Razer BoomSlang CE 2007 Mouse
The Good: Amazing responsiveness, cool green lighting, smooth, and leftie-capable. Adjustable in every way, with multiple profiles for quickly switching to a different gaming environment.
The Bad: It's sold out. And it's a bit low-profile for some handses. (Edit: may be available again now, check link above, currently shows 12/27/2007 availability)
The Ugly: $99 smackers is a high price to pay.
Some of you remember the original BoomSlang ball mouse, way way way back in the 90s. A few of you weren't born and have never had the pleasure of forcing a ball mouse across a crumb-strewn mousepad. (This may be an exaggeration, as the BoomSlang hit in 1999, and you're most likely over the age of 8, at least physically).
Ball mice were pretty generic at the time, when along came Razer with the original BoomSlang. As some StrafeRight forum members will adamantly let you know, the low-profile and massive buttons caused them too much distress to use. Others will tell you it's the best mouse ever. I'm in-between – I liked the original, but it did take some getting used to.
Since a 3-minute search of my garage stash did not reveal my old Boomer (I did find some 5.25” disks with Tank Wars, Chopper Commando, Cunning Football, Battle for Atlantis and Duke Nukem, if anyone still has a PC-compatible from roughly 1989), so
I have to go on my Alzheimer's-tinged memory, and say that I believe the measurements of the new mouse are very close to identical to the old. Low, wide, and with massive buttons.
The specs are reasonably impressive, if you're not a simple DPI whore, and you realize that a billion DPI is basically unusable. The BoomSlang boasts Razer's 1800dpi 3G infrared sensor, 1000hz/1ms response, 32kb onboard memory, 5 programmable buttons, and various other selling points not worth listing, except for on-the-fly adjustment that is a hallmark of high-end gaming mice. A 7-ft cord leaves plenty of room to connect.
It comes well-packaged in a nice Razer box, complete with the same type of tin can you received if you bought the original. You also receive a credit-card style numbered certificate showing that you were one of the privileged few (10,000) to drop a hundred bucks on the release date. While this is impressive, the potential for its use as a pick-up line is limited. That's about it for inclusions, other than the driver CD and 2 manuals, which I promptly ignored.
The foam bedding, though, protects your titanium-bodied BoomSlang in its virginal state for you to deflower (too much?). I think unboxing photos are ridiculous, but people love them, so I've included a few.
Looky Looky: 
Compared to Logitech's MX518 and 510, you can see the low-slung but wide Boomer and how it differs. While it is quite similar in size to the ball version, the 2007 BoomSlang is actually much easier to adjust to, mostly because the position of the ball on the original was so much different than other mice at the time. The BoomSlang is well weighted, not too heavy or light, very comparable to other gaming mice.
Although it is low to the ground, doing a hands-on comparison revealed to me that I don't really rest my palm or any other part of my hand on regular mice, anyway, but simply pivot on my wrist – so the profile didn't affect me as much as I had feared. I've only used the BoomSlang for a few hours, but I didn't notice any kind of tiredness in my hand – it was very comfortable.
The titanium body is cool to the touch, but you're mostly touching the rubberized grips of the sides, and the similarly coated top buttons. Speaking of which, the buttons are very large and very easy to click, but not overly sensitive, so don't worry about accidentally pressing down. The scroll wheel does have a very clicky feel AND sound, one of the few quibbles I have with it. This makes it very obvious when you've advanced the wheel, and seems exaggerated.
The large side buttons are customizable, and easy to find and click, unlike some of the newer mice which stack multiple buttons on each side, some with very small surface area making it hard to grab while panicking at a DennyCrane rush. One large button on each side is SO much easier to use.
The mouse feet are smooth and slide well, and Razer does include a single sheet of replacement stickers for when you grind away the originals. Nice, but I'll lose them quickly enough.
Install time:
I popped the USB into the gaming PC and ran the CD to install the software. Though I already had Razer's Copperhead installed, it adds a BoomSlang option, so you could switch back and forth. While the mouse-tweaking software is very similar, there are a few differences unique to the BoomSlang. The most obvious is the on-off of both the scroll-wheel light and the 'ring' light underneath the mouse. All settings are immediately implemented as soon as you hit the “Apply” button.
I won't go into all the details of the software, but you can play with DPI settings, polling rates, assign double-click speeds, assign different actions to each of the 5 buttons, adjust sensitivity, scroll speed, even insert delays – and save them all to 5 different profiles.
Perennial adjustment guru Relly would be in the mouse software for roughly 45 minutes. Most of you will take about 3.
I dropped my DPI down to 800 with high sensitivity, as the 1800 is way too twitchy for me. I found the 800 to be perfect for both desktop applications and gaming, but some of you might keep it at 1800 with lowered sensitivity, for quick turn-arounds and such.
Gaming was pretty easy to get into, and with all the adjustment tweaks, was quick to adjust to my style.
Final thoughts:
If you're an old BoomSlang user, you'll like the new one even more – there is almost no 'getting used' to stage with this one, which I did fear at first.
If you're a new Boomer, I think you'll enjoy the large buttons and feel of the mouse. It may, however, be an acquired taste, but much less so than the original ballSlang.
For now, I give it a 9 out of 10, for incredible adjustability, ambidextrous usage, surprisingly easy adjustment, and a cool different look. I don't, though, think it's worth so much more cash than Logitech's MX518/G5/G7, or Razer's Copperhead/Diamondback.
It also loses points for an overly-clicky scroll wheel.
(Win the #1 Boomslang now!
Razer's Biggest Fan | Razer | For Gamers. By Gamers.™)
Questions welcome, and we have one or two other members on the forums with the BoomSlang, also, who are welcome to comment here.
