Razer Firefly (Hard Edition)

[Rumble]

Razer Firefly (Hard Edition)
By Kyle "Rumble" Bousquet

Let me ask you something loyal reader: Do you have a fancy RGB mouse? A fancy RGB keyboard? Some lighting in your case? Well then Razer has a product for you. A lighted mouse pad. RGB lighting on the one piece of equipment you never thought you’d see it on. Is it an essential piece of gaming gear? I ask that in a quasi-sarcastic way. I’m a fan of the unified lighting this product brings to your desktop but is it really an area that needed to be invaded with RGB lights? I guess we’ll see by the end of this review.



CONTRUCTION AND MATERIALS

The Razer Firefly is built out of a hard plastic. The surface is textured and Razer claims it is good for both accuracy and speed. I’ve always seen Razer market dual-sided mouse surfaces with one for accuracy and one for speed so claiming this mousepad does both kind of invalidates all their other surfaces, or this one. The mouse pad gets its power for the lights from a standard USB port. The lighting is controlled via the Razer Synapse software and comes with a wide variety of colors and patterns. The USB cord is anchored on the mouse pad by a fairly nice sized plastic raised block that does a good job of at least looking like it will keep the cord from eventually pulling loose someday. So overall the construction is good and the materials are at least adequate.



PERFORMANCE

So that dual capability surface claim I have to take issue with. For years I used a dual-sided Razer mouse pad where one side was set up for accuracy and one side for speed. I tested it on three occasions and could see a discernable difference in the surface depending on what side of the mouse pad I was using and what application or game I was in. I found the accuracy side to be great for Photoshop and World of Warcraft but the speed side awesome for Call of Duty. I’d prefer Razer claimed this mouse surface to be a hybrid surface that gives you a little of both instead of the claims on their website and packaging that say it’s “optimized” for both. I guess I am nitpicking, but I found it to be a nice middle ground and just wish Razer’s claims were more in line with that.



CONCLUSION

I see what Razer is going for here. You’ve got this cool lighting thing going on with all your fans and keyboard and mouse so why not carry that over to the mouse surface? It works on many levels, looks awesome, is a decent surface for gaming and application use, but in the end it’s a little bit too “plastic”. They have recently released a cloth edition of this mouse pad and if Razer wants to get in touch and send me one I’d be happy to review it, but for this mouse surface while it does the job, I just wish it didn’t seem so much like a first attempt (and I am aware it is, in fact, a first attempt). It will absolutely make your setup look awesome and provide a serviceable surface to game on. The $59.99 MSRP is not a bad price in my mind. I just feel like this was a test and the Firefly Cloth Edition might be the real deal. I guess someday I’ll have to find out.


Performance: 8
Appearance: 9
Quality of Construction: 7
Tech and Features: 7

Overall: 7.75

It’s a good mouse pad, and looks good, but I feel like Razer could have done so much better.