Razer Atheris: New Wireless Gaming/Office Mouse

InB4 "Razer Arthritis" jokes.

https://www.razerzone.com/gaming-mice/razer-atheris

Spoiler: Specs

• $50
• Ambidextrous shape
• 5 programmable buttons + DPI adjustment
• 7200 DPI optical sensor
• 1000Hz (1ms) polling rate
• 220 IPS max speed, 30G max accel.
• Dual connectivity -- Bluetooth or 2.4 GHz wireless
• Powered by 2xAA batteries
• 350 hours battery life in Bluetooth
• 66g (without batteries)

I love my G403 wireless and G900, but their main downside is the ~30h max battery life, which necessitates charging every few days. Logitech tried to solve this with their G703 and G903 refreshes, which support the $100 PowerPlay wireless charging mouse pad to continuously charge your mouse during use, but that tethers you to the desk even more.

There is also the $40 G602 for on-the-go mobility and battery life (250h/1440h in Performance/Endurance mode), but that mouse has notable flaws:

• Large
• Extremely heavy -- 107g without batteries, 152g with 2xAA alkaline batteries
• Power-optimized (reduced performance) Avago AM010 sensor
• 500Hz (2ms) polling rate
• 80 IPS max speed, 20G max accel.
• Noticeable wireless lag

The Razer Atheris looks to fix most of these flaws.

It's smaller and much lighter. Only 96g with 2xAA Li-ion batteries, which is wired mouse territory, and is 10g lighter than the G403 wireless and G900,

It has a better sensor with faster polling that doesn't spin out at low speeds. Based on the DPI and IPS, the sensor is rumored to be a PixArt PMW3330 variant, which is the second best optical sensor on the market behind the PMW336x. If true, this would make it a better gaming mouse than the far more expensive Razer Lancehead wireless that has a laser sensor.

Cons of the Atheris:

• No RGB (might be a good thing)
• No onboard memory (requires Razer Synapse to program buttons and change DPI steps)
• Unknown wireless lag (Is it lag-free wireless like G403/G703 and G900/G903?)

Thoughts? Could this be the Logitech G602 or Marathon M705 killer for mobile professionals that game?

 

My thoughts are that you'd still be stuck owning a wireless mouse made by Razer.
Good luck on hoping that thing is still operational in 2 years (a subjective opinion). Because if you ever need support, you are screwed. Razer has some of the worst support I've ever seen in the business (source: Any thread ever made on this forum about Razer support**).



** - Seriously. Look up "notebookreview razer support" and try seeing how many pages of results you need to go through to find a thread where someone mentions a positive experience with Razer support. I gave up at 3.

 

Fair enough, although I haven't had many positive experiences with Logitech's support either. My experience is that it takes weeks between each response from, to the point where it would literally take months for a case to get resolved. Their turnaround time is infuriatingly slow.

 

The G602 actually has the G100s AM010 sensor, which is excellent.

What sensor does this Razer use?

 

G602 uses a power-optimized (read: gimped) version of the AM010 sensor, hence the super low 80 IPS. I can make it spin-out just doing flicks on the desktop.

And the G602 uses old wireless tech that has perceptible lag.

Supposedly this Razer uses the PMW3330.

 

oh dam, wasn't aware of that

 

To be fair, the G602 is so damn heavy that low sens FPS players who skip arm day probably can't flick it fast enough to make it spin out. j/k

But 220 IPS on this Razer is a lot more reasonable, even better if it is indeed confirmed to be a PMW3330 and has no wireless lag.

 

nice , not a bad price for a razer product. I've been going wireless recently and will probably gt one

 

It depends who you are dealing with. I've had one issue with the keyboard software, reported it and got pretty much run of the mill answer from tier1 support. I threw them back a detailed answer with screenshots of the issue and got immediately transferred to tier2 tech who was able to id the issue. For that one and only time I've contacted Razer support I had a good impression, both the speed of the answers and quality of them.

Don't know if the software was ever fixed though, I sold the keyboard because the blue switches were too loud to my taste.

I'm also looking for reviews of this mouse, I'm looking forward to replace my old MS 4000.

 

I'd rather go with Logitech and I hope to pick up a g403 soon. Razers software is just god awful from my limited use.