Sensor and Performance

The Razer DeathAdder V2 Mini is equipped with the PAW3359. The PAW3359 is based on the PAW3339, which was previously used on the Razer Abyssus Essential and Atheris. According to specifications, the 3359 is capable of up to 8500 CPI, as well as a maximum tracking speed of 300 IPS, which equals 7.62 m/s. Out of the box, five pre-defined CPI steps are available: 400, 800, 1600, 3200, and 6400.

CPI Accuracy

"CPI" (short for counts per inch) describes the number of counts registered by the mouse if it is moved exactly an inch. There are several factors (firmware, mounting height of the sensor not meeting specifications, mouse feet thickness, mousing surface, among others) which may contribute to nominal CPI not matching actual CPI. It is impossible to always achieve a perfect match, but ideally, nominal and actual CPI should differ as little as possible. In this test, I'm determining whether this is the case or not. However, please keep in mind that said variance will still differ from unit to unit, so your mileage may vary.


I've restricted my testing to the four most common CPI steps, which are 400, 800, 1600, and 3200. As you can see, aside from the 400 CPI step, deviation is consistently positive and of varying yet mostly significant degree, which is an average result overall. In order to account for the measured deviation, corrected but still off-target steps of 400, 800, 1500, and 3100 CPI have been used.

Motion Delay

"Motion delay" encompasses all kinds of sensor lag. Any further sources of input delay will not be recorded in this test. The main thing I'll be looking for in this test is sensor smoothing, which describes an averaging of motion data across several capture frames in order to reduce jitter at higher CPI values, increasing motion delay along with it. The goal here is to have as little smoothing as possible. As there is no way to accurately measure motion delay absolutely, it can only be done by comparison with a control subject that has been determined to have the lowest possible motion delay. In this case, the control subject is a G403, whose 3366 has no visible smoothing across the entire CPI range. Note that the G403 is moved first and thus receives a slight head start.


First, I'm looking at two xCounts plots—generated at 1600 and 8500 CPI—to quickly gauge whether there is any smoothing, which would be indicated by any visible "kinks." As you can see, such kinks are plainly on display in the second plot, which indicates that there is indeed smoothing, unlike on the Viper Mini using the same sensor. In order to determine the exact amount, we'll have to take a look at xSum plots. As an aside, SPI timing variance is fairly low.


In order to determine motion delay, I'm looking at xSum plots generated at 1600, 3300, and 8500 CPI. The line further to the left denotes the sensor with less motion delay. There is no motion delay differential at 1600 CPI. At and above 3300 CPI, I can measure a differential of roughly 2 ms, which holds true all the way up to 8500 CPI.

Speed-related Accuracy Variance (SRAV)

What people typically mean when they talk about "acceleration" is speed-related accuracy variance (or SRAV for short). It's not about the mouse having a set amount of inherent positive or negative acceleration, but about the cursor not traveling the same distance if the mouse is moved the same physical distance at different speeds. The easiest way to test this is by comparison with a control subject that is known to have very low SRAV, which in this case is the G403. As you can see from the plot, no displacement between the two cursor paths can be observed, which confirms that SRAV is very low.

Perfect Control Speed

Perfect Control Speed (or PCS for short) is the maximum speed up to which the mouse and its sensor can be moved without the sensor malfunctioning in any way. I've only managed to hit a measly 4.5 m/s (which is within the proclaimed PCS range), at which no sign of the sensor malfunctioning can be observed.

Polling Rate Stability

All of the available polling rate settings (125, 500, and 1000 Hz) look and perform fine. Polling stability is unaffected by any of the available RGB lighting effects. For whatever reason, polling is unstable for the first few thousand counts after changing polling rate, but this doesn't affect regular use to any degree.

Paint Test

This test is used to indicate any potential issues with angle snapping (non-native straightening of linear motion) and jitter, along with any sensor lens rattle. As you can see, no issues with angle snapping can be observed. No jitter is visible at 1600 CPI. 3200 CPI is the highest step without any smoothing and shows minor jitter, which is taken care of by the smoothing introduced at 3300 CPI. 8500 CPI has the same amount of smoothing applied and displays high jitter regardless. Lastly, there is no lens movement.

Lift-off Distance

The DeathAdder V2 Mini does not offer any pre-defined LOD levels to choose from, but a pre-calibrated Razer surface can be selected, which in turn allows one to fine-tune the lift-off range. Using no calibration, the sensor does track at a height of 2 DVDs, but not at a height of 3 DVDs (2.4 mm<x<3.6 mm, x being LOD height). By using a preset such as the Destructor 2 and a lift-off range of 3, I'm able to get a LOD of around 1 DVD, but tracking noticeably worsens on a regular cloth pad. As such, I recommend using the no calibration preset unless one of the indicated surfaces is actually used. Keep in mind that LOD may vary slightly depending on the mousing surface (pad) it is being used on.

Click Latency

Most gaming mice use mechanical switches for their buttons. By wiring the switches of the test subject together with the switches of a control subject, I'm able to measure click latency very accurately; i.e., standard error of around 0.05 ms. However, this method is not applicable to mice with non-mechanical switches and wireless-only mice in general. As such, other methods ought to be employed, one of which is NVIDIA's Latency Display Analysis Tool (LDAT). The LDAT allows me to measure the entire end-to-end latency between the mouse click and photon transition on the monitor. By establishing the relative difference to a control subject, I'm able to provide values I consider sufficiently accurate; i.e., standard error of around 0.2 ms. Many thanks go to NVIDIA for providing me an LDAT v2 device.

Click latency has been measured to be roughly +0.9 ms when compared to the Razer Viper 8K, which is considered as the baseline with 0 ms. Standard deviation is 2.5 ms, but since the indicated value is neither the absolute click latency nor the measured end-to-end-latency, standard deviation ends up looking disproportionally large. Comparison data comes from my own testing and has been exclusively gathered with the LDAT.