Razer Basilisk X Hyperspeed Review

The Razer Basilisk X Hyperspeed ($60) is part of a promising new trend. Rather than restricting wireless gaming mice to the $100+ category, manufacturers are starting to sell peripherals in the $50-60 range, admittedly with a lot of the bells and whistles stripped out. And that sums up the Basilisk X Hyperspeed pretty well: a decent gadget with no bells and whistles.

Still, given what the competition costs, I'm not sure why Razer had to cut out quite so much. The natural point of comparison for the Basilisk X Hyperspeed is the Corsair Harpoon RGB Wireless, which costs $50 and offers full RGB lighting in addition to almost every feature that the Basilisk X Hyperspeed sports.

On its own merits, the Basilisk X Hyperspeed is a decent enough mouse at a fair price. But compared to the Razer Basilisk Ultimate ($150), this mouse leaves out a lot of useful features, and compared to the best gaming mice in its price range, it doesn't do quite enough. Consider this one a "maybe."

Design

The Basilisk X Hyperspeed is similar to the original Razer Basilisk mouse, but with a few key alterations. The thumb rest is much longer, the base is a bit broader, and an aesthetically pleasing plastic curve spans the device's face.

But while this mouse looks pretty, it has lost a few things in translation from the previous model. First and foremost, there's only one dots-per-inch (DPI) sensitivity button on the face of the mouse, meaning you can't adjust DPI both ways on the fly (unless you want to program your thumb buttons to do so). Importantly, the Basilisk X Hyperspeed has lost the mouse's signature paddle, a protruding button that makes it easier to slow down first-person shooters into a lower-DPI "sniper" mode. Without that feature, the mouse feels much less distinctive.

Beyond that, there's a left button, a right button and not much else. You can crack the bottom of the mouse open to store the USB dongle or change the single AA battery. On the bottom, there's a power button that also alternates the gadget between 2.4-Ghz wireless and Bluetooth modes.

Features

When it comes to software, Razer Synapse is not quite as clean as I'd like it to be. While it's fairly easy to reprogram the thumb buttons with a variety of commands, setting up profiles is a huge process. You can't simply create a new profile and sync all of your Razer gear with it; you have to select your gadget from a list, assign it to a game (games have pictographic "tiles" rather than titles), change tabs, assign buttons and then change tabs again to get back to your default desktop profile. However, not every title loads a picture properly, so you may be stuck scratching your head, wondering which "broken symbol" icon is the game you want to play.

Also, some games work and some don't. When I assigned hot keys to the thumb buttons in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, these assignments worked beautifully, letting me construct houses and attack-move effortlessly. But when I assigned buttons in Final Fantasy XIV, they had no function at all, leaving me helplessly dancing back and forth when I wanted to be dishing out special attacks.

In any case, the software kind of works. What's absent entirely is any kind of lighting. Since the Corsair Harpoon RGB offers a completely lit-up palm rest, it's odd that the Basilisk X Hyperspeed costs $10 more and doesn't offer this feature. All you get is a tiny LED light on the DPI button that tells you if the mouse is in Bluetooth-pairing mode or if the battery is low.

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The battery shouldn't be low too often, at least. Razer estimates that you can get more than 200 hours via Wi-Fi and more than 400 hours via Bluetooth, and my tests were pretty much in line with this. (For the record, if you gamed for 8 hours per day, that's more than 25 or 50 days, respectively.) While the battery life is good, it's disappointing to have to use a replaceable battery rather than a rechargeable lithium-ion model.

The wireless functionality isn't perfect, either. One of the key requirements of a wireless mouse is that it can never drop signals or freeze, and while the Basilisk X Hyperspeed didn't do the former (even at about 30 feet of distance), it did do the latter. While I was in the middle of fighting off an English army in AoE II: DE, the mouse completely stopped responding and required a reboot. This happened only once during my few days with the mouse, but even once is too many times. Had this happened during a multiplayer match, that would have been the end of things for me.

Performance

Aside from the aforementioned glitches, the Basilisk X Hyperspeed did well in game. I was able to run and gun in Overwatch, pick the perfect cards in Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales, build up armies in AoE II: DE, and embark on epic quests in FFXIV. The mouse responded to each command precisely and accurately.

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This isn't really a criticism, but MMO players should still be aware: To use macros, you'll have to install an optional component in the Synapse software. You'll get a prompt for this when you install the program, but if you need to fine-tune macros, just remember to click the check box when you have the option.

Bottom line

For its price and core functionality, the Basilisk X Hyperspeed should be a very desirable mouse — and yet I have a hard time recommending it. The mouse does similar things to the Harpoon RGB Wireless and the Logitech G305 ($60), but it doesn't do them as well as either one of those affordable wireless gaming mice. There's no lighting, the software is mercurial, and this model ditches one of the Basilisk line's best features. Even though the high-end Razer Basilisk Ultimate costs more than twice as much, you're much better off with that model.

If you do go with the Basilisk X Hyperspeed, it'll probably work just fine. But even in this price range, you can get a much better wireless gaming mouse.