Mice from leading Chinese manufacturers used to be called “clones,” but that no longer feels fair. Many are clearly inspired by the shape and features of well-known Western devices but they’re also solid mice in their own right, and often cheaper.
Rawm is one of the brands whose reputation has swollen from a somewhat obscure budget specialist to a genuine high-end competitor and its chunky flagship, the Rawm Leviathan V4, is often compared favorably to Razer’s Viper. If you spend any time on the gaming mice subreddits you’ll have seen it recommended.
It retails for $130 direct from Rawm but I always see it discounted under $90 – and after testing it for weeks, I can confidently say that you get far more for your money than simply a Viper wannabe.
Rawm Leviathan V4: Premium Feel, With a Couple of Nitpicks
The Rawm Leviathan V4 feels durable. It doesn’t creak or rattle when I shake, squeeze or hit it, and the matte coating feels grippy without attracting sweat. The left panel flexed the tiniest amount when I really squeezed it hard, but not enough to be abnormal or worrying. Despite its relatively light weight of 55g it feels solid and reassuring in my hand.
That’s likely because of its size: like Razer’s Viper it’s larger than average, and specifically designed for medium-to-large hands. Mine are ever-so-slightly bigger than average for a man and spreading my full palm across on its body – known as a palm grip – felt luxurious. Its wide, relatively flat shape filled my hand and my fingers nestled in its gentle humps and curves. It felt completely natural and I could make adjustments big and small with no effort.
The large feet feel smooth and agile on a mousepad, and sending the Leviathan V4 in wide arcs is a joy.
In palm grip it’d work for average-sized hands – but you might struggle in fingertip or claw grip. It took me a while to find a hand position that felt natural in those grips, and the width of the mouse forced me to hold it on a slight slant. With adjustments I found a comfortable position, and it’s worth noting that most users find it most comfortable in claw grip.
What we said about the Razer Viper V4 Pro
The Razer Viper V4 Pro is a no-frills hyper-competitive gaming mouse that doesn’t care about anything besides winning. If you want something simple, elegant, and ready to compete, the Viper V4 Pro delivers, with premium-level performance in a comfortable symmetrical shell. But if you want more bells and whistles (on the outside), and something to fit your unique ergonomic needs, then you should look elsewhere. – Rami Tabari
Score: 8
Read the full Razer Viper V4 Pro review
Left and right clicks feel superb. They’re light and snappy, they sound crisp, and they’re bouncy enough to spam fast. In isolated testing I noticed their pre-travel – the distance they move before registering a click – was alarmingly high, particularly if I pressed away from the centre of the buttons. But when I was actually using them in games I never had any issue: their concave shape dips more aggressively in the middle than most, guiding my fingertips into the right spot.
I love the optical scroll wheel, too. It glides smoothly with very little effort, but you can still feel the bumps between each increment.
Its side buttons are a rare weak spot. They feel spongier than the main clicks, and on my model the back button was particularly soft, although I didn’t ever miss a click in games.
I also wish its large dongle was a bit heavier. It’s so light that the wire twists it, preventing it from sitting flat on my desk unless I keep adjusting it. The size is fine with me because this is very much a mainline desktop mouse for serious gaming rather than an ultra-portable device. Its connection was flawless – as I’ll go into later.
Those are relatively minor issues, though: the Leviathan V4 looks, feels and moves like a premium gaming mouse.
Rawm Leviathan V4: Lightning-fast Performance and Solid Battery Life
The Leviathan V4’s gaming performance is essentially perfect. I tested it in Marathon for quick first-person twitches and rapid clicking, Fortnite for third-person shooting and movement, and the citybuilder Whiskerwood for slow pointing and pressing.
In every scenario it felt smooth and responsive: I always felt it mirrored my movements instantly and exactly, and whenever I died I never felt like my mouse was holding me back. I could spam left click to rapidly fire semi-automatic weapons, and my quick flicks to land headshots felt precise. In Whiskerwood I never misclicked, and the slower pace allowed me to enjoy those big smooth sweeps across my mousepad.
I didn’t notice a single stutter, jitter, or connection dip in all my testing. That’s not surprising given it houses a top-notch Pixart PAW3950 – the sensor of choice for most smaller brands who don’t have their own bespoke tech. The headline numbers are that it supports a DPI (dots per inch) of up to 45,000, tracking speed of up to 750 inches per second and acceleration up to 50G. Those figures are overkill (I rarely use a DPI above 1,600) but it’s always good to have some headroom.
The Rawm Leviathan’s polling rate – the number of times the mouse reports its position to your PC – reaches 8000Hz. That’s standard for modern high-end mice and the fact you get it here for less than $100 is a boon.
It, too, is overkill: high polling rates should allow for smoother, more accurate tracking, but you’ll need a powerful PC and a high refresh rate monitor (ideally 240Hz or above) to take advantage. Even with an ideal setup, the vast majority of people won’t feel a difference between 4,000Hz and 8,000Hz, and many users – including me – barely feel a difference between 1,000Hz and 4,000Hz.
I personally play on either 1,000Hz or 2,000Hz, with very occasional forays up to 4,000Hz if I feel I need a particularly sweaty session (although I’m sure any differences I feel are placebo).
At those lower polling rates, the battery lasts ages. Rawm says you can get up to 150 hours in “high performance mode”, the default setting in the Leviathan’s companion software (which I’ll get onto shortly). Higher polling rates will drop that, of course. I’m on track for just over 100 hours at my current burn rate, where I’ve played at a mixture of 1,000, 2,000 and 4,000Hz. That’s more than enough.
Rawm Leviathan V4: Comprehensive Software That’s Hard to Understand
Credit to Rawm for offering users the choice of browser-based software and a downloadable app – not every manufacturer gives you both.
They look a bit amateur but are comprehensive. You can adjust sensitivity and polling rates in increments of one; you can pick between four modes (from “office” to “gaming+”) to balance between performance and battery life depending on what you’re doing; angle snapping, ripple control and motion sync are easy to toggle on and off.
You can also use “angle tuning” to calibrate the skew of the sensor axis so it matches your grip – if you hold your mouse at an angle, it’ll adjust so that your natural sideways movement stays perfectly horizontal. Not every high-end gaming mouse has that.
Unfortunately, the software is buggy and confusing.
The battery monitor is all over the place: I watched it go from 83% to 90% and back to 86% in 15 seconds.
It often forgot my settings – every so often, I’d plug in the mouse to find Motion Sync turned back on.
The web-based software defaults to Chinese and some segments won’t auto-translate properly when it loads, at least in Chrome, so you have to wait for it to load then click the translate button each time.
Weird inconsistencies appear between the web software and the app, too. The web hub, for example, doesn’t have a button to calibrate angle tuning, making it pointless unless you happen to know the right value. The app doesn’t label some of the features, leaving you to guess at what they actually do.
It’s a bit of a mess all-round. Feature-wise it’s rich, but it’s confusing to use.
Purchasing Guide
You can buy the Leviathan V4 direct from Rawm: retail price is $130 but it’s regularly discounted (at the time of writing it’s $85). You won’t find it in major US retailers but it’s available on AliExpress.
Samuel is a freelance reporter and editor specializing in longform journalism and hardware reviews. You can read his work at his website.
