My first impressions review of the Razer Naga was pretty grim. Having come from using a Logitech G7 for years prior, the Naga felt clunky at best and the complete lack of any key rebinding support for a mouse intended for MMO use left me scratching my head. In the days following that initial review, Wave of team Naga left me a comment (as seen in the comments section of this review) stating that they were intending to address the later with an upcoming driver release. A few months later, just as he had promised, version 2.0 hit... and it hit hard!
Before I get into all that, let me tackle the ergonomics. As I mentioned, at first I felt this mouse to be very clunky. Now, months later, I could not have been more wrong. When they said this mouse was designed for long gaming sessions with minimal hand fatigue, they meant it. My only real complaints in this department is about button placement. No, no, not the 12-button thumb pad... those are perfect! My beef is with the two additional index finger buttons, which for me, are at best awkwardly placed and at worst completely unusable.
But lets cut the nonsense, if you are reading this you care about one thing and one thing only... the 12 buttons on the side of this bad-boy.
I'll be straight with you, at first it is awkward as hell and comes with a bit of a learning curve. Don't expect to pick this mouse up and be some kinda of button-pressing Mozart by morning. Now months after my purchase I am still second guessing myself from time to time when reaching for the 8 and 9 key, mostly because I don't use them in very many games. As I alluded to earlier in this review, they are placed such that I don't have any issue at all reaching any one button (though 11 and 12 require a funky move that can mess with my cursor precision.)
The 2.0 driver also brought with it two additional features that came as a bit of a surprise to me... profiles and macros! The profiles are just what you would expect and though very basic in their functionality, the macros should get the job done nine times out of ten. If you are familiar with the Logitech G15 or Nostromo N52, then you know what I am talking about. If not, well, it's little more than pre-recorded keystrokes with custom delays between them. Nothing fancy, but far from useless.
Now that the issue of rebindable keys has been taken care of, I struggle to find anything at all wrong with this mouse.
If I absolutely had to give it a con, hmmm... I suppose it requires a bit more care than other mice in order to keep clean. Lots of buttons means lots of places for build up. Fortunately the fit/finish on this mouse is tight enough that cleanup is a breeze.
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