Alright, I already did a exchange for my Death Adder and it is now a brand new unit.

Here is the review. With alot of my personal preference so it might sound biased towards what I prefer. Hopefully it doesn't look it clouds the review.

Originally it came with firmware V1.10 and knowing the bugs that it has, I quickly flashed it to V1.25 which solves several annoying bugs.

First thing that comes into mind when having a Death Adder is its elegant looks. The Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer 3.0 design inspired is biased towards right handers. The mouse is illuminated in a color Razer calls Nova Blue with the logo pulsating in a pleasant manner.
he entire upper part of the mouse is covered in a material which is a hybrid combination of plastic and rubber. It is wonderful to touch and a sight for sore eyes. However it is not without its flaws. This sort of material tends to absorb sweat and oil, so overtime it will definitely turn from a work of art to a scarface. The rest of the body is made out of polished plastic, yet again, this is a design flaw. Human bodies produces oil and sweat, with polished plastic, oil tends stain and grip of the mouse will severely affected.

The clicks on the mouse button 1,2,3,4 and 5 all feel solid and tactile. The mouse wheel utilizes small grooves so it doesn't click loudly as it is being rotated. The cable is thin and light comparatively to the 3 other mice I own which is the MIE3.0 MIE1.1a and the Logitech MX518. The difference here is that it provides a less restrictive movement during gameplay if you're not using a mouse bungee or some sort of cable management system.

Now we shall move down to the selling point of the mouse. We all know the Death Adder's sensor is a 3rd Generation (3G) Infrared optical sensor with a maximum resolution of 1800 dpi that was claimed to be built for low sensitivity players. Perfect! I'm a low sensitivity player myself. With ESReality's mouse benchmark proving that its sensor is at least as good as (but in the tests, superior) the MX518's optical sensor. I was left with high expectations and a dry wallet.

As a benchmark, I used the MIE3.0 as my main mouse, although the sensor is very much inferior to the MX518, the IE3.0 felt very good to my hands. The IE3.0 does suffer from negative acceleration quite abit when you drag the mouse past a certain speed.(You can refer to the charts of the ESR benchmark results). The specs of the MIE3.0 is 450dpi optical sensor (Yes, 450 not 400 as most people believe) with a stock polling rate of 125Hz.
With the Death Adder, I installed the drivers with only one thing in mind, to update the firmware. Else, the settings are identical with what you get from a plug and play configuration. Resolution at 1800dpi as well as 125Hz polling rate. Also, I used the windows mouse settings with the pointer speed at the 3rd dot, 2 bars from the furthest left. (It then feels like 450dpi, slightly faster.)

I play Counter Strike : Source mainly, with CnC3 as a close second and occasionally CS1.6. In Source, my sensitivity is 1.7 with the Death Adder, which translates to me having to move the mouse approximately 14 cm to make a 90 degree turn. A full 360 turn forces me 4 swipes of 14 cm or 2 swipes of 28 cm approximately.
The perfect control of this mouse is amazing, I've been shooting alot better with the Death Adder thanks to its very well performing sensor, HOWEVER, benchmarking results show that it will never skip as its malfunction speed is above 4.50 m/s (Is it even possible for me to move the mouse at that speed? Well, that I don't know) It occasionally skips during fast drags. A little disappointing despite its heft price tag of 190+MYR (I'm only a student). Not forgetting to mention, the mouse tracks despite being lifted a fair amount of distance, bout 5mm on the Mantis Speed which I'm currently using as its the only pad that the Death Adder seem to agree with relatively. On hard surfaces, tracking cuts off at a good 2/3mm.

Another thing is, I feared it might have been because of the mousing surface I've been using, which is a Steelpad QCK as Death Adders have been known to have problems with Steelpads.
Heres the catch, I tried it with all mousing surfaces I own, and even borrowed some to make sure that it isn't the fault of the mouse. I tried it on an Everglide Titan DKT, Mantis Speed, Steelpad QCK, FuNc 1030, an Exactmat and the most wonderful wood veneered TABLE of mine. Note that on Mantis Control, mice tend to track quite poorly comparatively to Speed, I have no idea why.
There is an oddity here which I still don't understand, it skips indefinitely on all clothe surfaces while on all hard surfacese it does not show ANY sign of skipping or even negative acceleration. The use of Exactmat and my table and even my friends table (lol I'm really not kidding) already proven this. I stay away from hard surfaces since they grind your mouse feet very quickly and their too smooth for me. I need a lot more friction than what the Exactmat Control can offer.
Regardless, I had slightly higher expectations off the Death Adder than what I experienced.
No gripes on RTS games like CNC3 and WC3:Frozen Throne(God I love this mouse using Orcs).
Oh, I have got to add this, the bloody teflon feet is as thin as paper, using hard mats will kill it off in a week.

Conclusion - Its one of the best mice money can buy,but low sensitivity players who uses clothe surfaces should be reminded that if you play very very low sensitivity it might skip on and off depending how fast you drag your mouse. There are several design flaws that could have been avoided if they (Razer) would have paid slightly more attention to fine details, yes it looks good, but will it hold up for very serious gamers who will use the same on the long run? All in all, it still can't beat the MX518 yet, only in comfort it does.

*Edit = Oh yeah, Everdying might have been right bout the ESR mouse benchmark being biased. Although most of the results feels accurate, from the mice I've used they really feel right, which is the MIE3.0,1.1a, MX518, Copperhead, Diamondback, G3 and G5. The only one that strays from the list is the Death Adder.

**Edit 2 = I have to credit Moderno for bearing with my gripes and allowed the 1 on 1 exchange despite the problem was not very apparent.

***Edit 3 = Damn, I'm so forgetful. The IR sensor makes the mouse feel very warm. Heres some basic physics for you, infrared is an emitted electromagnetic wave usually from hot objects. However, objects can absorb infrared light and gain more energy and converting into heat. In this case, the infrared light emitted from the sensor is absorbed by the shell of the mouse and thus causing the mouse to feel hot.

This post has been edited by sean392: Oct 17 2007, 09:30 PM

oh yeah, everdying, any idea how to contact razer itself?
i'd like to send in some comments to see its fixable via firmware.

lols go get a DA now lol and change it with the db body D:
lol

woot!!!! got myself an everglide Fnatic edition as some dude in razerblueprints said it tracks flawlessly on it (yeah i know its a gamble but i needed a monstermat anyway)
and results? EXACTLY WHAT HE SAID
i don't know exactly why, but it seems that it tracks perfectly with no skipping.
Good for me, now i'm an uber satisifed user of the Death Adder.

@jakesean
UGPM!

Damn, you beat me to it. Wei you got alot of free time in office ka? lol

yea wei, get a monster mat
erm, from razerblueprints some dude stated that it has flawless tracking on the monstermat fnatic
which is wat led me to even think to buy the fnatic ed mat. (im not big fan of team fnatic)
wanted to get the dkt, cheaper =p but oh well, lucky, it was a good bet.

i have one gripe bout the mantis speed and the titan tho, its too fast =/
i still prefer my qck's speed, just the right amount of friction for stopping, my drag shots are slightly off cuz i can't stop as quickly
dangggggg
=/

This post has been edited by sean392: Oct 19 2007, 01:00 PM

bring your cranky copperhead to work la
lol
or did u rma it =/

lol nice trick

@everdying
don't be lazy and go rma it now
=/ lol

rma then put lo
lol

lol
thats quite some transplant
the copperback lol or diamondhead

If you need directional sound for a headset very much Barracuda. Its very good for listening to footsteps which gives a competitive advantage for games like CS.
If you're not all that competitive, I'd suggest you go for Audio Technica, since they have a wide soundstage and pretty good for games, and from the ATH Pro 7000 I tried, sounded very good with music. Albeit the lower bass frequency wasn't very powerful, but the mids and highs are of sufficient quality.
The Barracuda wasn't made for music and it'll never sound good for music (At least to my ears it is heavily inferior).


Yes, the Piranha is new, and it looks like it stole the design from Sennheiser PC-series.

This post has been edited by sean392: Oct 21 2007, 01:04 PM

Hence having one for games and one for music.

but but but but theres nothing wrong having speakers AND headphones for music XD

Wasn't that discussed before? The Razer marketing are animal rights activists!
Razer and PETA are great friends ! They should make a joint venture!
The A-KFC mouse! (Anti KFC). "The only mouse that makes you hit opponents, not birds!"

No seriously? The protones actually are priced pretty well
but if you got the dough, go for the mylars
lol

@btrix
wah you use so little space on your mantis =/
i like need the entire mat on the monstermat lol

plz, no widescreen lol
so many games aren't widescreen optimized lol

2ms response , with built in usb ports
that'd be nice

That'd be cool, but they would have nothing special besides branding.
Unless they come up with like a mobile version of the Barracuda sound card and bundle the HP-1 and a Razer mouse, its not gonna be a big hit in the market.
Only a minority know about and use Razer peripherals anyway.

Never judge how a product looks until you've seen live pictures.

But yeah, the new Cyborg isn't too nice under sunlight. Looks pretty cool with the green backlights on in a dark area

This post has been edited by sean392: Oct 25 2007, 01:17 PM

Its not released yet. So we all don't know the price yet.
It's only been announced.

Razer sucks ma
lol
jkjk

eh edit me oso ler
lol

Razer DeathAdder Nova Blue and REMOVE EXACTMAT (cuz it sucks lol, nah jk)