Lighting

The Zephyr Gaming Mouse has a single large lighting zone beneath and around the main buttons. There are a host of different lighting effects to choose from: Tail, Neon, Steady, Response, Streaming, Wave, and Breathing. At this point in time, disabling the lighting altogether is not possible. Retail units will come with brightness reduction options and the ability to disable the lighting altogether.

Color accuracy and vibrancy are excellent throughout. Here's a short demonstration video where I go through several modes:

The Fan

In this section, I'm (thankfully) not talking about the schlocky De Niro movie from 1996, but, rather, the built-in fan of the Zephyr Gaming Mouse. While the fan in the prototype this review is based on is the same as for mass-production, it's not running at full power. For the finalized version, three modes will be available: 4000, 7000, and 10,000 RPM, the latter of which represents their dynamic mode. For a general idea of what to expect, please refer to the following video, which, in order, shows their high RPM mode, low RPM mode, off state, and high RPM mode:
A 25 mm sleeve-bearing fan is used, which raises some durability concerns. For a permanently running high-RPM fan meant to be silent, I'd much rather see a rifle or fluid dynamic bearing fan, or at least a double ball bearing fan. Additionally, sleeve bearings tend to perform poorly when not mounted vertically, which is the case with the fan in the Zephyr Gaming Mouse. The fan is using a 2-pin connector, so fan speed can only be changed by altering the voltage. In theory, replacing it with a another 25 mm fan using a 2-pin connector should be possible.

Alright, so how does the fan work and feel in practice? For starters, my hands tend to get quite sweaty when gaming, and the ambient room temperature when testing was upwards of 27 °C—in short, perfect testing conditions. My prototype essentially has two modes to choose from, a high RPM mode and a low RPM mode. Low RPM mode really doesn't do much in terms of cooling; in fact, I'm barely able to tell the fan is running. High RPM mode, on the other hand, provides actual cooling. It's not super noticeable, but definitely keeps the hand cooler than it would be in its absence. It doesn't come without its issues, though. First, with the fan running at high RPM, the whole mouse starts to vibrate. It's not strong enough to be irritating, but may, depending on one's sensitivity towards vibrations, still end up feeling weird. Second, electrical fan noise is fairly loud. Less noticeable in high RPM mode because of the noise produced by the fan blades and airflow, it is very noticeable and annoying in low RPM mode—more so than the noise produced by the fan blades and airflow, which is noticeable but not overbearing. Generally, a larger diameter, slower-spinning fan might've been a better approach.

To sum it up, yes, the fan does work. The vibrations and electrical noise can be irritating, however.