Sensor

Moving on to the sensor, the tracking is done by a PixArt PAW3328, which is a Razer-specific variant of the PAW3327 as far as I know. It's a mid-level, albeit not mediocre sensor with some great tracking abilities. It just has a few downsides compared to a high-end PixArt model (like the PMW3360) you can read about later on.

The nominal maximum acceleration and tracking speed values are 30 G and 220 IPS (about 5.6 m/s). Lift-off distance is about 2 mm as the mouse did track from 1 DVD in height, but didn't from a double stack. This might be a bit too high for some people, and unfortunately, there's no way to change it in the software, but you can always use the tape trick to reduce it. Polling rate can be set to 500 or 1000 Hz in the software, and there is no option to turn on angle snapping.

Paint Test

There is no jitter on the reasonable CPI steps, or unwanted angle snapping. However, there is a ridiculous amount of sensor lens rattle you can easily hear as well. Now, this is a huge issue (I have no clue how my unit passed through QC like this), but it can be very easily DIY-fixed with some glue if you're not afraid of taking the mouse apart. I really hope only a very small percentage of the DeathAdder Essentials out there are affected by this, and so far, I have found no complaints about this online anywhere, which is a good sign. The following tests were done after I fixed the issue because the results would have most likely been affected by the rattling.

CPI Divergence

CPI divergence is good on the DeathAdder Elite, but interestingly, the 800 CPI step deviates quite a bit even after more accurate and thorough testing.

Perfect Control Speed

Perfect control speed (or PCS for short) is high on this sensor. It's 220 IPS nominally, which translates to about 5.6 m/s. There's pretty much no way of hitting this value in-game even with an extremely low sensitivity setting.

Speed Related Accuracy Variance

This test shows the sensor's accuracy at different speeds. You can see me doing a fast swipe to the right before I slowly slide the mouse back to its original position. There is no acceleration or deceleration; any displacement in this test is almost entirely caused by human error.

Polling Rate

Both polling rate values seem nice and stable since there are no suspicious periodic drops or other sorts of outliers.

Input Lag & Smoothing

Even though there are no suspicious kinks in the xCount graphs, there is some measurable input lag on and above the 6000 CPI step, which maximizes at about 2-3 ms on 6400 CPI. CPI steps below 6000 CPI aren't affected by this and seem absolutely fine.

Click Latency

Click latency is roughly +10.5 ms when compared to the SteelSeries Ikari, which is considered as the baseline with 0 ms. The data comes from this thread and my own testings. Testing was done with a Logitech G102 and the DA Essential, using qsxcv's program.