The Razer Imperator! The name itself asserts the mouse’s bold presence and instills fear in the hearts of opponent gamers. And on first inspection, it is instantaneously clear that the Imperator is totally a right-handed mouse and not one of those ergonomic ones. Leaning slightly to the right it cradles the ball of the hand, and provides a niche for the fingers and thumb to sit. An array of customization features comes along for the ride so that you can precisely adjust and tune it to your playing and working style, although it is probably more suited for quick, responsive gaming than it is for anything else. The glow from the wheel and logo on its back make it look cool, if this doesn’t otherwise provide much functionality. Although you need to look at the blue haze from above to actually get a real sense of it.
The Imperator has two buttons, forward and back, just above the wide ridge for the thumb. These can be used to navigate the Windows Explorer and the Internet Explorer pages forward and backward. They can also be physically adjusted to a position which allows for easy thumb access. The button for this is at the bottom of the mouse and has five positional settings. Navigating forwards and backwards also works with Mozilla Firefox, and could possibly work with other web browsers. Another extremely nifty feature of the Razer Imperator is that you can adjust its sensitivity using two buttons placed just posterior to the mouse wheel. One increases its sensitivity while the other decreases it. We just loved this feature. So easy, so quick, so simple. With a few clicks you can drastically alter the sensitivity, although the jumps in sensitivity are quite large by default, and hence give less control. But you can set the number of stages as well as the amount of sensitivity difference between each, up to a maximum of 5 sensitivity stages.
All the buttons can be customized though, and you can practically use any combination of buttons to change mouse sensitivity. But in order to do this you must download and install the Razer Imperator driver. The mouse will work even without it, but you won’t be able to customize buttons and other things. The inclusion of Macros is a nice feature. You can record up to eight keystroke events and package them into one macro. This will allow you to execute a chain of commands with the press of just one button, which can come in real handy while playing competitive video games.
That being said, it was time to take the mouse into a few video games to see just how it would stand up to fast action, repeated clicking and precision shooting. Playing Counter Strike, the Imperator’s edge became apparent. Being a laser mouse, the Imperator pulls its weight well. It is much heavier than your regular laser mice. And this adds to the Imperator’s stability when it is most needed, in games like Counter Strike where quick as well as accurate movements are extremely crucial. What we loved was that even mid-CS the sensitivity of the mouse could be adjusted. Just what we needed, moving from strength to strength when switching from sniper mode to assault, and vice versa. Even in Quake 3 for the PC, the mouse delivered. And had we programmed a few macros into the Imperator’s functioning, we might have come out on top without even so much as a minor hitch. As it is, Quake 3 is an extremely fast-paced game, even more so than Counter Strike. And just the thought of shooting out a lightening flurry of rounds at multiple opponents with the single click of a button makes us want to jump into more challenging games, confident that we’ll go in hard and fast, and come out clean and smiling.
It’s quite a simple mouse though, the Imperator. Not too many buttons all over, clogging up the look and feel, just the absolutely essential. It also has good styling, and looks like something right out of a science fiction movie. In terms of comfort, the mouse didn’t give us any trouble and seems like playing for hours should be a cinch. When we reviewed the PS3 Slim, we referred to it as ‘sexy’. That’s not the case here. The Razer Imperator has the ‘ugly’ look which many fast, futuristic supercars have been criticized for, including the 2009 Formula One cars, except it doesn’t have fins sticking out all over its body. Everything about the Imperator is high tech, including the connecting cable, which looks like something Agent 47 might use to strangulate innocents. The Razer Imperator also has a laser which is invisible to the naked eye and which, the manual says, is set to always-on mode. This beam should never be pointed into one’s eyes as it could prove harmful. But because it can’t be seen even if looked at directly, the beam can prove to be quite a risk. And you wouldn’t even know it.
What we didn’t like / could have been improved / incorporated:
The Razer logo on the Imperator’s back does a slow alternate, fading out completely from full-on. It would be really amazing if you could customize the pattern and sequence of this dynamic lighting function. Also, the positioning of the default sensitivity control buttons makes it a bit difficult to get to on-the-fly. Although you can customize any other buttons to control sensitivity, these buttons, just posterior to the scroll wheel, are a bit hard to get to, and programming them with any other function too would make that function difficult to access.
The Final Word: All in all, The Razer Imperator is a great high-quality mouse. It can even store up to five profiles on its memory, allowing you to take your personalized settings with you wherever you go. Priced at 79.99 USD (approx. Rs. 3,705), the Imperator finds itself at the higher end of Razer mice, but it certainly delivers and should be the preference of many gamers even after just a single use. It makes you feel like you’re in control, something that every high-end mouse must endeavor to achieve.
Looks: 8.7/10.
Functionality: 8.9/10.
Comfort: 9.2/10.
Overall (not an average): 9.1/10.