Razer Basilisk V2 Gaming Mouse Mini-Review

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FlyingPenguin
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Razer Basilisk V2 Gaming Mouse Mini-Review

Post by FlyingPenguin »

I have given up on the my faithful old Logitech G400s. I loved that mouse, it's what I've used for years, but I use the top DPI buttons with macros for gaming, and those buttons just don't last like they used to. Even the main buttons seem to wear out. I've bought several of those mice over the years, but the last one didn't last more than a few months.

The reason I haven't tried another mouse until now is that I haven't found anything that has enough programmable buttons to make me happy, and feels good in my big hand.

After reading a lot of forum posts by people who also felt they had to abandon Logitech gaming mice because the quality of the switches has gone to crap, a lot of them were recommending the Razer Basilisk v2. It uses optical instead of mechanical switches (pressing the button breaks a beam of light instead of touching two metal contacts) so in theory the switches will last longer, and be less prone to double clicking which has become a notorious problem in Logitech gaming mice.

It's selling for a very reasonable $35 at Amazon and Best Buy, which is apparently some kind of sale because the mouse sells for $80 on Razer's site.

I've been using it for a couple of days, which includes some heavy gaming, and I must say that the mouse feels great. The switches feel great, the mouse feels comfortable in my big hand. The wheel, while easy to turn when you want, has very good indents so it's hard to accidentally spin it. There is an adjustment wheel on the bottom of the mouse that lets you adjust the stiffness of the wheel. Mine was set to max stiffness from the factory and I liked that, but you can make it as loose as you want.

The cord is wrapped in a cloth sleeve which makes it much less stiff than most mouse cables, and also don't tend to stick or snag on surfaces like other cables do.

There are 11 programmable switches. In addition to the usual left, middle, right, and two thumb side buttons, there's two top buttons mounted under the wheel (DPI up/down by default but I have them setup to emulate PgUp & PgDn) and an interesting third side side thumb button which is a paddle. At first I couldn't figure out how to use this button because it's optional and the paddle is removed and the whole covered with a rubber plug from the factory. If you want to use it, you have to install the metal paddle. The paddle is in the thumb rest area below the left hand buttons. The intended purpose is as a "DPI Clutch" - to quickly "shift" between two DPI settings. It is, however, completely programmable, as are all the other buttons, and another recommended use is as a push to talk button. I have mine setup as the "Home" key.

The ninth and tenth buttons are triggered by moving the wheel left and right. This is the first time I've ever had a mouse with a tilting wheel. I haven't tried it much yet. I only have a few FPS games that have a left and right lean function, and I'll have to try them with this.

The eleventh button is actually on the bottom of the mouse, and is intended to be used to switch between profiles. It is, however, fully programmable, and I could see using it to change the DPI setting if you do that sort of thing, but don't want to tie up the other buttons.

The mouse supports RGB which I couldn't care less about, but using their software you can make it do all the usual RGB "dancing elephant" stuff.

The software, which is required to program the buttons, works well, but annoyingly requires you to create a Razer account to make use of all the features. That said, it does back up your profiles to the cloud. When I installed the mouse on my second PC, it downloaded my profile from the other PC and offered to install it. You can have multiple profiles saved in the software, also saved to the hardware storage in the mouse, as well as the cloud.

I have never used multiple DPI settings. I use one setting, which on this mouse works out to 950 DPI for me. I'm using a polling speed of 1000 Hz.



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Losbot
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Re: Razer Basilisk V2 Gaming Mouse Mini-Review

Post by Losbot »

My Logitech G500s is still running strong. Plus it has the tilting wheel option.
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