A rodent on the run, from the well-respected game-gear makers.
We have bit of a love-hate relationship with Razer gear. The ubiquitous black-rubber clad, blue-LED lit gaming gear has earned everything from our Epic Fail award to a near-permanent spot in our prestigious KitLog; sometimes the company gets it right, but some of its choices are real klunkers. The new Orochi, a small form-factor mobile gaming mouse seems to truly encapsulate that up-and-down Razer ethos.
Designed with the seriously mobility-concerned in mind, the Orochi features the usual symmetrical Razer form factor, but shrunken down to something that practically fit in the palm of your hand. Curiously, it lacks the usual non-slip rubber coating, instead featuring a combination matte and gloss body. The upper surface bifurcates to create the left and right mouse buttons, and this panel also clicks off to reveal the batteries.
The mouse features both wired and dongle-free Bluetooth connectivity, which is convenient, but also means you'll need built-in Bluetooth to take advantage - this isn't an issue if you're using a modern gaming laptop, but might be if you also want to use it on your desktop rig. Annoyingly, there's no driver or software disc included with the Orochi; you'll need to download that yourself. That said, once installed it allows convenient macro building, DPI programming, and button re-mapping, all of which are stored on the mouse.
But to really test the mouse, we turned to our old reliable kill-house level in Modern Warfare (the good one, not the new one). Our stock Razer Lachesis mouse can deliver an adjusted completion time of about 19 or so seconds, give or take. With the Orochi, we immediately noticed one thing - even our tiny Editor-sized hands get real cramped, real fast with the tiny form factor. But performance is king, so we ripped into a session of target shooting.
Oddly, the Orochi performed really well - like two seconds better than our stock mouse, with some incredible accuracy! However, the cost in muscle-fatigue and cramp was high. Not only do you need to assume the worst 'claw' position, but the slick sides of the mouse quickly became greasy, forcing us to grip the mouse even harder whenever we picked it up for fast maneuvering. We typed this review immediately after, and felt quite a few twinges in our wrist from the effort of controlling the Orochi.
Ultimately, while the Orochi is great for its size, we're not sure that performance justifies both the cost, and the loss of comfort. But if you must have a dedicated mobile mouse, this is about the best you can get. Just factor the cost of a chiropractor visit into your purchase!
Issue: 133 | February, 2012