Wrapping Up

The Razer Orochi mouse was provided by Razer for review purposes.

Intro

The Mercedes SLS, various Porsche’s/Ferrari’s and the Honda S2000. Flying economy, half a pint of lager, half a rack of ribs and now, the Razer Orochi. What?!?! Yes, that’s right. I can add the Razer Orochi wireless gaming mouse to my list of things that are (for me) too small. Now the question that remains, is it a too small like flying long haul economy crammed in surrounded by screaming kids and vomiting drunk holidaymakers and the pilot has had a heart attack in midair over the ocean or is it a too small like a Mercedes SLS or half a pint which just leave me wanting more?

I’m a pretty big guy. It’s caused its fair share of problems for me in life, particularly on the car front. Quite a few cars I’ve loved the look of have come and gone over the years, which I’ve taken for a drive but just can’t quite fit in, or can’t quite fit comfortably in at least. Small wireless mice are a similar story. With large (ish) hands, the typically small Bluetooth ones designed for laptops never quite feel right for me. It’s a shame as I’ve done more than my fair share of being on the road with a laptop over the years, although thankfully these days I travel a lot less. Back then, my favorite wireless mouse was a Microsoft one. I liked it so much I bought several for when they inevitably died, but the last of those was laid to rest years ago now.

So what do we have in the Orochi? Let’s find out.

In The Box

In the box is the usual bunch of Razer accessories. Razer logo stickers, a nice little pouch with the customary green zipper, a pair of AA batteries (yes! They’re included!), braided cable for use as a desktop mouse etc.

The mouse itself is symmetrical, so it’s good for left or right handers. That includes the little buttons on both sides (more on this later) and it fits nice and snugly into the carrying case. The case itself has an elasticated netting on the underneath where you can store the USB cable or batteries etc.

The top comes off quite easily, it feels like it’s magnetic so doesn’t need too much pressure to open and put the batteries in so you’re not going to be breaking the plastic clips getting at the batteries, but when the top is on, it still feels like it’s securely in place with very little play.

Flip the mouse over and you find the power switch as well as a notched slot for the micro USB if you want to plug it into your machine. I like the way Razer notches/grooves its USB cables for easily attaching to its accessories.

Using The Orochi

The Orochi itself has some nice easy slide pads on the base so it’s nice and easy to slide over a variety of surfaces (much smoother than the magic mouse on my wife’s iMac); it doesn’t feel all scratchy on a wooden desk if you don’t want a mouse mat. This is more important for Orochi owners as they’re likely to be using it on the road where mousing surfaces will vary.

On the sides it has a nicely recessed shape to rest your thumb with an inlaid rubberized grip pad. The thumb naturally comes to rest just below the side buttons. It’s small of course, but still fairly comfortable to hold.

The mouse behaves well out of the box. Put in the batteries, turn it on, pair it with your machine (or plug in the USB cable if you’d rather) and you’re good to go, but if that’s all you’re looking for, you’re unlikely to have bought one of these as there are countless other small wireless mice available for a lot less money.

Well, the Orochi is well built, but so are other mice; you do get a nicely put together 125Hz (what Razer refers to as “Ultrapolling”) mouse in wireless mode. Wired gives 1000Hz, but it seems to defeat the Orochi's purpose for me to use it wired. The sensitivity goes up to 8200 DPI and the right side buttons adjust this sensitivity up or down.

One thing I did have some difficulty with is the right mouse button. I’ve never had this problem before, but I guess as a tip/claw mouse user who uses fingertips to navigate rather than the palm of the hand, it seems like I use my middle finger a reasonable amount in doing this. The buttons on the Orochi are a bit sensitive for my large hands. That means that I fairly regularly hit the right mouse button while just moving the Orochi around, which is of course a bit of a pain. The back of the Orochi is fairly arched for such a small mouse so if your hands aren’t as big as mine and you’re not a tip gripper, this may not be a problem for you.

The other problem as a tip/claw grip mouse user is that I was prone to accidentally catching the “speed up” button with my third finger fairly regularly, as I use this finger to push the mouse left (I’m right handed). Time to customize the Orochi a bit, then…

Interval: Razer’s Synapse Software

If you’re familiar with Razer accessories, you’re likely also familiar with Razer’s Synapse software. Synapse is what allows you to customize your Razer accessory, record macros and assign them to buttons, change color options etc. It’s a usable piece of software if not overly intuitive and it’s always a bit of a shame when companies which make great hardware (I count Razer as one of those) often struggle to make great software and vice versa. Synapse has been around for a few years now, I didn’t use it in the early days but reports on it weren’t amazing. Nowadays, the software is stable and does what it says on the tin. The UI could use some work to make it more user friendly and intuitive but it does what it’s supposed to and I’m sure the Razer crew will continue to improve it.

Synapse certainly gives you the kind of functionality you’d expect. For the purposes of the Orochi it’s not too bad as there aren’t as many options as there are for my Orbweaver Chroma, for example. Using it on some of my other Razer accessories with more options, things can get complicated fairly quickly (particularly with layered lighting color options!), but here, the main options are to change the color of the Chroma wheel and customize the buttons to enable/disable or apply a macro to them etc.

One thing is quite handy in Synapse: you create a profile which stores your settings in the cloud. What this does mean is that if you use any of your Razer devices on multiple machines, installing Synapse on those machines lets you login to your profile and have all customized settings there immediately, without needing to set them up again. Additionally, you can apply different profile sets to a device, so one profile if you’re just using it for normal windows navigation and different ones for certain games where you can apply macros to different buttons/keys. I’m not the road warrior I used to be with regards to travel, but I can see the appeal. If your Steam library and save games are available to both your laptop and desktop, it makes sense that your custom mouse bindings should be too so you don’t have to set it up every time from scratch.

A quick setup change later, and the right buttons on the Orochi are disabled. Now it’s a bit more usable. I’ve played around with the DPI settings a bit and find my sweet spot to be about 2500 for general windows navigation, otherwise it’s just too fast, some people will obviously want to assign some macros to these buttons I’ve just disabled for various game profiles they may wish to use assuming they’re also not prone to accidentally hitting them.

Razer is of course a gaming brand, but the Synapse software is useful for not just gamers. Got an app you use regularly and then close? You can assign a button to launch it. Stuff like this is pretty easy to configure.

Wrapping Up

All in all, the Orochi is a good mouse. The functionality you get with Synapse is useful and for those who game on the road and like to create macros or customize buttons easily, it’s a good route into that. The performance is solid, the Orochi is a high end piece of hardware in terms of DPI and polling rate via Bluetooth. There are faster polled wireless mice out there, but they tend to need a dongle where the Orochi doesn’t (assuming your machine has Bluetooth). It handles reasonably and is comfortable for extended sessions. After a few days, my touch lightened to the point where I was no longer right clicking all the time thankfully.

Razer is a pretty premium brand and their stuff isn’t cheap (Amazon US $69.99 for the 8200 DPI version, Amazon UK £68.95 for the Bluetooth 4 version), but I’ve found it tends to be well put together. If you’re just after a normal wireless mouse with some simple left/right and back/forward button click functionality, you don’t really need the Orochi, particularly at the price point chosen by Razer. If you’re a gamer who wants to make use of Razer’s Synapse software for storing profiles and macros both at home and on the road, it makes more sense.

Personally, even when I was on the road a lot, I didn’t tend to game much on a laptop so the Orochi isn’t something I would have considered. Ultimately, I still feel that small mice designed for portability and use with laptops are still generally too small and lacking the functionality/comfort of a good desktop mouse to be used in all situations, but if you’re on the road a lot and after a decent gaming mouse for your laptop, you can definitely do worse than the Orochi.

In that sense, it’s not the Mercedes SLS, but neither is it the flying economy scenario. It’s probably somewhere between half a pint and half a rack of ribs. It’s a good device, but (as ever with small mice aimed at laptop users), I find myself needing more.

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