Review: Part I: Razer DeathAdder Gaming Mouse

There are many reasons to look for alternatives to Apple’s Mighty Mouse, and one of the latest is the Razer DeathAdder Mac Edition.

Razer is known for its mice, especially in the world of Windows gamers, but up to now, there were no Mac drivers for gamers. This does not render Razer mice entirely useless on the Mac, but makes them act like standard mice, stripping them of most special features available on Windows. Razer now has a special Macintosh version of the DeathAdder, featuring a glowing scroll wheel in white and – more importantly – a Mac driver. This allows Mac users to take advantage of the many features of the mouse.

From the bare specifications, the DeathAdder is a right-handed, five button 1800-dot-per-inch (dpi) mouse with the new 3G Infrared sensor. In Razer’s line up, this mid-range mouse puts the 800 dpi Mighty Mouse to shame. Razer also tries to tweak their mice to the max, and regularly offers firmware updates to fix errors or to teach an old mouse new tricks.


The most remarkable feature of the DeathAdder lies in your ability to change the sensitivity of the mouse on the fly, without opening the control application. While common in high-performance mice on Windows, this is something new for the Mac. You use a definable button on the mouse to adjust the sensitivity with the scroll wheel in precise adjustments, with a visual on-screen indication. This comes in extremely handy in many games, where you often wish to lower the sensitivity of the mouse, for example in sniping situations. Another option lets you change the dpi settings from its standard 1800 to down to 900 or even to 450. This rather course adjustment has no on screen indication though.

As expected from a mouse in this price range, you can assign any function or command-shortcut command to the five buttons. However, the settings are global across all applications, which diminishes the usefulness of the feature. Games often have their own pre-set action for the third mouse button, so unless you want to change the settings each time before gaming, you should not assign a custom action to this button. While there is the possibility to store five different profiles, they would be much more useful if they could automatically be selected depending on the front most application.

The difference between a DeathAdder and a standard mouse is immediately notable, even for mundane tasks. The DeathAdder is both fast and precise, and while some may call its appearance bulky, it allows the hand to rest in a number of comfortable positions. These features make Razer mice popular among both Mac gamers and graphic designers or photo editors who value precise movement.

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