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If there weren't enough options out there
already for gaming mice, more and more companies are venturing into this
market, including some you may have never thought would jump into input
devices. Heck, even OCZ now has gaming mice. However, this
market is tough for the newcomers and in order to succeed, they need to
design a gaming mouse uniquely enough to catch the eye of many enthusiasts.
With Razer and Logitech currently having the strongest hold of the market, the product
better be impressive and must be marketed well. Apparently, Silverstone
knows this and has boldly ventured into this market with their first and
highly appealing RAVEN gaming mouse. From its unique design to their
new impressive portal site launched to market this new line of upcoming
products, lots of effort was taken here to attempt to convert a number of loyal
enthusiasts. Let's have a detailed look at the first product in this
series...
Packaging & Contents
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I'm
not one to brag much about packaging, but the mouse does ship in highly
appealing and well-designed packaging that maintains that "gothic look" found
in their new and impressive flash-based portal site. If you haven't
seen it yet, you can find it
here.
Moving on, the mouse comes with a software CD and with what is the most
comprehensive user's manual I've seen shipped with a mouse. There's
good reason for this, as I will cover later in this review. The manual
is quite thick and all info is provided in ten different languages.
Design
This mouse sports a very unique design, some features of which many will
highly benefit from and others that will leave many simply trying to adapt.
Due to its somewhat intimidating design, I took the extra effort to provide
very custom digital pictures without flash to give you all the best possible
visual as to how the mouse will truly look in person.
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**click to enlarge** |
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Starting with the top view, it is clear it is quite a busy mouse in terms of
functionality. The Silverstone RAVEN laser mouse has a whopping 11
functional buttons, most of which can be customized. The mouse sports a
roughly all black finish with the exception of the side Flip3D wheel and the
large right-side buttons. It is nicely accented by a carbon fiber palm
rest. However, note that it is covered in clear plastic, not providing
any unique texture and/or feel. Directly above the large, secondary
scroll wheel are two scroll
buttons. The custom picture above was purposely taken this way to hide
the final and highly unique feature found here which I will cover in detail a bit later. Moving on to the bottom of the mouse, you'll find
its twin-eye laser sensor roughly in the bottom center. In addition,
you'll find a manual switch on the bottom that allows you to switch to game
mode for further customization and much higher performance and sensitivity. The Teflon feet do appear somewhat
standard. However, I did have some issues with them as I will cover
later.
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On
the left side is where you'll find that large "eyeball", as many I have
shown this mouse to have labeled it. This basically acts as a
secondary scroll wheel with some differences in terms of functionality and
software support.
No, there's no 360º motion as it may appear to offer. Also, the middle
black area (or "eyelid") is actually one of the eleven buttons that acts as a DPI switch
by default. You'll also find two additional small buttons on this side
of the mouse that act as back/forward buttons by default. The right
side has to very large buttons accented in silver. These buttons act
as page down/up buttons by default.
Specifications
The
following detailed specs were taken directly from the manual...
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