Patriot Viper V570 Blackout Edition Gaming Mouse Review

First Impressions

When I first took the V570 out of the box, I liked how it fit nicely within my palm-type grip. The contours where your thumb is placed on the left side made gripping the mouse more comfortable than other mice I have used. Access to the macro buttons can be a bit tricky, but with practice it is not that much of a hassle. The scroll wheel reminds me of a car tire from its tread pattern. It also has a good size too. Behind the scroll wheel is a profile button and the DPI setting button, both easily accessible.

The thumb side, or left side, of the mouse is textured with easy access to the “Sniper” button. By default, this button allows you to quickly boost your DPI but it can be programmed to something else. You can rock your thumb up against 1 of 5 other macro buttons located along the top too. An LED strip can be seen below the thumb rest area.

The right side of the mouse has a little contoured area for your ring-finger or pinkie if you wish to rest it there. When viewing the V570 from the back, you can see the contoured area where your thumb rests. I have found it to be quite comfortable for short and long periods of use.

Here is a better angle from the top front. The LEDs located a bit behind the scroll wheel are a visual indicator for the profile and DPI setting you have selected. The two buttons on the image right are the typical mouse “forward and backward” buttons that can be reprogrammed if needed.

When looking straight on to the front of the mouse (something most people wouldn’t normally do) you can see two little LED panels which add to the overall RGB lighting of the Viper V570.  The Viper V570 Blackout Edition has 7 RGB lighting zones that can be set independently of each other. You can fine tune the colours to suit your gaming experience needs easily.

Flipping the mouse over you will see the 5 ceramic feet and the laser sensor. I would love to see more mice move away from the PTFE (Polytetrafluoroethylene) feet or as some people may know it as Teflon, to these ceramic type feet. I am sure that the ceramic feet will wear and tear far less than the Teflon feet that that majority of other mice have.

Flip the mouse back over and you can pop off the little area where the weights can be installed. You can adjust the weight of the mouse by adding the little cylindrical weights. Six (of 7) additional weights can be added to change adjust the weight from about 159 grams to about 182 grams.

Setup

As with most computer peripherals, there is software you can download to configure the device to your specific needs. The Viper V570 Blackout Edition gaming mouse is no different and can be highly customized to suite your play styles.

The first tab is the button configuration page. Here you can specify what each and every button does on the mouse. You can also see that you have 5 profiles to choose from so if you play multiple games you can set up a profile based on what game you might be playing; you could even make profiles based on character type within a game too if you can handle that sort of thing.

The next tab is where you can change the DPI settings for the Viper V570. Clicking the DPI setting button behind the mouse wheel allows you to cycle through these 4 DPI profiles. Yes, you can even specify DPI settings for the X-axis and Y-axis separately.

You can program macros. The mouse has internal memory as shown in the above screenshot.

The next tab is the Settings tab. Here you can change the USB polling rate, enable and disable some options, as well as backup and restore your settings.

The last tab is where you can change the lighting settings for the Viper V570. You have 5 profiles in which one you can modify to suit your needs.