Razer Basilisk Ultimate Review

Razer's latest premium wireless gaming mouse, the Basilisk Ultimate, pushes gaming mice to a new standard with smarter internal and external features. 

For $169, the Basilisk Ultimate offers great wireless performance paired with a neat adjustable scroll wheel that's packed into a comfortable design. You also get a cool charging dock as well as some solid software. 

If you can afford its steep $169 asking price, the Basilisk Ultimate is one of the best gaming mice you can buy right now.

Design

The Basilisk Ultimate sports a slick, black shell dazzled with Razer's Chroma RGB lighting. At 4.6 x 2.79 x 1.49 inches and 107 grams (3.77 ounces), the Basilisk Ultimate felt like a good size and weight for my hands while working and gaming.

There's an RGB-lit Razer logo at the palm rest, which is a boxcutter-shaped panel surrounded by a glossy black accent. Beyond the glossy bit are the left and right clickers, and in between their stylishly carved shapes are an RGB-lit scroll wheel and two DPI buttons.

There's a grippable panel on the right side of the mouse for your ring and pinkie finger, and another for your thumb on the left, which is home to two discrete buttons as well as a multifunction paddle. The left side's grip curves outward at the bottom to give the thumb somewhere to rest. Both sides have a thin RGB lighting zone right under the left and right mouse buttons. 

The front of the mouse holds a slot for a micro USB port, which can be used to charge the mouse and go into wired mode. Meanwhile, the underside houses the 2.4-GHz wireless USB dongle beneath a plastic door. You can also find a rocker to change the resistance of the scroll wheel, which is awesome. Along with that is a button to change the profiles of the Basilisk Ultimate, of which you have five to completely customize.

Like the Razer Viper Ultimate, the Basilisk Ultimate comes with a Razer Chroma mouse-charging dock (bundled for $169; $49 separately), which is a cute little dock surrounded with Chroma RGB lighting at the bottom. There's a blacked-out Razer logo at the base just below the magnetic two-prong charging port and a USB Type-A port above that, designated for the mouse's 2.4-GHz wireless USB dongle. The Basilisk Ultimate worked seamlessly with the dock, thanks to the magnetic bottom.

The Basilisk Ultimate mostly fits the contours of my hand. What I love most about it is the thumb grip — my thumb has never felt more comfortable. The grip for my ring and pinkie finger could've been better, but most mice don't accommodate them very well either. The adjustable scroll wheel is superneat to mess around with, and the scroll wheel itself is much better than that of the Viper Ultimate, which is too small for me. 

The main left and right buttons are a little shallow, but still have a sharp, satisfying click. Meanwhile, the palm rest mostly catered to the top half of my palm instead the general center, which is where I think the mouse could be improved. While the Basilisk Ultimate isn't as easy to lift as the Viper Ultimate, it still felt relatively light in my hand. Overall, the Basilisk Ultimate is comfortable to use.

Features

Like the Viper Ultimate, the Basilisk Ultimate is packed with a bunch of new tech, and it's all fully powered by the Razer Synapse app.

You can configure the Basilisk Ultimate's 11 programmable buttons via the Customize tab in the Razer Synapse app. If you're looking to change the DPI, take a trip to the Performance tab, where Synapse will give you the option to set the DPI in five stages, each number going from 100 to 20,000. Meanwhile, you can customize the 14 RGB lighting zones in the Lighting tab, which gives you full access to Razer's Chroma tools, so you can run with basic effects like Wave or design your own in Razer's Chroma Studio. The two other tabs in the app let you customize the calibration and power modes of the mouse.

The Basilisk Ultimate is rated to last 100 hours on a charge with the lighting disabled, so you can game for 5 hours a day for 20 days straight, or even 10 hours a day for 10 days if you want (perfect for when Death Stranding on PC comes out). And like the Viper Ultimate, you can simply throw the mouse on the charging dock at the end of a session, so battery life isn't much of an issue. The charging dock indicates your mouse's current charge level with these colors: red (<25%), orange (26% to 50%), yellow (51% to 75%) and green (76% to 99% breathing, 100% static).

However, I tested the battery with the lighting on at 100% and the battery went from 24% to 4% in a matter of a few hours, which was a little concerning. So if you plan on gaming for long sessions, I recommend turning the lights down or off completely.

According to Razer, the Basilisk Ultimate's optical switches are more durable than the ones on a traditional mouse: They're rated for 70 million clicks as opposed to 50 million clicks.

Performance

Gaming with the Basilisk Ultimate felt natural.

In Doom, I queued up arcade mode and destroyed demons like nobody's business, from nailing precise headshots with my pistol, to fluently mashing the multifunction paddle to melee and executing some fools. Every mouse should have a paddle in addition to the two buttons on the left-hand side like the Basilisk Ultimate does.

In Remnant: From the Ashes, the Basilisk Ultimate helped me consistently land shots on every monster's weak points. And being able to switch DPI on the fly helped me make quick turns when I needed to.

In Age of Empires III, I felt comfortable using the Basilisk Ultimate for a long period of time, doing simple tasks like sending Villagers to go cut down trees, or telling my people to build walls around my small town. Of course, the mouse was superresponsive when my snap reflexes needed to come out during a skirmish.

The Basilisk Ultimate, along with the rest of Razer's recently unveiled mice, has an edge in performance over the competition, thanks to its hardware. Its optical switches use an infrared light beam to register a click, which gives the mouse a response time of 0.2 milliseconds.

With the Razer Focus+ optical sensor, the Basilisk Ultimate also has smart tracking (calibrates the sensor depending on the surface the mouse is on), asymmetric liftoff (enables different liftoff presetting) and motion sync (improves sensor responsiveness). According to Razer, the sensor has a 99.6% resolution accuracy and a tracking speed of 650 inches per second (IPS).

Unlike typical mice, the Basilisk Ultimate's mouse feet are made of PTFE (Teflon), which is designed to increase the glide. It worked with the Viper Ultimate and it works with the Basilisk Ultimate. The glide is so smooth that it felt like someone placed a silk sheet under my mouse.

On top of that, Razer claims that its wireless technology is 25% faster than that of any other gaming mouse.

Bottom line

The Razer Basilisk Ultimate comes crashing into the wireless gaming mouse scene with a fancy new optical sensor and optical buttons for supersmooth performance. To top that off, it sports a comfortable design, a neat charging dock and an adjustable scroll wheel — all backed by solid software. However, the mouse's $169 price may be too high for some.

If you want to cut costs, go with the Logitech G502 Proteus Core, which is just $50. It's wired, but you do get some of the same neat features, like an adjustable scroll wheel and great software. And unlike the Basilisk, the Proteus Core has adjustable weights.

But despite the price, the Basilisk Ultimate is one of the best wireless gaming mice you can buy.