Gadgetory

what's up guys today I'm taking a quick look at the new and improved Diamondback gaming mouse from Razer the original DB debuted back in 2004 and grew to be one of the most well known gaming mice of its generation well over a decade later its diamondback with the re-engineered design and some new tricks up its sleeve including razor's full RGB chroma backlighting now while I don't have extensive experience with the original I can tell you that the revamp uses a similar ambidextrous body with forward and back buttons on either side sports a pair of standard click buttons and a clickable scroll wheel over all the mouse sports a simple design which stays mostly true to the original on a scale of 1 to 10 I'd give the comfort level a 6 for me personally being a claw grip user myself I generally prefer my mice to have a bit more arch I like I'm with them curves and the Diamondback body is really too flat for my taste granted this is a preference thing and I think calm rest users are much more likely to enjoy the feel of this Mouse than the rest of us that being said the small rubber side grips are tapered inwards with the rest of the body making them difficult to actually get a hold of factor in the lighting strip that's replaced the rubber grip ring from the original and you'd swear you were playing viscera cleanup detail with an actual bar of soap it's a pretty slippery Mouse again coming from a claw grip users point of view fortunately you get some top notch switches that deliver solid feeling clicks all around with the perfect amount of actuation force that is when their buttons you actually intend to click one caveat I encountered with the ambidextrous design is that my ring finger tends to accidentally click the outer forward button when I go to use the inner forward button this happens especially often when my hand goes berserk in a frantic firefight which for me is really out of character in the first place while you can disable any button in the software to prevent unwanted actions taking place the sound and feel of these infrequent miss clicks can get annoying pretty quickly that being said there's a satisfying click to the scroll wheel which is lined with textured rubber and Scrolls beautifully with tactile bumps for tasks like switching weapons in game not necessarily a con but something to bear in mind is if a mouse beers on the lighter side with no weight tuning option so heavy handed gamers might want to look elsewhere you can see there's also no shortage of LED accents on this thing everything from the scroll wheel to the palm Razer logo to the seamless ring that wraps around the body is independently customizable in the software but more on that later when it comes to precision and accuracy Razer has this one in the diamond bag oh I'll get you I'll get you eventually the 16,000 dpi 5g laser sensor is wicked fast precise and tracks noticeably better than my Logitech G 500 with it you get up to 210 inches of travel per second 50 G's of acceleration and a 1000 Hertz polling rate via the 7-foot rated USB cable now apart from getting acquainted with the hardware this review also marks my first experience with the Razer synapse software which is just as much a part of this product as the mouse itself and here you can import export and create custom profiles for different button actions lighting effects and settings once you've created or imported a profile you can start remapping your buttons to perform virtually any action macros dpi adjustment program launching and profile switching to name a few the suite gives you full control over X&Y laser sensitivity acceleration and you can even enable surface calibration based on your mouse pad there's also an entire stats area where you can track your mouse clicks and in-game actions to provide deeper insight to your clicking hotspots moving patterns and while you're still single as I mentioned earlier a prominent differentiator of the new Diamondback is the incorporation of RGB lighting and the software does a nice job of making it easy to trick out your mouse the LEDs themselves are bright accurate and incredibly rich in color making my k70 RGB look like it stopped giving a the software's chroma configurator displays a top-down diagram of your mouse where you can select which parts you wish to edit I was pretty impressed to find that you can also isolate different sections of the surrounding LED strip and apply unique lighting effects to any region making the possibilities that much more limitless among your typical static effect for applying a single unchanging color breathing mode pulses one or two colors ominously at your desired speed here you can choose to have the effect activated upon mouse click or set it to run indefinitely reactive lighting is a single color effect that only activates upon mouse clicks choose the color and duration of the effect and you're good to go spectrum cycling simply cycles through others of the spectrum and while it's a neat effect the preset blocks off the speed and activation tweaking that we saw with breathing mode by far the most customizable and wowing effect in the bunch is wave a lighting trick notorious for being plastered on every RGB keyboard ever going above and beyond your basic rainbow wave with adjustable speed and activation properties synapse lets you add up to seven colors change the stop distance between them set color width delay between cycles and wave direction there's even a split feature which I still don't know what that does if all of these options are making your head hurt by now just look at what the mouse is going through and during an endless barrage of piercing light for your optical titillation I kind of know how he feels speaking frankly though synapse is a well thought out program that gets the job done and then some but it's not without its faults for starters the pop-up window for button remapping can't be moved and neither can the main window while it's open which limits some visibility also in the button mapping tab the numbers representing the forward and back buttons on the mouse diagram are in descending order from top to bottom but ascending order in the left-hand list calling nitpicky but this just seems counterintuitive my only other critique here is the sectional grid around the mouse diagram in chroma configurator is rendered much too light and I find myself having to squint when selecting individual cells apart from a few innocuous shortcomings synapse offers an overwhelming number of possibilities particularly with LEDs and the execution of lighting effects here are some of the best I've seen among gaming peripherals now be that as it may blingy lights aren't for everyone so the LEDs can be turned off if you prefer a stealthy diamond too black on that notes I can see you're all about to pull the curtain on me so to sum up I feel very strongly about the software the accent lighting and the awesome sensor and I think those are all welcome additions to the Diamondback lineage that most gamers will appreciate on the other hand the flat and slippery body design just isn't for me and I'd only consider recommending this mouse to pierpon rescue tzer's or for gamers who need the ambidexterity but let me know what you guys think of the new Diamondback and how you think it stacks up to the original