Razer Deathadder V2

Few pieces of hardware have as strong a legacy as the Razer DeathAdder. Many Gamereactor readers and general PC enthusiasts have owned a version of the iconic mouse at one point or another. The combination of comfort, design and a competitive price earned the peripheral a stellar reputation, establishing the product as a part of gamer culture.

That said, however, it has stayed the same for a long time. Since 2016 and the release of the DeathAdder Elite, in fact. Now, however, Razer has created a new version of the classic mouse, dubbed the "V2". At first glance, it's a pretty direct "sequel". It looks just as solid as its predecessor and it's hard to blame Razer for keeping things on a winning track.

The DeathAdder V2 remains a mouse of the wired variety, so Razer isn't offering something with hybrid functionality with this one. Instead, this is an old school peripheral. The iconic design is also largely unchanged, and although the unit itself is on the large side, it feels great to hold and to use. Keeping with its old school identity, there's no adjustable weight and no extra mouse buttons have been added. There's still a profile button at the bottom of the mouse, two incremental DPI buttons near the wheel, as well as two dedicated buttons on the left-hand side.

Under the hood, however, Razer has added a whole lot of new technology. For example, the company has switched to optical contacts for the V2, which increases the sensitivity and response time of the unit. In addition, users now get the new optical sensor called 'Focus +' and that guarantees up to 20,000 DPI as well as a 99.6% resolution accuracy, which also means a polling rate of up to 1000MHz. Not bad.

Razer has also completely ditched the old braided cable and has fitted the DeathAdder V2 with a Speedflex variant that feels softer and doesn't have the same tendency to curl as some cables are known to do. All in all, it seems that Razer has worked hard on making the mouse versatile. There's a rubber layer on each side that offers a better grip, PTFE pads on the underside that allow for use on a variety of surfaces, and a weight of 82 grams.

That's where the positives come to a screeching halt. For £69.99, we feel that even though most of the features of the DeathAdder have been upgraded, Razer could have been a bit more ambitious. Razer showed us what the ultimate Razer mouse could look like with the Viper Ultimate and with Corsair's IronClaw RGB as a competitor, it's hard to justify a mouse that relies on having a high DPI and a low weight exclusively.

Where is the weight adjustment? What about interchangeable parts to fit the left-handed? Where is the 2.4GHz wireless transmitter? The extra mouse buttons? We understand that the V2 is built upon the iconic base of the DeathAdder, but the V2 seems a bit boring considering what it's competing against.

That said, the DeathAdder V2 does everything that one would expect from a DeathAdder mouse and the components that have been introduced via other models following the launch of the Elite are all present here. We feel that it's justified to subtract some points this time around, however, because even though the V2's performance is infallible, we were expecting something new and fresh instead of a DeathAdder greatest hits.