I’ve been privileged enough to play around with a good few mice over my years here at NAG, yet I still can’t find myself changing over from my daily drive, the Logitech G Pro X Superlight 2.
Admittedly, that faith wavered when I was given the opportunity to take a spin with the Razer Viper V3 Pro, an ultralight esports-level gaming mouse that had me doing double-takes so fast I needed to go to the chiropractor.
Let me break it down for you.
The Razer Viper V3 Pro comes in at 54g, making it almost 10g lighter than my Superlight 2. It comes out of the box with an 8k wireless Hyperspeed dongle, and it features some of Razer’s latest generation mouse clicks, the Optical Gen-3’s, beneath the main buttons. It also packs the Focus Pro 35K Optical Sensor Gen-2 underneath it all, offering a max DPI of 35,000 and a max speed of 750 inches per second.
Razer has also given the Viper V3 Pro some massive skates at the bottom of the mouse, ensuring a smooth glide over your mousepad. The ergonomically designed main buttons do feel quite comfortable, especially when the middle finger is resting. The scroll wheel has a decent step to it, but it does feel a little too aggressive or stiff for my liking.
In addition to the two main buttons, the two thumb buttons, and the clickable wheel, there is also a dual DPI/Power button beneath the mouse for quick DPI switching.
The shape of the mouse is pretty similar to the Superlight, being slightly longer than the older Viper with the hump a little to the rear of the mouse. It’s pretty comfortable for a full palm grip and even more so for a fingertip style grip. Because of the location of the hump your hand does rest a little when using a fingertip grip. So, if you have smaller hands, probably 19cm or less, you may feel like the hump gets in your way.
The clicks feel quick and responsive, but sometimes I had to lift my finger a little more than I’m used to initiate the next click. This only happened when I was attempting to click the mouse as fast as possible, so I don’t see it being an issue in general use or in-game.
The massive software suite you get with Razer allows for some customisations, like DPI settings, Macros and polling rate, but thankfully, because there is no RGB on the mouse, I only had to have Razer Synapse installed to properly configure the mouse.
Speaking of polling rate, let’s talk about whether the 8K polling actually makes a difference. In all honesty, probably not. To a pro-gamer, maybe. I run my Superlight on a 1K polling rate, one because it has the best balance between power efficiency and speed. I do notice a slight difference when going up to around 4K in polling, but anything higher is lost on me. For the majority of users who pick up this mouse, you’re probably going to be pretty good at gaming, so I’d aim for a nice balance and hover around the 2K polling rate mark. This will get you about a week’s worth of battery before having to plug the mouse back in.
Overall, I think the Razer Viper V3 Pro is fantastic. It’s ultra lightweight, super comfortable in hand and feels like a well-built gaming mouse, but after two years of time spent with the Superlight, I don’t feel like I’d make the swap. Sure, the Viper V3 Pro comes with a technically better sensor and newer generation switches, but at almost R500 more than its main competitor, it may just boil down to brand loyalty.
