Razer DeathAdder V4 Pro Review – Lighter, Faster, Better?

This is Razer’s brand new DeathAdder V4 Pro, and it’s lighter, faster, and supposedly better – but is it? Let’s take a look and find out. This thing looks remarkably similar to the V3 Pro, with the same high arch and large size – seriously, this thing isn’t for the small-handed folk anymore. I have fairly large hands and I can barely palm grip this. Claw grip seems to be most comfortable, although with the right posture you can just about finger tip grip it. You’ve still got two buttons on the side, although all you get up top is the left and right clicks, and a new optical scroll wheel (along with their gen 4 optical switches, I might add). The power and DPI button is on the bottom along with the decently large PTFE skates, and that’s kinda it.

The big changes are inside – a new Focus Pro 45K Gen 2 sensor, which yes, can run at up to 45,000 DPI. Why? God knows. But it can handle 900 inches per second of tracking speed and 85G’s of acceleration. Does any of this truly matter? Unless you’re running it at 100 DPI and flicking like absolutely crazy, almost certainly not, but hey faster is faster, right? There are a few things Razer’s custom versions of PixArt sensors offer, like 1 DPI steps, and astonishingly 26 steps of lift off distance control – for both up AND down. What’s new for this DeathAdder V4 Pro is what Razer is called “Dynamic Sensitivity”. This basically changes the sensitivity based on how fast you move the mouse – which sure sounds like the mouse acceleration setting we all know and hate… There is, at least, customisable profiles for you to choose or make your own, but I’ll leave that one up to you. There’s also a “Rotation Tool” which means if you cant your mouse over you can correct the movement to follow your arm rather than your wrist. That’s cool, but wouldn’t definitely take a lot of learning to retrain your muscle memory! 

One thing I found rather funny with this thing was this little dome. This is the HyperSpeed V2 wireless dongle, which very explicitly claims “TRUE 8000HZ WIRELESS”, which implies all others (I guess including their own too) are not ‘true 8000Hz’. Funny how marketing works, huh? Anyway, this very weighty dome takes the USB C cable in, and gives you three little LEDs that you can customise what they show in Synapse – polling rate, DPI, connection quality, or battery life. Of course that means that the nicely braided and colour matched USB C cable is readily accessible on your desk for when you need to charge it, although with a claimed 120 hours you shouldn’t need to do that too often.

The other new thing with this V4 Pro is added lightness. Specifically a claimed 57 gram weight (or weirdly 56 grams on the black version), and if I drop it on my rather accurate scale we can see that, yep, this is 57 grams. 57.17 grams here, but that’s well within tolerances. So, what does a 57 gram mouse feel like to flick around? Well, pretty great! I’m not sure this new large size works for me personally, but the distinct lack of weight does make it very easy to move, it glides rather nicely, and damn it feels fast. I did of course use my open source latency testing tool (available at OSRTT.com by the way, link in the description) both wired and wireless, and threw in a 1,000 hertz run too for good measure, and I’m happy to report this DeathAdder V4 Pro is the second fastest mouse I’ve tested behind the amazing RIGID CLR1, at 1.7 milliseconds wired or 1.8 milliseconds wirelessly. Running at 1K does offer the same speed as the V3 HyperSpeed – and I’m sure that with the 8,000 hertz optional-extra dongle would have been a decent bit faster too. Still, this is plenty fast. It’s worth noting that this thing ships in 1,000 hertz mode, so you do need to install Synapse to change it to 8,000 hertz.

For gaming, as you might expect, this is fantastic. As I said I don’t know that this shape is my personal favourite, and it does definitely lean towards larger hand sizes, but if you vibe with the shape, the sensor is fantastic. It’s smooth, tracks perfectly, and endlessly tunable for your preferences. The clicks feel great too, and the ultra low latency is incredible at giving you even a slight competitive advantage. Of course, this thing better be good, because man are you paying a premium for it. This is an eye-watering £170! Genuinely, you’ll have to shell out mid range CPU money for a mouse! At least the RIGID CLR1’s 250 euros was for a limited run indie production with artisanal value – this thing is mass-produced! As far as I can tell, this is the most expensive mainstream mouse available for sale right now – Asus has a few options in the £160 range, and Logitech I think peaks around £140 with the G502 Lightspeed or G PRO X Superlight 2, so it’s safe to say this in a class of its own. This isn’t really for me, so I’m not in the best place to truly judge whether it truly belongs in a class of its own or not, but that does seem like a hell of a lot for a mouse. I don’t know if the advancements in sensor technology truly translates into a better gaming experience, especially for the average joe or jane who’s gonna be buying this, but hey, those are my thoughts, but I’d love to hear yours in the comment down below. Let me know what you think of the price tag, the sensor upgrades, and the DeathAdder V4 Pro in general in the comments below!