Razotech UFO Mouse

Written by Michael Larabel in Peripherals on 21 March 2005 at 01:00 PM EST. Page 2 of 2. Add A Comment.

Performance:

As the only stock option available for the Razotech UFO is USB, we plugged the UFO into one of our testbeds that can handle some gaming. We turned on the system and we were immediately attracted to the rotating LED appearance. Every few times per second the bright blue LEDs would illuminate in succession, to have a "spinning light" appearance to resemble the imaginative appearance of UFOs in the sky. After FedoraCore3 (2.6.10-1.770) was booted up, we were pleased to see the mouse immediately working. It was true plug and play under Linux and there was no need to configure anything in order to get the mouse working.

When we were gripping the mouse, a couple centimeters of our hand couldn't fit on the mouse due to the incredibly small mouse size. We found the mouse to work admirably well when doing some general office tasks in AbiWord and OpenOffice, but we felt gaming to be a slightly different story. The games played using this mouse were America's Army Special Forces, Cube, and Unreal Tournament 2004; all of which are First Person Shooters and require an accurate mouse in order to make some kill shots. During this game play, we found the mouse to be very precise with our movements while it was placed on a Xtrac Hybrid surface. The part that got us troubled was the size of the mouse, We constantly found ourselves re-positioning our hands on the mouse as the size was simply too small.

As for the appearance, the mouse was more attractive than other mice we've seen. If you're interested in seeing this LED action check out our video here here (if you are using a pop-up blocker or Internet Explorer, use this link).

Conclusion:

This definitely isn't one of the best mice we've seen performance wise, it simply was too small for our hands, only offered three buttons, and the LEDs became distracting after a while. However, this mouse would be great for mobile use with laptops, as it’s small and in-expensive. Furthermore, this mouse would be great if you have any children because of the LED appearance and petite size to conform to their hands. It will be interesting to see what other innovative products Razotech will have on the market soon. Once again, if you wish to view the video of the mouse illuminated, please click here or alternatively here if the first link doesn't work with your browser.

Pros:

· 10 bright LEDs
· Translucent
· Cheap (~ $9.95)
· Unique

Cons:

· Small
· LEDs distracting after a while of use

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Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.