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Introduction

Razer are known the world over for their high DPI gaming mice and awesome precision mouse mats. Their Copperhead and Boomslang mice are legendary and I am sure there are literally millions of frags that can be acredited to these gaming periperhals. The only down side with Razer products is the price. That’s where the Krait comes in; high DPI, lower price. Sounds like a perfect combination? That’s because it is.

A little about Razer

Razer is the world’s leading brand in high-end computer gaming peripherals. We reinvented the computer gaming industry by bringing the competitive edge to gamers when professional computer gaming was in its infancy. In the mid 90s, with the advent of networked gaming and competitive first-person-shooter (FPS) games, gamers found that their legacy peripherals were inhibiting rather than enhancing their gameplay.

In the late 90s, after years of research and development, the Razer Boomslang™ gaming mouse, the stuff of gaming legends, was launched. Featuring an unprecedented precision of up to 2000 dpi when other mice maxed out at 400 dpi, the Razer Boomslang™ offered up to five times the accuracy of other gaming mice of its time. The Razer Boomslang’s™ precision technology was powered by proprietary opto-mechanical technology developed by the Razer engineering team and its sleek design and profile sculpted by ergonomics experts of its day.

And the rest is history.

NB: Razer’s history is a little long, if you want to read all of it, click Here

Specifications

1200 APM* – Optimized for Real-Time Strategy (RTS) / Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming(MMOG).

Infrared engine powered by Razer Precision™

1600 DPI, twice that of conventional high performance sensors

Ultra large non-slip mouse buttons, tactile response design

Award winning Razer drivers featuring On-the-Fly sensitivity™ adjustment

Frame rate over 6400 frames per second (5.8 megapixels per second)

16 bit data path, as compared to 8 bit and 12 bit data paths used by other conventional mice

Always-On™ Mode – the optical sensor never powers down – provides instantaneous response at all times during gameplay

High speed motion detection, up to 40ips and 15g

Buttons – 3 physical buttons optimized for gaming response and independently programmable

Non-slip side rails and new ergonomic ambidextrous design

Zero acoustic Teflon feet for smooth motion over any surface

Gold plated USB connector for maximum conductivity

Size: 5.04″ length x 2.5″ width x 1.54″ height

7 foot, lightweight, non-tangle cord

Bits and Box

The Krait’s box is pretty similar to the packaging of other Razer products, dark, forboding and awesomely cool. The front features a picture of the Krait along with some of its specifcations; namely its APM (Actions Per Minute) and its DPI ( Dots Per Inch). There is also a large Razer logo along with an embossed “Krait” under which is written, “High Precision Gaming Mouse”.

On the back of the box is another picture of the Krait along with some multilingual features and specifications which are number coded to parts of the picture.

The lid of the box is held shut by a small velcro pad. Peeling this back reveals the Krait housed in a vacuum formed plastic shell.

Razer also took the liberty of adding a little blurb of how great their product is on the left

The mouse is relatively easy to remove from the packaging and along with it came a few bits that were hidden beneath the Krait. Along with the mouse you also receive:

1: See through sticker
2: Manual
3: Driver CD
4: Note from “Razer Guy”
5: Certificate of authenticity (So you know you are a “Real” Razer owner).

The drivers are easy to install and the manual is clear and concise in showing you how your Razer works and how you should operate it. Not that many people don’t know how to use a mouse…

The Krait

The Razer Krait is a 3 button high definition gaming mouse and true to gaming style, it is one hardcore looking mouse.

It features the same smoothed over buttons like its bigger, badder, brother, the Copperhead.

It even has the same tiger stripe design down the its sides that the Copperhead range sports.

There are however, several sacrifices that must be made when going from a the £50+ Copperhead to the slightly cheaper Krait. You do miss out on the higher DPI and APM rates, as well as the glowing logo at the back which pulses in that oh so pleasing way. Also, the Krait, unlike its counterparts, uses a high DPI optical sensor as apposed to a laser. Lasers are used in high end gaming mice as they tend to have a much higher sensitivity than generic optical sensors. However, if the Krait’s optical sensor is good for 1600DPI, who needs laser?

The underside of the krait is as fancy looking as the rest of it, the centre optical sensor looking very serene. Their are three mouse feet on the Krait in the usual beige/white Razer feet colours. They are very smooth and provide an excellent glide like feel to the mouse’s movement.

As well as having orange “Tiger Stripe” sides, the Krait also shines through, if you’ll excuse the pun, on its centre button/wheel. The orange glow from the centre button and sides is pretty appealing, and really stands out compared to other mice where the standard colours are blue, red and occasionally green.

Having sufficiently drooled all over the product while I snapped some fancy pics and made up my mind what I thought of it aesthetically, it was time to move on to the testing; and test I did.

Testing

To assess the Krait I ran it through several windows based tests such as general navigation and web browsing. I also ran sevarel gaming tests from different genres to determine how capable the mouse is of improving game play. In a final, small test I made my own personal observations on the comfort of its use.

Windows Test: The mouse performed pretty well here, though I did need to turn the sensitivity down a little using the supplied software. This was simply due to the fact that at the 10 setting I found it very hard to click on icons. At the 8 setting it was perfect, I had the accuracy I needed with the ease of only moving a centimetre or two to traverse the desktop. Browser use was perfect, the scroll working perfectly and although the sensitivity had me clicking the wrong icons initially, as I got used to it I found it a genuine improvement over my old mouse.

Gaming Test : For this test I put the Krait through its paces in several different gaming environments. One RPG (World of Warcraft), one FPS (Battlefield 2142) and one RTS (Company of Heroes). In WOW the Krait was a small improvement over my original mouse, though RPGs are not particularly helped by inceased sensitivity. A game like this would be more helped by some side buttons to link macros too, though these were the cause of many problems with the Copperhead series, so perhaps it is best that they are not present.

The FPS was an entirely different story, I saw huge increases in my gaming ability. I was able to react faster to anything that went on because of my increased mouse sensitivity, and therefore decreased real world movement for the same on screen movements. Although the sensitivity did take some time to get used to, and therefore my playing ability did drop slightly while I became accustomed to being able to turn around with tiny flicks of my wrist, I was beyond my original kill counts in no time.

Company of heroes was quite interesting to test with the mouse, as although I was able to move around the map faster, my accuracy was slightly reduced and therefore I occasionally found it hard to click on some of the smaller units in play. However, tweaking the sensitivity I was able to find the niche that I was looking for and overall saw a general increase in my reaction times to enemy attacks. The “On-The-Fly” sensitivity adjustments really panned out with this game as I was able to Alt-Tab out every few seconds and adjust the sensitivity of the Krait using Razer’s software with no problems at all.

Comfort

When I first started using the Krait I did find it a little odd. The mouse is slightly slimmer than most generic mice, so my ring, and little finger hung over the edge of the mouse more than normal. This did feel a little odd, though it was far from uncomfortable. After a time I got used to it, and generic mice now feel large to my Krait trained hand.

Price

As I have previously mentioned, the price of the Krait is fantastic for what you get for your money. At around £25-£30 this is the best cost/performance gaming mouse you can find.

Conclusion

As I said in the beginning of the review this mouse ticks every box when it comes to gaming mice. It has awesome sensitivity, great looks, smooth tracking across your chosen mat. It increases your gaming skill in RTS games as well as FPS’. However the crowning jewel of this product is the price. Not only does the Krait provide you with almost everything that a Copperhead of Boomslang will, it does it for nearly half the price. This is a true gamers mouse, at a middle of the ground price, it really doesn’t get any better than that.

Pros	Cons
Typical Razer Flare/Style	Takes time to get used to
Huge sesitivity (1600DPI)
Large APM (1200)
Tracks effortlessly
Improves gameplay in several genres

I’d like to thank our sponsors Meroncourt for providing us with the Krait.

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