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Today is one of the happiest days of my Razer life because today is the day that we finally unveiled the Razer Mamba wireless gaming mouse. I don’t know how many of you are original, longtime Razer friends and fans but this is a dream that we began and actually announced roughly 8 years ago.
There are a number of reasons why we stuttered during the development of the Mamba and there is no way I can convince you that it takes 8 years to create a masterpiece. Over these many years of trial and error, we had a dream of creating the truly first wireless gaming mouse. Yes I know that there are a number of other wireless mice available but trust me when I tell you that they are not worthy of the title wireless gaming mice. If you don’t agree with this statement go to any BYOC, live gaming event, large LAN party, gaming center or arcade and see how many wireless mice are in use … freakin NONE!
From the beginning of its development we had four hard and fast rules that had to be perfected in order to make the Mamba a wireless gaming mouse. Overall it MUST perform exactly as a wired version of the best gaming mouse in the world. It had to limit latency to 1ms. It could not weigh more than a wired mouse. The battery life needed to be at least 9 hours or more (I’ll explain the more part later). And lastly signal conflict had to be mitigated as much as humanly possible.
I have searched our archives to find some original Mamba images and these date back to 2001. Back then all we made was the original Boomslang ball assembly mouse. If you recall that mouse gained critical acclaim as the first and original gaming mouse. We needed to follow up the success of the Boomslang with a wireless mouse and the gamers we interviewed at that time wanted a right-handed design.
After a year of research and development we began to run out of money. Since we had already announced the Mamba to our fans we came up with a less-than-genius plan to enlist our fan’s support and raise a little capital to “Save the Mamba”. Since this mouse was an endangered species in 2002 we printed Save the Mamba tee shirts and baseball caps and used the proceeds to keep the flame of creativity afire.
At that time (2002) technology limited us to a 2000 DPI, 900Hz mouse that weighted in at 180g with the batteries. I guess it was a good thing that we fumbled all those years as the 2009 version of the Mamba is 5600 DPI laser at 2.4GHz and weighs in at an amazing 129g even with the battery in place.
Again, and I repeat myself, with a firmware latency limited to 1 freakin millisecond!
I’m going to delve into much deeper information in this blog than my usual pithy approach because 1) you need to know what a huge achievement this is and 2) how truly excited I am regarding this mouse. So here is some of the official Mamba specs …
Mamba Specs
Wired Latency
• 1ms (Ultrapolling)
Wireless Latency
• 1ms (Ultrapolling)
Weight of Mamba
• With Battery – 129g
• Without Battery – 108g
Weight of MX 1000
• 169g
Weight of G7 in grams
• With Battery – 134g
• Without Battery – 115g
Time Required to Fully Charge Battery
• Timing required for both Dock and USB is the same. Difference is in switch settings.
• Mamba switch in ON position – 5 hours
• Mamba switch in OFF position – 4 hours
Battery Life
• Continuous Gaming Usage – 14 hours
• Normal Gaming Usage – 72 hours
Default DPI Settings
• 5 Settings are available on the mouse by default – 800, 1200, 1800, 4000, 5600
1800DPI is the default setting
Earlier in this post I alluded to extended battery life and “more”. The more part relates to one of the coolest features of the Mamba. The mouse performs in dual-mode wireless and wired functionality. You will be able to switch quickly between the freedom of wireless into the frenzy of wired play with zero down time for charging. The USB cable can be easily and instantly switched from the charger unit directly into the mouse. It’s diabolically cool.
Mamba Q and A
Also in order to better to anticipate your many questions here is a beginning Q and A. Please write me back through this blog with any other questions and I will do my best to answer them and also update this Q and A so everyone else can read them.
Q. How is it possible to have 1ms polling rate in wireless mode when the mouse supposedly communicates to the receiver at 1000hz and then the receiver communicates to the computer at a rate of 1000hz – theoretically this would degrade signal strength by 25% unless there is a repeater type function built into the receiver itself. While testing I have found the Mamba in wireless mode to be indeed around 750hz, not 1000hz. Please keep in mind my findings are based off of the windows drivers and I will test again when I have access to the proper drivers.
A. Ultrapolling is a hardware level optimization. The mouse hardware, wireless transmission and reception and USB communications are tuned to send information from the mouse hardware to the PC at a 1000 times a second (A frequency of 1000Hz / a 1ms interval).
This is a hardware feature. It is active all the time. It is active whether or not data is sent by the mouse and received by the PC.
Software that measures polling frequency captures data received by the PC system. This software measurement is always lower than the hardware setting. It varies depending on the frequency of data sent by the mouse to the PC. It is not representative of the hardware setting.
Q. Will the Mamba communicate with more than one receiver at a time?
A. Our engineers have attempted to get a single Mamba mouse to work simultaneously with two charging docks. It has not been possible on our end.
If it was meant that two Mamba mice are able to be paired to a single Charging Dock, this is enabled for debugging purposes. It shall not be possible with customer hardware.
Q. Does the Mamba have dynamic power scaling?
A. No, the Mamba is tuned for gaming performance and all hardware equipment is provided with the required power at a constant rate.
The Mamba utilizes Power Management where it enters into a standby state after it remains idle for a few minutes. This is done to extend the time before a recharge is required.
Q. Do we have the R&D preliminary studies with an in-depth performance analysis?
A. What we can provide is a comparison of communication latency across the various wireless mouse technologies:
o Bluetooth – 14ms
o Generic 2.4Ghz – 8ms
o Gaming Grade 2.4Ghz – 2ms
o Razer Mamba – 1ms
Q. Razer Mamba security features, what are they?
A. The Razer Mamba utilizes a proprietary wireless protocol.
The pairing of Dock and Mouse utilizes a proprietary pairing protocol.
No encryption of the signal is made as this would affect performance.
Q. What are the hardware DPI intervals to?
A. 800 DPI is the minimum gaming-grade DPI setting.
If lower DPI values are desired, they are able to be configured via the software drivers.
Q. Are any of these claims for longer battery life in wireless mode than competitors valid?
A. Our proprietary laser sensor gives more power with less power drawn
Increase in battery cells and quality
Firmware/Drivers/Software
The Razer Mamba’s Laser sensor is able to deliver gaming-grade performance while drawing less power.
It uses a high-grade, rechargeable Lithium-Ion Polymer battery.
The Razer Mamba was designed for gaming performance with an extended battery life. This is accomplished with optimized electronics and power management. The Mamba is a Razer gaming-grade mouse of the highest order. As responsiveness and accuracy are key to gaming performance, where and how you move the mouse is exactly how the cursor responds.
To wrap up this post I wanted to express my personal gratitude to our development and firmware teams who have worked hours, months and years on this amazing piece of engineering. This is truly quality product and the estimated MSRP of $129.99US reflects the craftsmanship and attention to detail that those of you who desire a wireless gaming mouse can expect. My best guess of retail availability is early April of this year.
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