SilverStone Raven

Verdict: Let down by the cumbersome second scroll wheel.

There's something ironic about naming a mouse after a bird that eats mice. However, it's more likely that SilverStone intended for the Raven's diet to consist of battlefield leftovers, after it's aided the destruction of your gaming adversaries.

The Raven has a very distinct look, with a huge bubbly scroll wheel on the side, an OLED screen and the carbon fibre casing. The large scroll wheel on the left, which also doubles up as the dpi profile selector via its button, looks cool but causes your hand to lose contact with the main body of the mouse, which makes using it cumbersome. The shape of the mouse and the side scroll wheel means that you typically rest your thumb on this button. A sudden movement to the right could cause an accidental click, changing the dpi sensitivity and probably getting you killed.

A lot of effort has gone into providing control over the dpi settings. With the mouse toggled to gaming mode via a switch on the underside, five different dpi profiles can be created using the intuitive bundled software. Both X and Y values can be adjusted by increments of 100dpi, although we never saw any benefit to having asymmetrical X and Y sensitivities. The sensitivity setting is shown on an OLED screen. Using a combination of the left and right scroll buttons and large scroll wheel can also change the dpi - again something we didn't find very useful.

The sensitivity settings are stored in the mouse, so you can use your profiles on any PC without installing any software. In normal mode, the dpi options are simple. A push of the side scroll wheel button doubles the sensitivity four times from 400dpi to the Raven's maximum 3,200dpi.

The Raven has forward and back buttons, plus two extra buttons behind the scroll wheel, and another two recessed into the right main button. Each button can be programmed or turned off. Most of the extra buttons of the Raven are awkward to press quickly, especially the forward and back buttons on the left (the side scroll wheel partially blocks access) and one of the buttons in the right main button.

Conclusion

The Raven is an innovative design with a lot of features and comprehensive control over its dpi settings. However, the bulk of the second scroll wheel causes issues when gaming, and most of the sensitivity options are gimmicky. The Logitech G9 is a much better gaming mouse.