Hardware Razer Sabertooth Review

Razer's pro-gaming Xbox 360 pad has buttons and features galore; can it justify the £70 price tag?
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2013/03/11/razer-sabertooth-review/1

 

I personally cannot see why anyone would buy this - paying an extra £50 (or an extra 250% if you'd rather) for a couple of extra buttons and a bit of customisability... I'll stick with my excellent (and cheap) xbox 360 pad thanks...

 

And to make it even better im guessing you have to use the excelent Synapse 2.0

 

The problem is that the standard 360 pad that I use is pretty much perfect for what I would want to use it for, and I'm never really playing competitively on a pad, so a £70 pad is pretty useless to me. I've got a half decent racing wheel for games like Live For Speed and iRacing, and I'll use my £20 pad for games like ETS 2 and F1 2012, as well as singleplayer based games such as Sleeping Dogs or GTA- That way I can play them whilst lying in bed.

An ingenious solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

 

The problem with razer products is that it seems to come with this synapse 2.0 which seems to be some sort of internet connected bloatware needed to "activate" the full functionality of the device. Frankly its turned me off all Razer products. I take it that even this joypad requires the same software. If it is required it should be mentioned in the review and should be marked down because of it.

 

I had a Razer Mamba... and I would never buy another Razer product ever again. It never worked properly, had unplayable lag in wireless mode, and the laser just gradually crapped out over a period of several months. The really infuriating thing was that it didn't just die, boom, warranty it and get another mouse. No, it died slowly, becoming incrementally less accurate, over two or three month period, and the entire time you're thinking, "I've paid $130 for this mouse, surely it can't be this bad? I'll just give it one more go, just one more day..." But of course, the mouse is just cheap garbage, it never came good. I wish it had been half as well made as the packaging it came in. Just Google "Razer problems" if any doubt remains as to Razer's questionable build quality. For the price, their products are disposable crap.

 

Totaly agree, IMHO reviewing a product without including details of the software that comes with it is not a complete review.

 

I bought the Razer Onza Tournamnet Control about a year ago to play games like F1 2011, Grid etc as I wanted an analogue controller. I went for the more expensive version with the adjusters as I thought it might make a difference. To be honest I haven't adjusted it once...

The build quality is really good. But the one really annoying thing is the length of the cable - its looooong. Its obviously built for xboxers who sit the other side of the room, but for pc users who sit about a metre or so away from their pc, it just gets in the way, especially as it is thick and braided, it can't be looped up easily. Having an option for a shorter cable would be great.

The other pain is the lights can't be switched off, so I have to unplug/plug it whenever I want to use it.

Other than that - great product.

 

If you're a PC gamer that can't get on with the console controllers, I'd recommend the XIM3.

http://xim3.com

 

I can highly recommend Logitech's F-series controllers these days for PC use. They are basically a hybrid of the PlayStation and Xbox 360 controller, taking the best elements from each. Very comfortable and extremely well built, work well with pretty much any game too. I haven't tested them on consoles but apparently they do work as well. Best part is they are cheaper than the official gamepads as well.

 

Oh, forgot to mention, durability is also a concern. The Xbox 360 pad has really shitty thumbsticks that get worn down to worthless in a year's worth of time, and that's not even gaming heavily. If the Razer controller could have one leg-up over the official one, it'd be the quality of the analogue sticks and the durability of the whole thing. Microsoft's controller just feels cheap to me, nowhere near as well built as, say, a GameCube or PS3 controller.

 

I can +1 for the logitech gamepads. Bought a Razer onza tournament edition for both myself and a friend for his birthday last year and both of them stopped working (the joysticks eventually broke and I never adjusted mine beyond a few clicks the very first time I used it to get the sensitivity right). I had to pull out my old logitech and it's still going strong after all these years.

 

I have no understanding of what anyone here complaining about Razer's quality is talking about or Synapse 2.0. I have a Razer Lachesis mouse, and Black Widow Ultimate 2012 keyboard. I had a Razer Diamondback, Lycosa Keyboard, Lycosa Mirror Keyboard, and Arctosa Keyboard. None of them have worn out and are still very much usable today. Minus the one keyboard I spilled soda into. I play heavy, am a journalist/blogger, writing a book, and am on the PC a large percentage of the day. I will straight up say those of you have issues with dying products, take better care of your stuff.

As for Synapse 2.0, I never have an issue online or offline. My macros are saved on the cloud and my PC. I think you people do not know how to use the software or have junk PCs.

 

But with the old system you could take your mouse any where as it saved the profile onboard, if you wanted to do the same with Synapse 2.0 you now either have to download there software or take a copy of Synapse 2.0 with you along with your profile.

Unlike the 'classic' drivers, your settings aren't applied until a few seconds after you log in (so you are left with default mouse sensitivity at the login screen),

It lets Razer harvest e-mail addresses, and tells them exactly when, where and how often people are using their products, Im not paranoid but why should some marketing genius need to know these details ?

And have you even read the subscriber agreement
www.razerzone.com/synapse2/subscriber-agreement
I had to use cached Google results as it seem Razer don't want people reading it, pay particular attention to clause 4.

 

A subscriber agreement for a controller who would of thought we would ever see the day.

Are pirates going to steal it razor do you think lol.

Dont personally get the point.

 

Market research and personal data accumulation for resale, I would suspect are the main reasons.

 

Well. This seems like a big ol' bag of fail.

I'll stick to my standard Xbox controller for the casual stuff.