Razer Boomslang 20th Anniversary Mouse Review: For Collectors | WIRED

$1,337 at Razer Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Rating: 7 /10 Open rating explainer Information WIRED Unique throwback design. Top-of-the-line specs. PU leather-wrapped body. Ambidextrous shape with mirrored buttons. Wireless charging. Includes an exploded mouse in a backlit frame. TIRED Absurd price. Shape doesn’t feel great if you aren’t nostalgic for it. 100-plus grams. No Bluetooth connectivity. No USB charging or wired connectivity. The Razer Boomslang 20th Anniversary Edition gaming mouse costs over one thousand dollars. $1,337, to be specific. I was surprised. Everyone I mentioned this to was surprised. Even the Razer representative hosting the press conference seemed surprised. It’s not made of gold. It doesn’t even have real leather on the leather-wrapped components. It’s a plastic-based polyurethane leather, attached to a transparent plastic shell. For $1,337. According to Razer, you aren’t paying just for the throwback shape. You’re paying for the prestige of what the brand calls the “exotic supercar of mice.” It’s something they admit will be, for most buyers, a display piece more than an actual, functional mouse—they even send you a framed, broken-down version with each functional mouse. Is there any actual reason to spend this money on a “leet” mouse that looks like a Ghost from Halo and comes with a display case? For many, there was; I received this mouse only a day before preorders started, and the 1,337 units sold out almost immediately. If you want one now, you’re likely going to be stuck spending nearly $2,000 on the aftermarket . Clickable History There couldn’t be a better time for Razer to release a reimagined version of its first mouse: The transparent, rounded, and futuristic designs of the early 2000s have swung back around to being cool in the public eye, and a retro mouse like this (as much as it hurts to call this “retro”) is exactly the kind of thing I expected every brand to be pushing for. The Razer Boomslang was originally released in 1999, making this a bit late for the “20th Anniversary” it’s supposedly celebrating. The Razer brand was first founded as a subsidiary of Kärna LLC in 1998, shutting down only two years later when Kärna filed for bankruptcy. The brand was revived five years later, rereleasing the Boomslang as the new Razer’s debut mouse and establishing the 20th Anniversary in question. Razer claims the Boomslang to be the first gaming mouse ever made. It introduced a 2,000 DPI sensor, gaming-focused shape, and precise functionality that was previously unheard of in gaming (but if you ask me, any mouse can be a gaming mouse when you use it for gaming). While “Boomslang” may sound like the name of a bomb-lobbing slingshot from a Borderlands game, I was shocked to learn that it’s actually the name of a venomous green-and-black snake native to Sub-Saharan Africa. Translated from Dutch and Afrikaans, the name quite literally means “tree snake.” The coloration and snakes’ head shape presumably served as inspiration for the shape of the mouse and its transparent green colorway. Even the pricing is a not-very-subtle reference. For those that weren’t online back in the day, “1337” is an example of “leetspeak,” which consists mostly of replacing letters with numbers and modifying the spelling of certain phrases, either to evoke more-specific meanings or bypass text filters. “1337” was “LEET,” which was an intentional misspelling of “elite,” and being the first half of “1337 H4X0R,” a ridiculous way to write “elite hacker,” since being a hacker was the coolest thing possible in the Matrix era. Ancient Ergonomics This mouse’s shape is over two decades old. In the interim, mouse ergonomics have advanced a lot. Because of that, I don’t think it’s realistic to hold this design to the standards of today. The original Boomslang came from the era of Xbox’s bulky Duke controller. We had just barely made it past the N64’s beloved three-pronged abomination. At a time when “ergonomics” was a novel idea to be explored instead of a defined concept, this design was a lot more palatable. It’s still a gaming mouse in theory, even if the vast majority of them will spend more time on a shelf than on a mousepad, so I do need to talk about whether it can game. Shockingly enough, it’s not that bad. The shape is unusual, yes. Compared to a standard mouse, the Boomslang is low-slung and wide. It feels like it was designed for an Elite from Halo to hold, their two central fingers and a thumb on each side. It is bizarre and ancient feeling, but it’s not bad. Putting your hand on this mouse, you have to rethink where everything goes. Your thumb curls underneath the main hump, and your pinky mirrors it on the opposite side. There’s enough real estate on the two main buttons for all three fingers to sit comfortably. If you’re like me, and you tend to rest your middle finger on the right mouse button, it’s exceptionally odd. Instead, your middle fin