Razer Taipan

Any lefty knows that this is a world made for the right-handed. From automobile gear-shifts to can-openers and scissors, it's tough to find a hands-on experience that's southpaw-friendly. This is especially true of gaming mice, where ergonomic features are emphasized for comfort over hours of play. Thankfully, the Razer Taipan ($79.99 direct) doesn't discriminate against the left-handed, thanks to an ambidextrous design that offers ergonomic comfort for either hand.

Design
The Taipan isn't a button-studded MMO mouse; rather, it's a basic gaming mouse for first-person shooters (FPS) and point-and-click games?think somewhere in between the Editors' Choice Gigabyte M8000Xtreme Mouse and the bare-bones SteelSeries Kinzu Optical Mouse . The Taipan is outfitted with nine total buttons: Right and Left, a clickable scroll wheel, sensitivity up, sensitivity down, and two pairs of programmable thumb buttons to either side of the mouse. One pair is positioned for right-handed users, the other for lefties. The scroll wheel glows green, and a matching accent lights up the Razer logo positioned under the palm. The scroll wheel is also textured.

The symmetrical design has a thumb contour on both sides of the mouse, making it ergonomic for either hand to use, unlike right-handed mice like the Roccat Savu . The hexagonal snake-skin texture of the rubber lining inside these two thumb contours provides both traction and comfort. The overall design is nice, but it's a little narrow, and sits just a bit too low for comfort, measuring 1.5 by 2.6 by 5.0 inches (HWD). A seven-foot braided USB cable gives you ample freedom of movement while resisting tangles, and the USB 2.0 connector provides power (no need for batteries) and is widely compatible.

While the Taipan will function as a plug and play device on both Windows (Windows 7, Vista, XP) and Mac (OS X 1.6-10.7) systems, you'll definitely want to download Razer's Synapse 2.0 software, which provides tools for tweaking the Taipan to your liking. An added bonus of using Synapse is the automatic syncing to Razer's cloud server, automatically downloading driver and firmware updates and letting you save your settings and port them to other Razer devices. Razer also covers the Taipan with a one-year warranty.

Performance
On the underside of the mouse you will find that the Taipan has not one, but two sensors. By pairing an optical sensor with a laser sensor, Razer has not only made the Taipan extremely accurate, the dual-sensor array actually calibrates itself to whatever surface you happen to be using your mouse on, even if you don't use a specialized gaming mat like the Razer Vespula .

When put through some simple play testing in Team Fortress 2 and Portal, the Taipan was smooth, responsive, and performed like a champ. On-the-fly DPI adjustments were smooth and easy. The only issue I had was that the thumb buttons on the side opposite my thumb protruded just a bit too much, irritating the inside of my ring finger. Since the Taipan has a symmetrical ambidextrous design, it's a problem that will irritate right- and left-handers alike.

All in all, the Razer Taipan is a solid performer, though it has a few small issues, like the irritating buttons and the slightly too-narrow and too-low build. The Editors' Choice Gigabyte M8000Xtreme Mouse offers a wider feature set and more comfortable use, but with the Taipan's solid performance and ambidextrous design, this is a basic gaming mouse that anyone can pick up.

COMPARISON TABLE
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/zL1A3N_HntE/0,2817,2408749,00.asp

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