Razer Lancehead – The Ultimate Wired/Wireless Gaming Mouse Review

It has been some time since I have set my sites on reviewing a gaming mouse and after some time looking around I decided to checkout the Razer Lancehead. This is one of Razers latest incarnations of gaming mice and I can not wait to put to the test.

I love my mice, mostly mice with loads of buttons on the side, like the Razer Naga Hex or the Razer Naga Chroma, which I use all the time, I would also like to state, that I use the Razer Firefly Mouse Mat and Razer Blackwidow Chroma Keyboard, the only thing that is not Razer Currently is my headset, which is now the SteelSeries Arctis 7, previously it was the Razer Man O’War, but due to some issues, it’s no longer working…Gutted.

In the past, I have reviewed the

• G900 Chaos Spectrum from Logitech
• SteelSeries Sensei Wireless

and plenty of Wired Mice

• SteelSeries Rival 300
• SteelSeries Rival 700
• Xtrfy XG-M3-Heaton Mouse
• Genius Scorpion M8-640 Mouse
• PNY Riot Mouse
• Fnatic Gear Clutch G1

Above are just a few of the reviews I have done in the past, I would say I have improved a lot since I started and my best review would be the Fnatic Gear Clutch G1. So on that note, let’s move on to the actual review of this mouse starting this time with the boring Tech Specs.

POWERED BY RAZER SYNAPSE 3 (BETA)*

HYBRID ON-BOARD AND CLOUD MEMORY

‘To give you absolute flexibility, the Razer Lancehead is powered by Razer Synapse 3 (Beta)* so you can save your settings directly onto the mouse as well as to the cloud. This way, even if you don’t have access to Razer Synapse or the internet, you can instantly activate your favorite profiles wherever you are. * Coming soon.’

Moving swiftly on, depending on how fast you read, unboxing, first, you are greeted with a sleeve containing a congratulation from Min-Liang Tan, and a form welcoming you to Razer Synapse Pro Beta, there is also a good size instruction Manual.

Underneath the mouse, you will find the wired connection cable, wireless dongle and the wireless dongle hub. If you open up the instruction manual you will find some Razer Chroma Stickers.

Now moving on to the actual mouse itself.

There are some interesting features with this mouse that are small but needs to be talked about, for instance, USB Dongle Storage, not heard that one before from Razer, under the mouse there is a little compartment which you can lift up and store your dongle inside, GROOVY. When your battery is low while gaming wirelessly the Mouse wheel while will blink red twice giving you an indication that the mouse only has 15% battery life left. Switching the mouse on and off is simple, underneath there is a flip switch, flip on done, flip off done, nothing else to it.

Razer Lancehead allows for Hybrid Storage, this allows you to store up to four profiles, each profile has a set colour, white which is active profile, Red  – Profile 1, Green  – Profile 2, Blue  – Profile 3 and Cyan –  Profile 4. You can view which profile you have active just above the USB storage underneath the mouse, you will find a small LED.

The Razer Lancehead is fantastic for left and right-hand users thanks to Razer’s choice in making this mouse Ambidextrous in design, there are grips on both sides, 2 sides buttons for both left and right-hand users, 2 DPI buttons, mouse scroll and mouse buttons. The Chroma lighting flows around the sides of the mouse, Razer logo on top and sides of the mouse wheel. The final part is the top of the mouse, which is nice and smooth thanks to the choice in plastic used in its design, feel great under hand.

Discussing the Grip, I find it great for palm grip, however, some of my friends prefer the mouse as claw grip, might be due to the size of the hands, bigger than mine, I have small hands.

The actual size of the mouse is, the front of the mouse also know as the grip width is 5.8cm/58mm, length around 12.6cm/126mm max height is 3.9cm/39mm.

Picking the mouse up from the box and chucking it on to some scales. the mouse weighs around 112g, the weight distribution is more towards the rear, but when picking the mouse up in line with the sensor the mouse stays perfectly stable.

Now I did a video for this, sound of the clicks on the mouse, to note the left and right buttons are Razer Omron Switches.

Left and right switch feel great to press with a little bit of tension behind them, side buttons have a good travel distance and click and I did not find myself accidentally clicking them. The two DPI buttons are good and out of the way, so no chance of clicking them anytime soon, the scroll wheel is ok, it’s just a little noisy and the scroll button has a good amount of travel distance and click, can not complain there at all, so overall everything is good so far.

Now comes the software Razer Synapse 3.0 Beta,looks good, though I was gutten that Rynapse 3.0 only worked with the Lancehead and would not detect any of the other devices I have, so I had to use 2.21 and 3.0 to get everything working. Checking the website for compatible devices, you find out that there are only 6, the Lancehead, Lancehead Tournament, Basilisk, Atheris, Base Station and Dev kit.

I hope they update this 3.0 to work with everything, or this sucks

OK moving on, now a closer look at the Synapse 3.0 Beta software through screenshots

Set Chroma Lighting from Quick effects to Advanced Effects also control brightness and when to turn on and off.

Effects include

• Spectrum Lighting
• Breathing
• Reactive
• Static
• Wave

The DPI can be set from 0 to 16000, to a level, that best suits you, or you can use the 5 stages already set, it is down to you what you want to do or use, I set mine to around 3600 DPI, Polling Rate at 1000 and Max Acceleration.

The software is easy to use, quick to install and is just as good as version 2.0, however like I said before, I hope to see all devices work on the new platform once it is rolled out.

Now comes a few tests while gaming, the spin test, does the mouse spin out when you quickly flick it to the left or right, and the answer is YES, this is not good if you play FPS games and need a mouse to be precise and not kick out when you are trying to turn fast.

I tested the mouse on a cloth mouse mat and the Razer Firefly, the mouse works great on both and slides well across the surface thanks to its four rubber feet, you can also lift the mouse up off the mousemat to a certain distance and the mouse will still work, however, I doubt many will be doing that.

Now for the final part, games, games games and thanks to a good month I was able to test it with some cracking games, Destiny 2 Beta, Ark: Survival Evolved, Fortnite, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, Last day of June, Dungeons 3 & PES 2018. Recommendations first, Grab Destiny 2 on PC over any other format, trust me, if you have a system to play it, you will not regret it, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is an amazing game, one of the best indie titles I have ever played, along with Witcher 3 and then there is Last Day of June, might not have heard of the game, but it is well worth the asking price.

Now for my experience using the mouse, as always, I set up the side buttons and DPI buttons to do other actions, other than their default configurations. I do this by playing the games and any buttons I find out of place I assign to a button on the mouse. I then delved straight in, Destiny 2 and due to the mouse spinning out it was rather difficult for quick actions during intense battles. When it came to playing the likes of  Hellblade, Dungeons 3, Fortnite, PES 2018 and LDOJ I found the mouse worked great, and I had no issues.

So the question on my lips now, is, would I 100% recommend this mouse, and I am sad to say I can not, yes it’s a bloody good mouse and the connection between the mouse and the PC is spot on and it never dropped out, but due to the laser sensor, its lacks precision which is required for many actions in FPS games. If you just looking for a wireless mouse and don’t tend to be a quick action type person and more or less use the mouse at a general speed, then you should find this mouse reasonably ok. So on that note the mouse is scoring 8/10

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