I'm hardly an esports fiend, but a good gaming mouse is pretty essential no matter what you're playing. Cards on the table, the game I've been obsessed with most recently is Magical Princess, an obvious spiritual successor to the Princess Maker series. This character-raising sim hardly requires a swishy, flicky mouse—but I'm still glad I'm playing it with one.
I've said it once, and I'll say it again: the best hardware is sometimes the bits of kit you don't have to think about. As such, I can't recommend the ageing Razer DeathAdder V3 Hyperspeed enough, and I wouldn't trade it in for the world—unless our top pick for the best gaming mouse overall happens to get a discount. Well, wouldn't you know it, the Razer DeathAdder V4 Pro is now $20 off at Amazon.
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Now, if like me, you also happen to have a great gaming mouse that received a score of 91% from our very own Nick back in 2024, there's really no need to rush out for the upgrade. Unless you're a gamer with pro ambitions, there's little in it between these two lightweight, wireless gaming mice. However, I like shiny things, and the V4 Pro for $150 still sounds like a cracking deal to me.
While the V4 Pro is a few hairs heavier than my beloved V3 Hyperspeed, it leaves that older mouse in the dust when it comes to features. I'm talking an up to 8,000 Hz polling rate, a max sensitivity of 45,000 DPI, plus a max speed of 900 IPS coupled with a max acceleration of 85 G. It's definitely overkill for raising my fictional daughter and overseeing her career of street fights and petty crime, but these bleeding-edge upgrades are very nice nonetheless.
Our Dave is a longtime fan of the V3 Hyperspeed's sibling, the Razer DeathAdder V3 Pro. Even so, he was immediately impressed by the newer Razer squeaker, writing in his DeathAdder V4 Pro review, "It does feel like the company cut some corners when it put the old V3 Pro together. And those cheaper aspects are thrown into stark relief the instant you pick up the new DeathAdder. It's a superior squeaker in pretty much every respect."
Calling the V4 Pro "the smoothest, slickest Razer mouse I've ever laid digits on" is high praise indeed. Dave also specifically rated this wireless gaming mouse's greatly improved Optical Scroll Wheel, calling it "a huge improvement over the noisy, hollow-sounding, slightly gritty mechanical one used in previous DeathAdders." Though, unfortunately, he thought the Gen4 switches on this mouse's main buttons made them louder than their forebears.
That 8K polling rate also comes at a price, as it can whittle down your battery life to only 22 hours if you have it on constantly. However, the Synapse software offers a potential remedy with its Smart Polling Rate Switcher option. Basically, you can set the mouse to automatically switch polling rates depending on whether you're in-game or not. The Dynamic Sensitivity switch works similarly, switching up your DPI if it detects a swifter flick of the wrist. Together, that will definitely save your battery life, though Dave says this latter feature took some getting used to.
He writes, "That's going to need a degree of practice, though, as I found myself overdoing things and slamming into walls when I was meaning to back the F off under fire. I can see it becoming bedded in, though, once you get your head and hands around it."
As for me, though, that just sounds like a standard match of Arc Raiders following the panicked realisation I've waded into a PvP gunfight. At least the worst I have to worry about in Magical Princess is my virtual daughter spending too much time at the outlaw bakery and getting into illicit loaves.
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