Occasionally you come across a product that makes you throw your hands up in the air, gaze towards the heavens, and announce “why?” I had just such a moment earlier today, when viewing a mouse kit that wants you to not only buy a perfectly decent Razer Viper V2 Pro to complete it, but to rip the sticky skates off the bottom, disassemble it, and harvest its delicate PCB from within.
The Zerømouse V34 calls itself the “ultimate aiming experience”, and essentially boils down to a plastic frame that can make use of the Viper V2 Pro’s internals to become another mouse. Only this time presumably lighter, because the Razer squeaker is known to be a heavyweight chonker of a device that…
Oh, it only weighs 58g to begin with, thanks to what Razer calls an “ultra-lightweight design”. Scrap that then.
After disassembling the poor mouse and angling the PCB into the provided housing, which the demonstrator in the installation video admits needs to be inserted in a “very specific way”, you can reassemble the scroll wheel, insert the battery (with optional black sticker for looks!) and then put some skates on the bottom that are the same sort you can buy on Amazon for $10.
After that you can add some “Supergrips” if you don’t like the feel of the plastic, and ta-da, you’ve created a much more uncomfortable-looking mouse than you started with, but presumably a fair bit lighter and smaller than something that was already very light and quite small to start with. Super.
This will cost you a mere $69 for the kit, and of course a whole $150 for the Razer mouse itself, bringing the grand total up to $219. Of course, you could also buy a used or refurbished Viper V2 Pro to save yourself some cash, or even save yourself a whole $69 by just using that mouse in the first place.
I despair, I really do. Still, a market does appear to exist for the Zerømouse V34, as it’s currently sold out on both the US and the UK online store. Come on then, own up, which one of you bought one, and can you please send it to me for review?
Honestly, I’m desperate to know what advantages have been gained by removing the shell from a very capable mouse, beyond the satisfaction of taking it apart and cramming it into a frame that looks like the sort of thing your original peripheral might have been packed in for shipping. The product page says that it’s now an “ergonomic fingertip mouse” which is both wireless, and with low-input lag.
That’ll be those Razer internals for those last two points then, and why you can’t use a regular Viper V2 Pro with your fingertips escapes me at this precise moment in time.
Alright, alright, there is some precedent for this sort of thing, as tinkerers and kit enthusiasts have long competed to create peripherals like this unbearably cute tiny gaming mouse. In that case, I sort of get it. It’s weeny, it’s silly, and it’s quite an impressive feat of engineering. The sort of peripheral you might create simply for the novelty value, not the ergonomics.
Perhaps some competitive gamers might want one because it’s so small, because small is…faster? I really don’t know. For me though, I really can’t see the point. Takes all sorts I suppose, although in this case, count me well and truly out.