I've always heard good things about Razer, specifically how good their PC gaming hardware is.  I am an avid player of World of Warcraft and I decided I could use some extra buttons to help me react faster to things.  I decided on the DeathAdder because of its reasonable price and two extra buttons.  You could go with different mouse with even more buttons, but I thought that might be a bit of overkill.

Anyways, I've had this mouse for about a year and am fairly happy with it.

Out of the Box

The first thing you'll notice when removing any Razer product from the box is that it comes with a bunch of fancy stuff, like a certificate of authenticity, an instruction book, some Razer logo stickers and maybe a few other things that I don't recall.

The second thing you'll notice is that, unlike most mice the DeathAdder has kind of a textured feel to it.  Most other mice that I have used were slick plastic, and if you worked up a sweat you could have the mouse slip.  The DeathAdder is slightly textured, as in it doesn't have a smooth surface.  It feel surprisingly good in my hand.  It has an ergonomic design, and comes in both right and left handed styles (I have the right hand set up).

I plugged my DeathAdder into my nearest USB slot and after some plug and play (automatic) software installation I was ready to go.

The next thing I noticed where the awesome blue LED lights on my mouse, I had no idea!  There is a design of...what I guess a DeathAdder may look like on the mouse where your palm would go, so it's covered up most of the time, unless you aren't using the mouse.  It kind of glows for a while then dims, and keeps on doing that pattern.  The next thing I noticed was this overly bright LED in the scroll wheel.  I game in the dark a lot, and was annoyed at the brightness of it, luckily just a short time after I plugged it in this light ceased to function...that's Razer quality for you!  It didn't affect the way my mouse worked, so I decided to keep it instead of going through the hassle of returning it, and as I mentioned I thought the light was too bright anyways.

Specs

Gone are the days of the roller ball mice that always got clogged with gunk and needed cleaning.  The DeathAdder uses a laser to determine when and how much you are moving the mouse.  It boasts 3500dpi, where a standard mouse would have 800dpi.  This basically means that the mouse is much more reactive to your touch, you can move it less and get more movement on the screen than with a standard mouse.  It took a little getting used to, but I really like it now.

The DeathAdder also has a 1ms response time, where a traditional mouse might have an 8ms response time.  That means there is less time from when you move the mouse and it moves on your screen than with a traditional mouse.

The main draw for me were the two extra buttons.  A standard mouse would have 3 (left, middle right).  The two extra buttons are located within easy reach of your thumb.  I hardly ever hit them on accident, so I think they are positioned quite well.  You can also use the buttons in standard web browsing.  The thumb button located closest to your palm acts as a back button for your browser, while the one further from your palm acts a a forward button in your browser.  I don't really use this function of the mouse.

Final Thoughts, and an Explanation of my Rating

I like the mouse very much, it has helped my gaming needs, it feels nice in my hand and was easy to set up.  What I don't like is the light on my scroll wheel stopped working on the first day.  Every once in a while it will flicker on and off for a while then stop working again.  It's very annoying when it flickers like that.

I would not recommend this mouse to anyone that isn't in to gaming, though I know it can be used for other things as well.  My main experience with it is from a gaming perspective, so that's what I'm going with.  I don't think the extra cost would be worth it for basic web browsing.

I'm going to give the mouse 4 stars, it would have been 5 had my scroll wheel LED not failed on the first day.  I almost gave it a 3 for the same reason, but I could have returned it for a new one, so that's partially my fault.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 44.99