If you look simply at the specifications, the Razer Basilisk ($69.99) isn't much different than the company's flagship gaming mouse, the DeathAdder Elite.
Not only are these mice the same price, but they also share many of the same hardware traits, among them identical sensitivity settings and polling rates.
Unlike the e-sports-focused DeathAdder Elite, however, the Basilisk was made with die-hard first-person shooter players in mind.
Its key features—a rubberized thumb rest, a removable DPI switcher, and customizable scroll-wheel resistance—are designed to reduce gameplay friction for long hours of play.
Individually, these inclusions may seem minor, even negligible, to the average gamer.
But together they add dimension to a category of peripherals that hasn't seen a whole lot of innovation in recent years, especially at the budget level.
The Razer Basilisk combines first-rate comfort with a variety of features that are hard to beat in this price range.
The Logitech G Pro Gaming Mouse($129.95 at Amazon) comes close, albeit with a lesser sensitivity range and without the many layers of personalization that separate the Razer Basilisk($109.66 at Amazon) from the rest of the pack, and earn it our Editors' Choice.
Old Mouse, New Tricks
From the outside looking in, the Razer Basilisk resembles a seashell.
It measures 1.69 by 2.94 by 4.88 inches (HWD), and it weighs about a quarter of a pound, making it a little beefier than, say, the 1.6 by 2.47 by 4.73-inch, 0.22-pound HyperX Pulsefire Surge.
But the snug handfeel of the Basilisk is worth the trivial bump upward in size and heft.
With this mouse, Razer refrained from reinventing the wheel, but it did iterate on an age-old peripheral design: two main buttons, clearly divided down the middle, but complemented by a concave thumb grip.
The grip, on the left side, makes the Basilisk notably more comfortable to use than the Logitech G Pro, which is an ambidextrous design.
Alas, the flip side of that is that Razer's mouse is for righties only.
At first blush, the scroll wheel may not look like anything special, but it's controlled by a unique feature: a dial on the mouse's bottom that lets you control its level of resistance.
Gamers who enjoy the tactile feedback of a mechanical keyboard will appreciate the option to dial up higher levels of resistance.
Meanwhile, anyone using this mouse for school or for work can lower the level to eliminate the noise it produces at higher resistance.
All Buttoned Up
South of the scroll wheel are a pair of buttons to adjust the tracking resolution of the Basilisk, which ranges from 800dpi to 16,000dpi.
The high end of that sensitivity range is notable because other comparably priced mice, such as the Logitech G903 Lightspeed($99.99 at Amazon) and the Logitech G Pro Gaming Mouse, max out at 12,000dpi.
While an additional 4,000dpi may not seem like a big deal, the higher reaches of the sensitivity range can come in handy when used in conjunction with higher-resolution displays, such as 4K monitors.
The Razer Basilisk's polling rate ranges from 125Hz to 1,000Hz, a number that you can adjust in the serpent-bedecked, downloadable Synapse 3 software.
(I'll touch more on that in a minute.) In terms of these specs, the Basilisk doesn't differ greatly from the DeathAdder Elite($64.99 at Amazon).
The two gaming mice are distinguished by their disparate shapes and button arrangements, rather than their technical specifications.
On the left side of the Basilisk, above the thumb rest, are two macro buttons that you can customize in Synapse 3, as well.
You can assign these buttons to one of 13 functions, including an existing keyboard or mouse function of your choosing or, of course, a macro shortcut that you can record yourself.
Also on the undercarriage: a button you can use to shuffle quickly through the various lighting and button profiles that you can create in Synapse 3.
As useful as this feature is, and as frequently as PC gamers such as myself toggle among tasks, it's curious that the button isn't situated in a more practical location.
Below the macros is another button, one that will instantly set the DPI level to 800dpi.
During my time spent playing Far Cry 5, I saw significant improvement in my aim that otherwise would have taken several seconds to achieve with the dedicated sensitivity keys.
The Razer Basilisk isn't unique in its effort to make sniper mode an integral part of its identity.
It is, on the other hand, the only gaming mouse I've seen with a DPI-lowering paddle that you can swap out for a smaller one or, alternatively, a rubber fill-in cap that does nothing but protect you from yourself.
(Whacking the clutch by mistake is a worry of the past when it's removed from the equation entirely.)
Synapse Until I Collapse
Despite the Razer Synapse 3 software being in beta at the moment, it proves itself useful for customizing the lighting, performance, and button assignments of the Basilisk.
The user interface is minimalist enough to be familiar, even if you have never owned a Razer product.
It shows itself primarily in green and black hues, and it fits a wide selection of options into an uncomplicated package.
In the Lighting column, you can change the brightness of the Chroma effects or turn them off completely.
On a scale of 33 to 100, gamers can choose whether they want the lighting effects of the Basilisk to be dim, normal, bright, or somewhere in between.
The quick effects—Breathing, Reactive, Spectrum Cycling, and Static—can be tailored to your personal preferences too.
Breathing lets you pick two colors for the Basilisk to alternate between; Reactive makes the Basilisk light up a certain color for a specified duration every time you press a button; Spectrum Cycling exhibits an assortment of colors from its palette of 16.8 million; and Static sticks to the basics by showing off just one color at a time.
The Performance section is where you can modify the sensitivity.
By default, you get five sensitivity stages you access via the Basilisk's pair of discrete sensitivity buttons.
Stage 1 is 800dpi, while Stage 5 is 16,000dpi.
It's up to you to determine which stage suits your hand best.
More than likely, it's something in the middle.
Capping out at 1,000Hz, the polling-rate frequency can also be set here.
The lower it is, the more latency you are bound to experience.
We'd leave it at 1,000Hz, in most cases.
Under the Customize tab in Synapse 3, you can assign personalized commands to any one of the Basilisk's 10 buttons.
For instance, if you want the scroll wheel to act as a shortcut for the W and S keys, you can make that happen here.
Last, the Calibration section is devoted to configuring the Basilisk with a Razer-branded gaming mousepad.
The only problem that arises while using Synapse 3 occurs when Synapse 2 is installed at the same time.
Tethered to my own PC, the Basilisk frequently lit up red when I specifically programmed it for green.
Seeing as, at this writing, Synapse 3 was compatible with only a handful of newer Razer devices, anyone sporting a Razer keyboard or headset that is more than a year or two old will have to keep Synapse 2 on their PC in addition to Synapse 3, possibly resulting in a similar concern.
A Razer rep told us this in reply to a query about the issue: "We're working hard on polishing up [Synapse 3] and we're hoping for an early June out-of-beta release." Hopefully, this will solve the issue, but until then, the best way to ensure its stability is to refrain from mixing back-catalog hardware with the Basilisk and Synapse 3.
Saying Goodbye to RSIs
At $69.99, the Razer Basilisk occupies something of a gaming-mouse niche: handy ergonomics paired with a complete array of features that, at one time, were limited to gaming mice twice the price.
Trigger-happy gamers will take delight in the snap-precision made possible by the onboard sniper control, while right-handed players who will use the mouse for long gaming sessions will appreciate the dimpled thumb rest.
Also, the resistance wheel actually gets us more excited than the endless swath of colors the Basilisk can display, since your hand will be covering the mouse (and its glow) when in use.
This is not just another tired attempt at appeasing players of first-person shooters.
The Basilisk goes above and beyond the gaming-mouse norm and delivers a premium experience in a budget mouse.
Cons
The Bottom Line
Packing deep color customization, lots of sensitivity options, and a nifty thumb grip, the Razer Basilisk is a proficient gaming mouse at a promising price.
