Razer Imperator 2012 Expert Dual Sensor Gaming Mouse Review

PerformanceFirstly, we always take a look at the comfort of a mouse and we were fairly impressed, while we doubt that any mouse will be really comfortable to use, this certainly has one of the nicest feels to it of any mouse I have tested. While the mouse isn’t exactly large it manages to give good support for your hand as they seem to have got the design just right – for my hand at least!

The button locations are also fairly well thought out, and of course with the ability to move the two thumb buttons you really ought to be able to find the perfect set-up for your hand shape and grip. Of course the range of these two buttons is fairly limited but you can still move the buttons by up to half an inch which certainly makes large difference.

The built in and default ability to change the DPI on the fly is brilliant, you don’t even need to have the drivers installed. The two buttons below the scroll wheel act to either increase the DPI or decrease the DPI. The default settings are quite sensible with 800/1800/4000/5600/6400 and while these are all large gaps I still managed to find the right DPI setting for most applications or games. If you can’t then it is very easy to alter this within the software. Once you do have the software installed you do get a nice little green ‘progress-style bar’ that comes up on the right hand side of your window to tell you which DPI setting you have just switched to. A very simple but neat trick as it certainly doesn’t get in the way of anything for those 2 seconds – and loads over the top of any window.

Moving to the already spoken about software, there were certainly a few things I didn’t like, for instance, every time you try to load the software up, it has to load the full 7 profiles from the mouse itself, and this isn’t exactly quick. I did, time this to take a good 12 seconds before the actual software loads, and while this isn’t too long, it does it every time you try to access the software. This seems especially stupid when you can’t change the profile settings on the mouse so therefore they must still be the same as when the software last ran up – or at least, highly likely. On top of this, every time you press Apply or Ok it has to then re-write all 7 profiles to the mouse, even if you haven’t changed 6 of them!

Sticking with the software there are many things I did like, On-The-Fly sensitivity options can be assigned to a button click which I find brilliant for making that odd 100 DPI adjustment. On top of this it has given us loads of other very useful options in a very easy to use interface, and instead of spending 10 minutes looking for the option I wanted to adjust I had the mouse set-up to how I like within seconds of the software loading up. Macro creation also works effortlessly and it allows you to chose whether it records delays in between button clicks or whether it should add a default 50 ms delay. They really have thought of everything, but at the same time kept it simple. Just like the lighting page which gives you two options to turn the scroll wheel light on or off and the Razer logo light on or off. What could possibly be better than that?

The performance of this mouse is very impressive, the dual sensors really do allow it to work on any surface that you are likely to use, and it is unbelievably precise. The ultra high DPI has got to be a huge bonus for some people and if for some reason you did want a low DPI it does go all the way down to 100 DPI. As you have a lot of simple customisation this mouse will suit everyone, whether for gaming or using Photoshop or to just playing good old minesweeper.