Razer Deathadder V4 Pro review - the new ergonomic gaming mouse king

The Razer Deathadder is one of the longest-running and best-selling lines of gaming mice in the world. Over the decades, the focus of the mouse has changed in line with gaming trends, with this latest version, the Razer Deathadder V4 Pro, being an ultra-lightweight wireless mouse focused on competitive gaming. One thing that hasn't changed much in all that time, though, is the shape of this mouse, with it retaining the tried and trusted large, curvaceous, ergonomic shape that's much-loved, just with a few tweaks.

As a regular entrant on our best gaming mouse guide over the years, hopes are high for this latest version, but with Razer slapping a higher-than-ever price on this mouse, while keeping its physical features list fairly short, it still has plenty to prove. I've been using it as my main mouse for work and play for the last few weeks to see how it truly holds up, whether it's providing comfort for a day of work or a few too many rounds of CS2 or The Finals in the evening.

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Specs

Features

Razer has packed the new Deathadder V4 Pro with its latest sensor and wireless tech and tweaked the mouse's design to be lighter and more user-friendly than ever. However, in terms of raw physical features, it's a very basic mouse.

It has five buttons on its top (left, right, scroll click, back, forward) with no DPI button on the top or any other extras. That's a fairly common arrangement these days for esports-focused gaming mice, but Razer has taken this formula a step further on the underside. Here, we often find a sliding power switch, a DPI button, and, in the case of mice such as the Cherry Xtrfy MZ1, several other buttons for tweaking the mouse's functions. Here, though, there's just a single button, to save weight.

This lone clicker is used to power the mouse on and off when held down, as well as cycle through DPI levels when tapped. It's a combination that fundamentally works, and was seen on the previous V3 Pro version of this mouse, but I found it surprisingly irritating.

It takes noticeably longer to turn the mouse on or off compared to just moving a sliding switch, and it's just fiddly enough to hold down (especially given that the mouse tends to want to slip out of your hand when held upside down with a button being pressed) that I would somewhat regularly not hold it down long enough. This resulted in either nothing happening or just changing the DPI instead of turning off the mouse.

This scenario might have been alleviated somewhat if Razer had added some more prominent and permanent RGB lighting. Here, you do get one LED on the front of the mouse, and it does light up when you power on the mouse, but it's hidden on the top, where it's not visible while turning the mouse on, and it turns off a moment after you power up the mouse.

This may all sound trivial, especially if you feel like you seldom turn your mouse off and back on, but if you have a second mouse that you use for work, or need to travel with your setup, it's surprisingly irritating. For a mouse this expensive, it slightly puts me off.

Elsewhere on the features front, this mouse includes a USB-C port on its front that can be used to charge the internal battery while you carry on gaming with a wired connection to your PC.

When it's not using a wired connection, the Deathadder V4 Pro takes advantage of perhaps this mouse's most prominent feature, which is its new wireless dongle. Instead of a traditional USB-A dongle that you can plug directly into your PC, Razer has made its new dongle a relatively large, weighted desktop puck into which you plug the mouse's lightweight, braided cable. This makes it less convenient to use with laptops - whether you're using one of the best gaming laptop options from our guide or not - but it does ensure the dongle isn't easily knocked around your desk.

Razer has also chosen to take this route, as this dongle is a high-end type that can deliver 8kHz polling rates, and these devices tend to be bulkier than traditional mouse dongles. We've seen quite a few mice in recent years offer larger 8kHz dongles as optional extras, but here Razer has done away with a smaller, more basic 1kHz option completely.

As well as boasting a high peak polling rate, the dongle and mouse use Razer's new Hyperspeed Wireless Gen-2 connection, which Razer claims delivers twice the bandwidth of its previous connection system and provides a 0.291ms average latency. That's nearly half the latency of Razer's Gen-1 Hyperspeed tech (at 8kHz) and nearly a quarter the latency of other 8kHz wireless tech, according to Razer.

On the front of the dongle are three lights that indicate the connection strength, battery level, and polling rate of the mouse (you can choose to run it at 125Hz all the way up to 8,000Hz, with lower polling rates boosting battery life). These will all glow green when all is well or the polling rate is maxed out, dropping to yellow, orange, and red as these figures fall off. You can also change the assignment in software, having one light show the DPI level, or just having them turned off.

That's about it for external physical features, but inside the mouse, there are more advancements. As well as the company's latest Focus Pro 45K sensor (yes, that's a possible 45,000 DPI) that can track at up to 900 inches per second and at 85G of hand acceleration, the left and right buttons use Razer's latest Gen-4 optical switches, and the scroll wheel is an optical unit too.

The new switches can claim 100M-click life spans, and Razer has intentionally made them even clickier-sounding than previous models - a point I'll expand on later. The scroll wheel, Razer claims, is 3.3x longer-lasting than mechanical scroll wheels, too. Having had a few mice suffer from failing wheels recently (after many years of service), I can attest to this potentially being a worthwhile upgrade.

Software and mouse setup

Razer Synapse returns to manage the capabilities of this mouse, and it's largely an easy experience to get going. You can easily customize all the buttons and set up HyperShift assignments, which is where the buttons perform a different function when the HyperShift button is pressed. You can assign the HyperShift button to be one of the mouse buttons, but given there are so few, you probably won't want to do this. Annoyingly, however, you can't then assign HyperShift to a normal keyboard combination, for instance, unless you also have a Razer keyboard.

In the Performance section, you can assign up to five different DPI levels, opt to have a high polling rate only kick in when games are running in full-screen mode, and use the sensitivity matcher to tune the V4 Pro's sensitivity to match the feel of another mouse.

Meanwhile, in the Power section, you can choose the sleep time (one to 15 minutes) and the low power mode. The Calibration section lets you tune the mouse to a particular mouse pad surface, while Advanced lets you set up Dynamic Sensitivity, which is where the sensitivity of the mouse will change depending on the speed at which you're moving it.

Elsewhere in the software, you can assign different profiles to different games, record macros, and download the Chroma app for managing the RGB lighting on other Razer hardware - the one light on this mouse doesn't work with Chroma.

Overall, it's a comprehensive selection that makes it easy and intuitive to set up the mouse with your preferred performance for a range of situations. The automatic profile switching for when certain games are launched is a particularly neat feature, even though I ultimately found I used the same settings for all games.

Design and comfort

The defining aspect of any Razer Deathadder mouse is its shape. It deploys an asymmetrical, slightly sloped shape that broadly would be considered for a palm grip style, where your whole hand drapes over the mouse, but it still works for other grip styles as well.

Compared to a symmetrical mouse such as the Razer Viper, or a particularly small fingertip grip-focused mouse, such as the Xtrfy MZ1, the larger, curvier form of the Deathadder allows for a more relaxed grip that supports your palm and doesn't require you to twist over your forearm as far as flatter mouse shapes. This larger shape doesn't allow as much freedom of movement underneath your hand as other designs, though, slightly limiting its appeal for a fingertip grip.

Although the core of the design hasn't changed in years, Razer is forever tweaking it, and this latest version packs a few changes from the previous version. These include a notable drop in weight from 64g to 56g, while the weight distribution of the mouse has been tweaked too. I didn't have a V3 Pro to hand during my testing, so that I could directly compare them, but the low weight is certainly impressive for such a relatively large mouse, and the balance of the mouse does feel great too - it doesn't want to tip forward or back when it's picked up.

Razer has also reinforced the side walls of the mouse a little to give it a more rigid feel and reduce any possible creaks from flexing plastic. A tweak has also been made to the side buttons, with a pronounced gap now added between them, making it much easier to distinguish between them while centering your thumb.

The notching on the scroll wheel is a little more defined as well, and perhaps the most notable change is that Razer has amped up the clicky sound and feel on the main left and right buttons. Razer told us that it consulted with pro gamers when designing this tweak, and their feedback indicated that they wanted to have a more pronounced click, and boy has Razer delivered.

Press the left or right button down, and there's a distinctly louder, lower-toned click than any of the dozens of other mice I have to hand. There's often also a higher-pitched metallic overtone. Release your finger, and there's a matching clunk as the switch returns to position. You can really sense that the mouse is quite hollow and a little larger than some, with the click seemingly reverberating around the shell.

What's more, with the right button in particular, if you click and release the button, lifting your finger fully off it, there's an almost bell-like quality to the click. It's like the difference between holding a vase at the base and tapping it to produce a clean tone, and holding it around the middle to dampen the sound - this button really rings out.

One final tweak is that Razer has beefed up the glide pads/feet on the underside of the mouse. The V3 Pro has three quite small main pads, but here there are two much larger ones, along with the small pad that surrounds the sensor.

The overall effect of all these changes is a mouse that first and foremost feels impressively nimble, particularly considering its slightly larger shape than some ultra-lightweight designs. Its balance is excellent, it glides effortlessly, and you certainly know when you've clicked its buttons.

As a predominantly fingertip-grip gamer, however, the shape of this mouse doesn't feel like it provides any benefit to me for gaming compared to the likes of the G Pro X Superlight 2, MZ1, or countless other slightly lower-slung, symmetrical designs that have more room for the mouse to move under your hand. However, your mileage may, of course, vary.

What I did notice is that, for palm and claw grip styles, I actually remain a little unconvinced of this type of shape. In particular, the rear left portion of the mouse just sits at odds with how I hold a mouse. The way this area projects out means it just interferes with the fleshy part at the base of my thumb. I find the same issue with the Logitech G Pro X Superlight 2 Dex.

In contrast, ergonomic mice such as the Logitech MX Master and G502 X Plus have a shape that tapers in more at the back. I find this a far more natural fit for my hand when used in more of a palm grip style. As a result, I actually find the Deathadder V4 Pro most comfortable to use when held at a 20-degree counter-clockwise angle.

It's also notable that, if you have somewhat large hands like mine - they're 20cm, or just shy of 8-inches, from base of the wrist to tip of the middle finger - using a palm grip on this mouse puts its scroll wheel far too low back under your middle finger, to the point where you can't reach it without shifting your whole hand backwards. You'll need hands at least an inch shorter to comfortably reach the scroll wheel with a full palm grip.

Performance

The combination of the ridiculously capable sensor and lightning-fast wireless tech in this mouse results in effectively flawless performance. That's a feeling that's true of the vast majority of high-end gaming mice from the last few years, with sensors and wireless tech being so good now, but the 8K wireless polling rate here, in particular, does allow for a little bit more of a smoother feel in games with very high frame rates. If you're used to playing CS2, Valorant, or The Finals at well over 240Hz, you may just be able to discern the faster update rate of this mouse over a 1kHz or lower mouse.

More impactful are the subtle tweaks to the buttons and scroll wheel. Quite aside from the loud click, the main buttons feel really well balanced between needing a forceful press to activate - so you don't click them accidentally - but without feeling like too much effort is needed. The scroll wheel button is also easy to activate without knocking the wheel - not the case on the G Pro X Superlight 2 Dex, for instance - and the newly separated side buttons really do help to keep a firm and centered grip.

Battery life

Razer has bumped up the battery life on the Deathadder V4 Pro by 50% over its predecessor, boasting a 150-hour life at 1kHz polling rates. It has also increased life at 8kHz, although this only moves from 20 hours to 22 hours.

In practice, this means that for peak-level gaming, you're still going to need to recharge this mouse every two or three sessions, but for lesser sessions running at 1kHz or lower, it comfortably lasts a week between charges. In two weeks of all-day use (mostly work at 1kHz with a handful of hours gaming per week at 8kHz), I only charged the mouse once.

Price

The Razer Deathadder V4 Pro price is $169.99, making it a very expensive gaming mouse, despite its modest overall feature set. However, this price is still roughly competitive with other top-tier options from competing brands, such as the Logitech G Pro X Superlight 2.

Alternatives

Verdict

The Razer Deathadder V4 Pro is undoubtedly the best ultralight, ergonomic-shaped wireless gaming mouse on the market right now. Its combination of a tried and trusted shape, very low weight, the very latest sensor and wireless tech, and just enough subtle design tweaks to improve its usability over the V3 Pro makes it the one to get if you like this style of mouse, and you also want the ultimate in gaming performance for first-person shooters, in particular.

Compared to its biggest rival, the Logitech G Pro X Superlight 2 Dex, the V4 Pro is lighter, has faster polling, better-feeling switches, a much better scroll wheel, and an even more capable sensor. The actual real-world difference of all these factors is relatively small, but of the two, it's the one I'd buy, except if I already owned, or was tempted to buy, a Logitech PowerPlay 2 mouse pad.

Otherwise, there's no denying that the value here is questionable for many gamers. At $170, it's a very expensive mouse with relatively few features. While the Logitech is nearly as expensive, there are many other brands with more affordable options, even if they're not quite as packed with the latest tech.

For more on what keyboard or mouse mat is best to pair with your choice of mouse, check out our best gaming keyboard and best gaming mouse pad guides.