Razer Naga 2014 Edition review: The MMO specialist

The button-heavy “MMO mouse” has become a rarity, having fallen out of favor almost as much as the MMORPG itself. No other class of game can take advantage of as many button commands or macros as an MMO, so a mouse studded with 15 or 20 buttons just isn’t in demand. But they haven’t disappeared. Razer, for one, refreshed its MMO mouse, the Naga, which looks like a mouse with a numpad glued to its side.

The Naga has 19 buttons in all: left-, right-, and middle-click, two buttons accessed by tilting the scroll wheel left and right (a new feature in this year’s model), two buttons adjacent to the scroll-wheel, and 12 buttons arranged telephone-style beneath your thumb.

This review is part of our roundup of best gaming mice. Go there for details on competing products and how we tested them.

Michael Homnick

Razer widened the Naga’s right side, making the device a bit more comfortable to grip. The 12 thumb buttons have been upgraded with mechanical switches for faster response times, and rearranged into a more concave pattern that in theory lets you tell which button you’re pressing without looking. But after days of use, I still found myself making mistakes in the heat of battle. Twelve buttons is a lot to put under one finger, and my thumb is just not sensitive enough to tell the difference between them without a second or two of thought.

The Naga is pleasant enough to use in any use scenario. It’s comfortable, lightweight, and it has enough buttons to make anyone happy. On the flip side, it’s overkill for most people. But you might not be “most people.” If you’re still playing a ton of MMOs, or love to have applications bound to all those buttons, I’d say the Naga is in the top three MMO-style devices on the market.

Summary: The Razer Naga, with its 19 buttons, is overkill for most people. But if you need that kind of firepower, there’s nothing better.