Razer has a history of making hardware designed for gamers, but the company's newest offering does something new; the product is a mixture of both software and hardware set up to make your raids a little more pleasant. While the Razer Naga mouse may simply look like a piece of gaming hardware with a number pad fused into it, the truth is actually much more intriguing.
No software is worth it if the hardware is not up to snuff, and luckily the Razer Naga is a sexy mouse. Yes, it lights up and the blue logo pulses in the dark—very impressive at LAN parties—but more importantly, the mouse features a 5,600dpi sensor, 1ms response rate, and a scroll wheel with 24 click positions. That's a lot of numbers that all mean that the mouse is ultra-precise and smooth in action.
The mouse itself feels good in your hand, although if you're a fan of larger, heavier mice you're out of luck here. I have moderately sized hands and was able to cup the entirety of the mouse very easily, and the hardware is light and easy to move. These are preferences more than issues or strengths with the product, but worth pointing out. The Naga is molded with places for your index, middle, and ring finger, and frankly this mouse is a joy to put your hands on. Even the cord hasn't escaped the notice of the designers; it's made from a braided material, not simple plastic. This would be an impressive mouse on its own merits, but the things that set it apart for MMO fans are noteworthy.
The pad on the side of the mouse features 12 buttons, with a selector switch on the belly of the mouse that maps them to either the top number buttons on the keyboard or the number pad on the side. It's interesting to see my laptop recognize the mouse as a keyboard, and then be able to use the number pads instantly. My wife—who is an accountant—found the idea of actually crunching numbers this way rather ghastly.
The real magic happens when you mix these buttons with Razer's software, called AddOns, which allows you to map these buttons to different actions inside your MMO game with ease. You can set up the buttons to operate like a phone keypad, or arrange them horizontally as they would be as the mouse sits on your desk. You can set it up so that your bindings on the Naga only impact certain characters. You can map the keys so that hitting them while holding the control button controls your pet. Here is a video from Razer showing how flexible the software is in World of WarCraft.
If you think twelve buttons is a lot to handle by touch, you're right. Luckily, Razer includes a series of plastic nubs, called trainers, that you can stick on any combination of buttons to allow you to navigate the buttons by feel. It's a nice touch, and shows the level of care given to the overall package. Right now the software is only available for World of WarCraft and Warhammer Online, but Razer promises more games are coming.
The downside to all this? The Razer Naga is a niche product; there is no reason to get excited about the extra buttons if you're not an MMO player, and there is no way to disable them if you don't want to accidentally hit one during the course of a game. If you tend to have a tight squeeze when you play shooters or other games, this may not be the mouse for you. On the other hand, I could see the value in using the buttons to flip through your units in RTS titles by mapping groups to your number keys.
This is a product that is either aimed at you or isn't, but it's nice to have a company like Razer take something that could have been a gimmick and spend so much time to make the product really work. All that effort comes at a price, however; the Razer Naga is available now for $79.99. Sometimes you get what you pay for.
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