Now going it alone once again, Razer today announced the company's next major gaming mouse, dubbed the Lachesis in keeping with the company's snake-inspired branding tradition. The new mouse looks to be an evolution of the company's last release, the Death Adder (review), in terms of its flared main buttons and matte black color scheme, though the Lachesis design also harkens back even further to Razer's older, ambidextrous designs with narrow waists.
Since we got our hands on it, the Death Adder has been our favorite gaming mouse at IGN Gear, supplanting a long standing predilection for Logitech's G-series mice. The Lachesis, however, does boast some interesting new features that may inspire an upgrade. Chief among these is the fact that the mouse will be the first gaming mouse to sport a 4000-DPI laser engine, outdoing Logitech's upcoming G9 (preview) gaming mouse's 3200-DPI engine that, for a short time, held the title of most sensitive without interpolation. Though not everyone loves ultra sensitive mice, if you've got a lot of screen real-estate, as we do with a dual monitor arrangement, 2000-DPI is nice to have, and we'll be looking forward to seeing how usable this next generation of gaming mice is.
The Lachesis will also feature Razer's usual suite of goodies, including 32KB of onboard memory for saving customized settings, 1000-Hz Ultrapolling, an Always-On mode, 16-bit data path, Ultraslick Teflon feet, and gold-plated USB connector. The Lachesis' nine buttons will each be independently programmable, though two of them will likely be dedicated to on-the-fly sensitivity adjustment in most users' configurations.
When the Lachesis launches in October it will be going to battle with some pretty serious competition that will include Logitech's G9 and Microsoft's SideWinder. Like these other mice in the 2007 generation, the Lachesis will not come cheap thanks to it's retail price of $79.99.