expensive but yeah, still impressive and it was quite long. I've read about many people complaining how hard it was to plug and unplug the cable, After my first try, second try, third try, and many many try... it is still very easy to do so, I can barely sit on the chair but still able to unplug the cable from the dock, plug it into my mouse, unplug it from the mouse and plug it back to the dock. Seriously, I don't understand how hard and time consuming it would be. Do you have a billion dollar project waiting for you to click in 1 ms and if you don't you're going to bankrupt? Of course, It would be better if Razer included a second cable for us to use, maybe braided cable might cost a fortune but they could at least include a normal cable for me to plug to the mouse while leaving another cable plugged in the dock.

My terrible experience with the software:
On Monday, I proceeded to upgrading the firmware and installed the configurator (firmware:1.07 and configurator/driver:2.01) for better stability (I hoped so) and to access more advanced option. The firmware updater was unable to detect my mouse although I've followed all the instructions from the manual provided and search razer official website for possible solutions but found nothing. A quick google gave me an answer with a undocumented method and it solved my problem and I was able to update my mouse and receiver firmware. As for the configurator, it was pretty much straight forward and easy to use with... only in wired mode, my wireless experience with the configurator was really really bad. In wireless mode, sometimes the configurator was able to read my device very quickly and sometimes it took forever to read. Everytime u tried to applied the new setting, it will write to the mouse but as usual it might take a short moment to write or forever to write to my device. Moreover, with each new profile you set up on the mouse will lengthen the time to read and write. Sometimes, the setting u applied will not be saved properly... I was unable to reproduce the same problem, but when it occurred you might need to reset the profile to default setting to saved it properly. It was a bug that appeared very rarely, so far 2 times over the course of my extensive testing. By the way, you can pretty much get the estimation of battery life from your setting on the last tab, so far the highest battery life I can get is 14 hours (With everything set to minimum), not sure how you can reach 16 hours (Continuous gaming) as written in Razer official site... Personally, I haven't got a chance to test the REAL life span of battery yet.

Spectrum cycling:
Now for the spectrum cycling feature, it was quite nice and all especially in the night but it wasn't something necessary... for me I'll stick with one colour which is the default colour blue. Spectrum cycling will sometime not synchronized properly with the dock, especially when u turn off the mouse and place it on the charging dock. In my case, most of the time, the mouse will glow in purple while the charging dock glow in the colour it should be, Not really a big issues but big enough to make me stay with single colour. Btw, I quite disappointed the logo doesn't glow... Not a big deal. While I'm on it, I noticed the base of the mouse doesn't emit any visible light like any other mouse... I don't really know about other high end mouse but it was really impressive that it was able to reach such accuracy without any visible light ^^. Oh yeah, I forgotten about the indicator, I think it was a really great addition that shows the current dpi profile and battery life. While the information given out is not detailed information but it was simple and straightforward, just the thing I need.

Conclusion:
Razer Mamba 4G is really a great mouse and I'd really recommend everyone to get it if they had the money to spare, I used up almost all my part time salary for a month to buy it but I still think it was worth it. However truth to be told, it was really overpriced with all the problems I've mentioned...

This was my first mouse review and I know it was quite long XD, if you're reading the whole thing... thanks for taking up your time to read it ^^