I wouldn't blame you if you're looking at the image above with your head tilted to one side like a curious dog. Razer, a brand I associate with some rather excellent gaming mice, has announced two productivity-focussed squeakers, the $100 Pro Click V2 and the $120 Pro Click V2 Vertical Edition. Guess which one the mouse above is. Go on, I dare you.
The Vertical Edition is, as I'm sure you've noticed, on a considerable tilt. 71.7º, to be precise, which puts it into a handshake-like position for ergonomic comfort (via Techpowerup). It's far from the first ergonomic mouse on the market tilted to such an angle, but there's something about seeing a familiar Razer-style chassis askew that's making my eyes cross.
The standard Razer Pro Click V2 looks to be a much more traditional affair, with a minor 30º tilted angle for a more neutral position. Both mice are the first to integrate Razer's AI Prompt Master, an AI productivity feature to "streamline the prompt creation process." Sorry, I nodded off there. Back to the interesting stuff.
It seems gaming-capable ergo-mice are the order of the day at the moment, as Keychron recently announced the M5 wireless ergonomic mouse with 8K polling.
The Pro Click V2 Vertical Edition makes use of Razer's HyperSpeed Wireless dongle, which is only rated to 1,000 Hz, but with a 30,000 DPI Focus Pro optical sensor and a 550 IPS max speed rating I'd imagine it'll still be pretty good for the odd bit of online headshottery—if you can get used to the handshake position, that is.
What's more of an issue, however, is the weight. I'm not bothered by a heavier mouse, but at 150 g it's quite the porker. As my colleague Nick Evanson (our resident ergo-mouse expert) has often pointed out, however, it's not so much the weight of an ergonomic mouse that's an issue, more the distribution of it.
It's pretty wide on the bottom by the looks of things, so hopefully it doesn't tip over as easily as some of the other mice Nick has tested. The other headline news is the battery life, which Razer says goes up to six months with the RGB disabled. That's a pretty impressive figure, and certainly suits a mouse with productivity credentials.
And likely contributes to that hefty weight figure, I'd wager. A big battery makes for a heavier mouse, but in the grand scheme of things it's a bit of a pain to charge up everyday peripherals on the regular. More battery life than you'd expect is always a good thing, in my book.
So, Razer is making fresh moves into the productivity mouse sector it seems, and I'd be curious to give either model a try and there's one in the post our way as I type. I'm lucky enough not to experience wrist pain over long mousing sessions, but as my years increase I assume it's only a matter of time until I start rubbing my wrists with the best of them.
A productivity-focussed yet gaming-capable ergonomic mouse might be in my future, as my bones gradually grind together to remind me of my age. A Razer model? Why not, I guess. At least I'll have some cool RGB lighting to remind me I'm still a big kid at heart.
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