The Razer Viper V4 Pro is finally official, with the company unveiling its update to the hugely popular symmetrical gaming mouse. It’s lighter, faster, and longer lasting than before, though it comes with a familiar high price.
The last few generations of Razer Viper have found their way onto our best gaming mouse guide thanks to their combination of great design and performance, and despite their high price. Competition from more competitively priced options is getting ever stiffer, but with an even lighter design and huge boost in battery life, the Viper V4 Pro could once again impress.
The big ticket change here is the battery life of this mouse. Razer is employing a new Focus Pro 50K Optical Sensor Gen-3 sensor that can track only when it needs to, reducing power consumption. As a result, battery life has doubled from 95 hours on the Viper V3 Pro to 180 hours on the Viper V4 Pro. That’s ‘only’ a 30 hour improvement over the more recent Deathadder V4 Pro, but it’s still an impressive figure overall. It also delivers that longevity while running at a reasonably speedy 1kHz, polling rate too, not restricted to a slow 250Hz or using Bluetooth (which this mouse doesn’t support).
This mouse can, of course, also ramp up to 2kHz, 4kHz, and even 8kHz polling rates, but with ever-decreasing battery life as a result, and an ever diminishing affect on performance. The new mouse uses the same wireless puck introduced with the Deathadder V4 Pro. This satisfyingly weighty unit, with its three green lights to indicate connection status, battery life, and polling rate, sits at the end of the USB-A to USB-C cable, and you’ll need to remove it to charge the mouse via its front USB-C port.
The other big change with this mouse is its reduction in weight, from the 54g of the V4 Pro to just 49g. That’s still not quite at the level of what would now be considered an ultra-light mouse, but it still makes for a decently light option. For comparison, the truly ultra-light Corsair Sabre V2 Pro is just 36g, but the new flagship Logitech mouse, the G Pro X2 Superstrike, is 61g.
Another difference compared to that Logitech mouse is that the Viper V4 Pro does include one extra button, over and above its left, right, middle, and side buttons. On its underside is a DPI switching button that can be used to switch between DPI settings with a tap, or, if you hold it down while scrolling the wheel, you can even fine-tune settings on the fly.
For switches, Razer hasn’t yet managed to engineer a copycat version of Logitech’s Superstrike technology, but instead, this mouse relies on conventional switches. However, these are optical switches that should have no debounce delay, no double-click issues, and they’re rated to last 100 million clicks.
On a similar note, the scroll wheel uses an optical encoder, which Razer says is more accurate and longer lasting than conventional mechanical encoders.
Also launching today is Razer’s Synapse Web, which lets you configure some aspects of your Razer gear via a web interface, rather than having to install Razer Synapse.
Available from today, the Viper V4 Pro price is set at $159.99, making this a typically premium option for a flagship Razer mouse.
A new Razer Gigantus V2 Pro mouse mat range has also landed on Razer’s store today. Like the SteelSeries QcK Performance range, it offers several different speed options to suit your play style. From Max Control, which uses a softer foam and rougher top surface for low mouse speed and high stopping power, to Max Speed, which uses a denser foam and ultra-slick top surface, there are five different options priced at $49.99.
