Razer DeathAdder Essential Review – £16 Gaming Mouse from RAZER???

This is Razer’s cheapest gaming mouse, the DeathAdder Essential (the 2021 version), a mouse I paid just £16 for. £16! For a RAZER GAMING MOUSE! Is this a scam? Is this just rebranded e-waste? Or is it actually good? Well, I bought it to find out, so let’s take a look at it, test it, and see if we can find out. First, this is a legit Razer product. It comes in a standard and otherwise very nice box, and inside the box is basically just the mouse. This thing looks like a typical, perhaps now more ‘classic’ DeathAdder shell, although upon closer inspection there are a few things that stand out. First is actually on the spec sheet – this offers just 6400 DPI whereas the majority of mice offer tens of thousands. We’ll come back to that. The other thing is in the immediate feel. Clicking the buttons feels a little… hollow. More hollow than usual. It all just feels a little… off? A little cheap, perhaps.

Diving a little deeper into the shell, you’ll notice a few good things, and one pretty bad thing. Since these are basically old style DeathAdder shells, anyone who has used them before will be intimately familiar with the shape and feel. For those who haven’t, it’s pretty huge. I have large hands and I struggle to fully cover this – quite the change from the small and ultralight shells I’ve been testing recently – so if you’re buying this for your kid’s first gaming mouse, well I can’t say this is the best option unless you really think they’ll “grow into it”. For my large hands it is fairly comfortable, with my preference here being claw gripping. Fingertip just isn’t really possible, and certainly not the most comfortable anyway. The sides are adorned with a nice honeycomb texture – this isn’t rubber, it’s part of the molding – which gives you plenty to grip on to. You will need it, since this weighs a relatively hefty 95 grams, which by 2026 standards may as well be a lead weight. The balance of the weight is also quite strange, feeling pretty top heavy. You do have two large and easy to hit, yet well supported, side buttons, and of course the USB cable – which retains its kinks frustratingly well – and some green LED lighting both on the scroll wheel and through the Razer logo on the back. The one thing you won’t find here is a DPI button. Yeah, while this thing does support I think like five DPI settings, unless you download Razer’s Synapse software, you will be permanently stuck on the default 1600 DPI, which is too fast for me. Thankfully Synapse 4 (the current version) supports this 2021 mouse just fine, and both remapping buttons and changing the DPI works fine. 

Coming back to the sensor, this is a PixArt PAW3328, a modified PAW3327, with a max DPI of just 6,400. As I said at the start, most modern mice offer 16,000, 25,000, or even more, although to be clear, the lack of maximum dots-per-inch of resolution isn’t the issue – I run my gaming mice at between 400 and 800 DPI – but the other related measurements like acceleration and tracking speed. This tracks at a maximum of 220 inches per second – which is nearly 6 metres, or in other words, plenty – and up to 30G of acceleration, which again is more than enough, but it is noticeably less than the 2026 standards. The lift off distance is also on the naff side at between 2 and 5 millimetres, when the newest mice offer just 0.7 mm. All of this is a little pedantic – especially considering the price – but it’s worth knowing what you’re getting into. 

For actually using it, I must admit that it doesn’t seem to glide all that well – even with all that weight. It’s a little rough even on my soft mouse pad, and the weight distribution makes it feel a bit off in my hand. It isn’t horrific – I have absolutely used worse – but it’s definitely a little off. If you have one of these already and struggle in games, I give you full permission to blame this thing and not your own lack of skill! The weight does mean it can feel a little on the heavy side and be a little fatiguing for longer sessions, but I must admit in game it was more than adequate. I hit my headies once I locked in, and despite having a pretty budget sensor, it tracked well enough at least for novice little old me. This is a perfectly fine gaming mouse. Oh, I did also use my very own open source latency testing tool (available at OSRTT.com by the way, link in the description) to test this thing for latency, and… yeah it isn’t amazing. It’s one of the slowest gaming mice I’ve tested – slower than even 1 kHz wireless mice by over a millisecond – although it isn’t horrific. It is worth noting though that this is noticeably slower than you might expect for a wired mouse. This could also be due to the decent amount of pre-travel in the switches, or switch debounce delay, but still. Keep that in mind.

But for just £16 – only a few quid up from the actual e-waste you’ll find in the £10 to £15 range – I cannot fault this thing. Sure, it’s big, and if you are buying this for your kid unless they’ve had a hefty growth spurt, this won’t be comfortable for them to use. Equally if you just have smaller hands, this also might not be for you, but if you do manage to find it comfortable, it is seriously hard to argue that this isn’t a perfectly adequate choice. Sure, it isn’t great, but for the money? Hot damn.