Razer Viper Ultimate Review

The Razer Viper Ultimate is a great ambidextrous, wireless mouse with a super-lightweight design that makes me want to ditch my heavier mice. This mouse also has great wireless performance and comes with a neat charging dock.

However, you're paying a good $149 for both the mouse ($129 separately) and the dock ($49 separately), which is still pricey even with the bundle discount. And for the money, we would've liked the mouse to have been a little more comfortable and the scroll wheel less stiff.

But overall, the Razer Viper Ultimate's array of cool features makes it one of the best gaming mice around.

Design

The Razer Viper Ultimate features a sleek, curved, black ambidextrous design. It's one of the lightest mice I've ever tested, weighing just 74 grams (2.6 ounces), and it's nearly identical in its dimensions to the original Viper, at 4.6 x 2.8 x 1.5 inches.

The Viper Ultimate's palm rest has an RGB-lit Razer logo, and the panel that the logo sits on curves outward and inward toward grips on the left and right side of the mouse. Just above the palm rest is a glossy curve that leads to the two discrete buttons, and in between them sits a snug scroll wheel.

The left and right side of the mouse feature another two buttons to accommodate left- and right-handed users. My thumb can easily reach the two buttons on the left, and while I can use my ring or pinkie finger to use the buttons on the other side, doing so is not very comfortable. On the front of the mouse, there's a micro USB port underneath the left and right buttons, and this can be used for charging. You'll need to do that if you don't purchase the charging dock.

Ambidextrous designs are typically a double-edged sword. On one hand, such a mouse is suitable for everyone, but on the other hand, the mouse doesn't perfectly fit the contours of most hands. Still, the Viper Ultimate wasn't uncomfortable, though it was awkward. My palm never felt like it was resting on the palm rest, but instead seemed to be hovering over it. And while my thumb cozied up against the grip on the side of the mouse, my ring finger and pinkie finger felt lost on the opposite side.

This mouse's awkward hand feel aside, I do love how light the Viper Ultimate felt. When I stopped using it to go back to my Logitech G502 Proteus Core mouse, I felt weighed down by the weight, which is ironic because you can actually put weights in the Proteus Core to make it heavier.

The left and right buttons on the Viper Ultimate deliver a deep click, as opposed to the sharper clicks on most mice. That may have something to do with the buttons being optical switches (more on that later). The scroll wheel was a little stiff, so it wasn't very satisfying to use. The wheel itself was also a little too far and low for my finger.

Interestingly enough, Razer moved the DPI switch to the bottom of the mouse (this switch is usually by the scroll wheel). I was a little frustrated by this at first, because it's difficult to seamlessly test which DPI felt most comfortable. But the real advantage here is that you'll never accidentally click the DPI button while you're in a really tense FPS matchup. However, some people actually prefer to change their DPI on the fly, depending on the situation.

You can also find the 2.4-GHz, wireless USB dongle housed beneath a plastic door on the underside.

The Viper Ultimate comes with a Razer Chroma mouse-charging dock (bundled for $149; $49 separately), which is a petite dock with Chroma lighting circling the bottom and a blacked-out Razer logo at the base. There's USB Type-A port at the top, designed for the mouse's 2.4-GHz, wireless USB dongle. Taking the Viper Ultimate off the dock and placing it back on is effortless, as the two-prong charging port is magnetic.

Features

Since Razer is Razer, the Viper Ultimate is jampacked with features, in and outside of the Razer Synapse app.

The Viper Ultimate offers eight fully programmable buttons, which you can configure with the company's app. Through the Performance tab, Synapse allows you to determine the five stages of the DPI levels, from 100 to 20,000. The Lighting tab gives you full access to Razer's Chroma tools, so you can either stick with basic effects like Spectrum Cycling or make your own in Razer's Chroma Studio. Additional tabs let you customize the calibration and power modes of the mouse.

Razer has rated the Viper Ultimate to last 70 hours on a charge (without lighting), so you can game for 10 hours a day for a whole week if you actually had the time (I know I don't). But the ease of just throwing the mouse on the charging dock at the end of a session eliminates any battery-life concerns. The charging dock also indicates your mouse's current charge level with these colors: red (<25%), orange (26%-50%), yellow (51%-75%) and green (76%-99% breathing, 100% static).

According to Razer, the Viper Ultimate's optical switches are rated for 70 million clicks, which makes them more durable than those on traditional mice (50 million clicks).

Performance

The Razer Viper Ultimate has a ton of goodies that help give it an edge over the competition. For one, it has optical switches, which use an infrared light beam to register a click, giving this mouse a response time of 0.2 milliseconds.

Next are the unique mouse feet, which are actually made of PTFE (you may know it as Teflon). Razer wanted to increase the glide in the mouse, and the company has succeeded. Gliding across my mouse pad has never felt smoother. I even put my colleague Phillip Tracy to the test with two other mice, and he liked the glide better on the Viper Ultimate.

The mouse itself is outfitted with an all-new Razer Focus+ optical sensor, which gives the mouse smart tracking (calibrates the sensor depending on the surface the mouse is on), asymmetric liftoff (enables different liftoff presetting) and motion sync (improves sensor responsiveness). The sensor has a 99.6% resolution accuracy and a tracking speed of 650 inches per second (IPS).

Razer claims that its wireless technology is 25% faster than that of any other gaming mouse. And while I couldn't really tell a significant difference between this and other mice, the wireless response time on the Razer was incredibly fast while I was playing Apex Legends, Dota 2 and Hitman 2.

In Apex Legends, I jumped off a cliff and landed on the porch of a house before skillfully lighting up a Bangalore with my VK-47 Flatline assault rifle, nailing my targets' center-mass while also landing a couple of well-placed headshots.

I also played Dota 2 (for the first time), queued up with the character Abaddon and point-and-clicked my way around the battlefield to eventually get murdered. My movement was superprecise, though the camera failed to follow my character. (How do I play this game?)

Meanwhile, in Hitman 2, I ran around several corners to escape some guards, waiting patiently until they rounded the corner so I could expertly shoot them both in the head with my ICA19 pistol. For a split second, the Viper Ultimate made me feel like a pro esports player.

Bottom line

Razer's new Viper Ultimate offers a lightweight, ambidextrous design packed with a smooth new sensor accompanied by a slick charging dock and some solid software. It's pretty pricey, however, at $149, especially since the mouse could be a little more comfortable and should feature a better scroll wheel.

If you're looking for something in a similar price range but that offers more comfort, consider going with the Logitech G502 Lightspeed ($149). It has a great design and offers excellent performance. However, you don't get a cool charging dock, and if you're left-handed, you don't get a mouse at all.

Despite the price, the Razer Viper Ultimate is a great mouse with some supercool features that help it compete with premium gaming mice within the same price range.