Razer Mamba & Carcharias performance update

Well I have a performance update on the Mamba now that I’ve had some more time to use it. Spent all day at work on it for office/casual testing. I was using (for 1/2 of the day) the Mantis control cloth mouse pad (my very favorite, but doesn’t track well with my Ikari Laser at home, so I use a QCK at home) and (for the other 1/2 of the day) the Razer Destructor mouse pad. The Mamba and the Destructor is a match made in heaven, but it performed very well on the Mantis Control. It didn’t exhibit any jumping when I picked it up at the end of the pad on either of those two surfaces, unlike the QCK at home. It comes down to make sure that you choose a mousing surface and a mouse from the same vendor for best compatibility.

Used the Mamba and the Carcharias tonight for my Left 4 Dead match with the NCIX Steam guys, and let me tell ya… Maybe it’s because I had already used the Mamba last night, but I think I was MORE impressed by the new Razer headset. This thing is awesome. I mean, it’s not the best pair of headphones in existence, but they’ll stand up proudly to any other pair of $100 headphones, and the mic is significantly better in transmit quality (using Mumble) compared to the Sennheiser PC161 I usually wear around my neck. This is according to the other guys on the channel. They were asking me what I did to make my voice so clear tonight and I told them I was using the new Carcharias.

Here are some shots of the Mamba next to all my other mice. I’m getting more and more impressed with this thing the more I use it. Trying to go back to the G7 for comparison testing tonight was painful. The Mamba’s ergonomics are not my favorite, but I think a big part of that is that for YEARS I “cupped” the mouse isntead of using a fingertip grip. The G9 got me out of that habit a little bit (as you can see from the grips, that’s a VERY used G9), but I still find the G5 and the Ikari Laser more comfortable. The Mamba hangs with them though, and it has the HUGE advantage of being cordless. I kept finding myself wanting to “tug” the cord to free it up, something I do reflexively now to ensure it doesn’t get snared on anything, only to find that there was no cord to get snared!

I game at about 1000DPI, so honestly I couldn’t tell you the difference between most of these laser mice as far as that’s concerned. I can’t IMAGINE playing at 5600DPI, but I know there are people out there who want just that. It’d be far too twitchy for me with that kind of sensitivity, but the Mamba offers 5 adjustable sensitivity settings (more than any other mice here) and on-the-fly switching, so you can easily configure it with a variety of different sensitivity schemes.

Enough about the Mamba, and more about the Carcharias now. It’s more comfortable than the PC161 (which I can’t tolerate anywhere but around my neck) and about equal (maybe just a touch less) to my well broken-in Sennheiser HD555 and the SteelSeries 5H V2. The mic is excellent and the audio quality blew me away. I would challenge anyone to show me a better value pair of headphones for $100CDN. They use an open design, so you get more bass out of them than the SteelSeries, but with the disadvantage of them being less effective at isolating your game sounds from others and the voices of others from your game sounds. They still deliver a less “full” sound than my HD555, and they are a little harsh at high volume, but they deliver what I believe gamers want: Clear highs and deep bass. The mid-range is a little weak, but that won’t matter unless you’re listening to a lot of music. Either way, they are 1/2 the price of the 555s AND you don’t have to look like a dork with a clip-on mic on your shirt.

Don’t get me wrong. The HD555s still kill everything else in that picture for sheer audio quality, but it’s like saying a Mazda RX-8 will outsprint a Honda Fit. Of course it will, but the Honda fit delivers amazing value at a great price, and that’s why you’ll see many more of them on the road.