Razer Viper Review – Their Best Gaming Mouse Yet?

Welcome to the Razer Viper review. Despite the slightly higher price point versus the competition, Razer is doing many things right with the Viper, and I feel like this new mouse might be a strong contender in the light and complete mice market.

Alright, so at $79 you’re looking at a mouse with a lightweight design at 69 grams, that’s very important since it means that it’s very close to the Model O but with a solid shell instead of the perforations all around.

I feel like this might work in Razer’s advantage in the long-term because dust and other ambient particles are not entering the mouse body, because this one is closed unlike with many other lightweight designs with perforations that we’ll see in the future. I’m not exactly sure how this will stack up maybe two years down the line, but when I think about lightweight mice I think about the perforated design because of Finalmouse, because of Model O, and other mice that are entering the market.

When you first see the Viper you might not necessarily think that this is a 69 gram mouse since visually it is certainly not giving off the lightweight vibe, it really just looks like your standard traditional mouse.

Now shape wise I actually prefer the Viper with its low profile and less curvy body over my Model O mouse.

The front triggers feel very nice with proper grooves to house your fingers, and the back section flares out perfectly to accommodate my pinky side and there’s also a nice place to rest my thumb.

The side texture is a hard rubber, it’s okay for some control even with a little sweat on it, while the main texture is slightly coarse.

The Viper has a cool transparent layer behind the logo so the illumination is very well integrated with all the RGB goodness but that’s it. There are no other illumination areas so the Model O visually is a more beautiful Mouse in my opinion.

The mouse feet are pretty generic which is disappointing given the Model O is cheaper and has much better glide feet. You can even hear the glide difference between the two.

At the bottom of there mouse is the DPI shift button for the five profiles that are saved on the mouse itself. This means you will need Razer Synapse to configure and access your DPI shifts if you want to customize them and then they’ll travel with you.

The RGB illumination color profiles are not saved on the onboard memory which means you’ll need Razer synapse if you want to have something other than a rainbow effect cycling on the mouse, which is again disappointing. Why wouldn’t they add a little bit extra memory so that it remembers what color profile you selected, not cool.

One of the advantages of the new Razer Viper is the fact that its shape is ambidextrous, and just for fun I decided to use my left hand – I’m usually a right hand player – to play against Eber in CS:GO in a 1v1, which is something that we’ve wanted to do for a while. It was actually a very comfortable shape for my left hand, but I was so uncomfortable aiming so I was fully expecting to get whooped. However, this left hand gaming really came to life. In fact, this mouse is better than the Model O in my right hand. I feel good with the Viper, even in my left hand the my performance pretty good I would say. I ended up destroying the competition, with a final score of Dmitri 16 and Eber 3.

The new Speedflex cable is quite flexible and light, it reminds me of the Logitech G Pro Hero cable which is nice. I’d still want a bungee toe and to flatten the exit of this cable so that it doesn’t have curves and is not bothering me when I’m trying to flick.

The primary switches are optical and that’s a first for a gaming mouse as far as I know. So instead of having a mechanical contact to actuate the switch, we have a laser and thus no physical contact to register the click. The technical advantages here with the optical switches is there’s no debounce delay, which normally happens with a mechanical switch where it filters out the certain milliseconds after the registration happens. On the optical switch it’s just on and off basically, which is awesome. There’s no way to develop double clicking over time that certain mice develop because of mechanical switches. It also has a 70 million click lifespan for the optical switches instead of your traditional 50 million. I’ve never had the mouse die on me, but it’s sounds like because of no contact inside the switch the lifespan is increased.

The scroll wheel has full control with nice tactile steps and a light enough middle click, and the side buttons are very flat to the body but with satisfying travel and soft actuations.

Finally, the sensor is Razer’s 5G optical 16,000DPI, which was developed with Pixart. It has really good accuracy, no spinning out of control, and surface tuning to automatically adjust lift off distance.

By this point, all Esports targeted mice have fantastic performance and the Viper fits in that category very well. I actually prefer the Viper shape-wise over my Model O, and I feel very much at home in CS:GO with aim correcting flicks and lifting the mouse to cover a larger mouse area. The only immediate difference I feel versus the Logitech G305 or the Model O are the slightly softer primary clicks, which have less travel distance and a less satisfying click than you experience on mechanical switches. Also, when it comes to the glide feet, they are not as smooth as the Model O or the G305, which is disappointing considering the mouse itself is more expensive.

I honestly feel this mouse should have been priced at $69 USD to remain competitive and be more of an attractive alternative to something like the G Pro that is $69, the Model O that are $50, or the SteelSeries Rival 310 that is also $50. However, I also feel like if Razer had priced it lower than $79 it would theoretically devalue the product versus the competition in the eyes of the Razer fan base. Therefore, my recommendation is still the Glorious Model O, which is cheaper and feels like it’s a nice compact overall package… or the G Pro from Logitech or even the SteelSeries Rival 310. They are all great mice. However, if you can find the Viper for a price point that is lower than $79 then I would say it’s definitely worth it. It has a fantastic shape and the optical switches are unique and add longevity. Although I will say throughout my entire mice usage history I have never experienced double clicking so whether these fancy switches matters to you depends on your own history.