After a great showing in past years at CES, Razer is back again surprising us with some really unique products. The product that they were really excited about was the Mamba mouse, Razer’s first gaming-grade wireless mouse. Let’s take a look at the Mamba and see what else Razer has in the works.
Mamba mouse
My Razer representative, a former professional gamer, said to me, “Razer won’t release something unless it’s perfect.” Eight years in the making, Razer finally "cut the cord" released its first gaming-grade wireless mouse. It has a black rubberized finish which absorbs sweat from gamers’ palms during hot action and sports an illuminated scroll wheel, plus several fully-programmable buttons.
Technically, the Mamba has the same latency as its wired equivalent, the Lachesis. The 3.5G laser picks up 5600 dpi, adjustable from 800 dpi in 800 dpi steps. The device communicates with its base station on the 2.4 GHz frequency, but uses a channel hopping technology similar to that of Bluetooth in order to avoid intereference caused by wireless networks, microwaves, and cordless phones. The Mamba has a 1 ms latency—1000 Hz, compared to the 500 Hz of the Logitech G7, the Mamba’s direct competitor, and the ~125 Hz of the Logitech MX1000, this writer’s favorite mouse.
It has a 14 hour constant use battery life, or approximately 72 hours on everyday productivity tasks. It can recharge in four hours, or magnificently, it can be plugged in via USB and charged while the gamer continues to play with it! Gamers who like a lighter mouse can remove the battery when it’s plugged in. The range is excellent—more than 10 meters—and can be used on just about any surface except glass.
The Mamba stores its macros on-board in its 64 KB of memory, so a gamer can take his or her macros to which ever computer he or she prefers. Macros can be up to 500 characters. The representative said that Razer recorded a macro for racing game, and, with one button, drove the car completely around the track using the recorded macro.
The Mamba will give gamers the "freedom to frag" at the end of Q1 for $129.
Headsets
The Carcharias 2.1 circumaural headset drops in Q1, too. The boom mic is super positionable—I bent it back entirely and it came forward only a little bit. The set is also one of the most comfortable I’ve ever worn. It uses standard 1/4″ jacks for audio and mic.
Razer is working on a 7.1 USB headset called the Megalodon. This device uses HRT technology developed by the French Army for its fighter planes: when a missle is chasing a plane, the craft’s computer locates the missle and echoes a sound to the pilot’s headset so that the pilot can tell where it is without having to look around or even down at a screen—he can just hear it and be able to dodge it. The control pod for the headset will be able to adjust each channel individually. It will drop for $149, estimated in late Q1 or Q2.
