Testing

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Unfortunately, this is where the good news ends. While on paper and features this mouse beats anything hands down but when you actually put your hand down on the mouse, you can see where Razer have made the compromises.

Due to the symmetrical design, Razer – in my mind – have taken a step backward in comfort. It’s more comfortable than the and Ideazon Reaper which is always a good sign, but doesn’t support your hand in the same way as the Death Adder or even the much older Krait. It’s not uncomfortable per se, but if an earlier and cheaper product fits your hand better you can see the obvious choice to take. This is due to the ambidextrous design that sacrifices comfort for either-handed players, which as I’ve pointed out isn’t necessary. I asked a couple of non-gamers which mouse felt better and the Death Adder won unanimously by comfort, although the Lachesis received the appearance award. The Lachesis seems to fit smaller handed gamers much better than larger handed fraggers.

However, the Lachesis harbours a deeper and more serious issue. The mouse sensor is no longer an infra-red LED as seen on the Death Adder or Krait but a laser version, hence the much higher DPI. Unfortunately, the laser sensor appears to be aimed directly downwards rather than at an angle like most other optical mice. This for the most part is fine for normal usage, and you won’t notice anything wrong with the mouse. But, if you use a soft mouse mat then when you click the mouse button, the cursor moves slightly, which is most likely due to the placement of the sensor. This problem doesn’t materialise on a hard surface, and is only prevalent on cloth mats, which leads me to believe that the mouse mat surface bends ever so slightly when you click the mouse button and the sensor picks this up as intentional movement. This becomes increasingly annoying as you begin to miss buttons; the issue getting worse on the higher DPI settings.

General Windows usage doesn’t suffer particularly from this issue, but you’ll sometimes end up dragging items rather than double-clicking or missing a small button. If you were to power up a game, then the problems worsen, especially if you are a sniper. While the first shot will hit, your cursor will move off the object you are aiming at, making a second fast shot much more difficult. This problem is shown well by Crysis where an assault rifle can be turned into a sniper with the use of a scope, if you miss with the first shot, you’ll lose the chance to land another piece of lead without re-aiming.

This annoyance lowers your gaming enjoyment considerably, and there seems to be no good reason why this issue should occur. We thought that this was serious enough to be a coincidence or one off manufacturing issue, so I tested the second Lachesis that we received and the same problem occurred. Pretty lack-lustre for the latest Razer offering in my mind. It should be noted that this issue does not occur when you use a hard surface which is a boon to anyone who prefers this type of gaming pad. Using the mouse on a SteelSeries QcK heavy, which is a thicker cloth pad, the mouse becomes near unusable, with the cursor missing buttons by a wide margin. It’s like using a teddy-picker at the arcade; even if you get the prize, the times you missed detract from the reward.

Considering as this mouse boasts over twice the DPI of the Death Adder, its accuracy should be unmatched, but it’s sadly not the case due to the clicking issue. I personally thought that the additional DPI would make for much smaller movements, but it’s a difference between moving an inch over a 1600x1200 screen to a half-inch; high sensitivity gamers will rejoice at this decreased amount of movement required on their part, but for me it’s a negligible amount.

Use the mouse on a less comfortable hard surface and it works a dream, with your movements being perfectly replicated on-screen by your cursor, regardless of sensitivity. In Crysis, using the hard pad, sniping was much easier, although the higher sensitivity was wasted as you don’t really need to be flicking around a whole lot during gameplay unless you rush in and get out of your depth. Cranking the DPI up using the buttons behind the scroll wheel and you get the additional speed burst you need with no noticeable negative deceleration. On either hard or soft surfaces the mouse glides as a Razer product should and the zero-acoustic feet name is well given.