Software / Subjective Impressions & Testing
Software and Button Mapping
We were going to create a button map for the RAVEN mouse, but lucky for us Silverstone has done this in the included software! The map on the left is a screenshot of the software on the page for Normal settings. In this mode the buttons do what you see on the map and there is no option to change anything. On the right, the settings for gaming mode are displayed. There are individual settings for X and Y dpi, and seven buttons are customizable. Five custom profiles can be created and users can toggle between profiles by simply clicking the dpi switch on the thumb control.
Subjective Impressions and Testing
General Impressions & Everyday Usage
To test the RAVEN we ran it for a few weeks while doing tasks from Internet browsing, to writing this review, to hardcore gaming. In terms of look and feel, first impressions of the Silverstone RAVEN gaming mouse were mostly favourable. The mouse is comfortable to use and for a user that likes to use a high dpi, it can be as fast any anyone would need. The carbon fibre surfacing also really makes the mouse look and feel great but doesn't add anything to performance or overall grip. On top of this. there is an OLED screen that shows the user which gaming preset is being used (in Gaming mode) or the selected dpi setting (Normal mode). The only part that is questionable aesthetically is the rather large bulge for the thumb controls which gets in the way more often than not. When in use, this button's blue glow is nice but it can be a bit distracting in a dark room and it just protrudes a bit too far for our liking.
One other thing we have to add is the RAVEN is not wireless even though there will be several gaming mice released in the next few months which claim proper wireless operation while gaming. Maybe we have become spoiled using a wireless mouse for most everything; it is just tough to go back to a mouse with a wire, no matter what supposed speed advantages a wired mouse provides. The cord is 180cm which is about average for a mouse, but it is also rather stiff and you constantly feel some drag from it.
Software installation on Vista 64 was very straightforward and the RAVEN software installed without a hitch. Also when using Vista, the thumb controlled scroll button gives the feature - Flip 3D. What this does is allow switching between tabs in tabbed browsers such as the latest Internet Explorer or Firefox. For a minor feature, this is very slick, but the scroller is a little difficult to turn. We should also point out, Flip 3D works on Normal Mode only so if you have a custom Gaming configuration you like to use, you would have to switch to Normal mode to utilize Flip 3D.
Since the RAVEN is not shaped in a traditional mouse style, Silverstone recommends two movement configurations, the grip position and the palming position. The RAVEN takes some getting used to in either style, but the grip position feels more natural. We found that positioning the hand forward similar to the palming position led to constant accidental clicking of the thump dpi button and the forward and back buttons. However, by keeping the hand back a bit, many mistake clicks were avoided. It would be nice to have the option to turn off the thumb toggle feature if desired.
The scroll wheel works well as do the right and left scroll buttons. It would be nice to allow for faster scrolling as the up and down scrolling is a little on the slow side but that is a minor issue. The silver page up and page down buttons are also nice, although once again it takes a little practice to efficiently click with the ring finger.
Gaming Impressions
Now for the part every reviewer loves, testing a product in gaming situations! We wanted to get a wide scope of exactly what kind of advantage the RAVEN would bring to gaming situations so games include CoD4, UT3, WiC, AoC, and EQ2. For first person shooter gaming, the performance was nothing short of outstanding. Page up and down, dpi adjustments on the fly, and 5 custom configurations really give a RAVEN user an advantage over a normal mouse. The occasional mistake click when excited is a given but this should diminish over time. But getting killed in a game because of a mistaken profile switch from paniced click is not that fun.
When playing slower games like RPGs and similar, we found that it was not really necessary to change dpi setting on the fly due to the slower pace. WiC is a little different since you are often moving around the game world by scrolling so the scrolling options on the RAVEN come in handy as do the dpi customizations and speed change on the fly. There is one small issue in performance – every once in a while the mouse pointer will shoot to the far right side of the screen. This occurred a few times in games and just navigating through Windows. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen very frequently, but enough to notice for sure. It is hard to say if this is a mouse or software issue at this point.
