Razer Armadillo Cable Manager

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by Greg King on July 21, 2006 in Peripherals

Are you a serious gamer? Does your mouse cord ever get in the way of your perfect kill? Razer believes that they have come up with the ultimate solution, and it’s name? The Armadillo.

As gamers, we are always looking for something extra. This could be extra cooling, extra speed extra anything. We want our systems to stand out from every other PC that we see. There is a huge market for PC add on hardware with just about everyone trying to get a piece of the action. One company that has made a name for itself is Razer. It had a sure winner with the release of the Diamondback gaming mouse but have they taken a break since then? No.

Back in November, we took a look at the then new Copperhead gaming mouse. The Copperhead used a laser to track movement and had on the fly adjustable DPI. Pretty damn cool. Then in June, we took a look at their new Krait RTS/MMO mouse. This was a mouse designed strictly for real time strategy games and massive multiplayer games as well. Not near as cool as the Copperhead but still a functional mouse.

Today we are taking a look at another product in the Razer lineup. The Razer Armadillo is a 300 gram weight made up of carbon coated steel. Thats a fair amount of weight for just a small package. With a height of only 35.25mm and a width of 43.88mm, the Armadillo is a stout little piece of hardware. Its main purpose is to prevent the mouse cord from pulling on your mouse when you are using it. Can it do it? Is it the The ultimate cable management system? And is it worth the $20 dollars youd be spending?

There really isnt anything to the packaging of the Armadillo. A small box with its only contents being the Armadillo itself. Once out of the box, we see that the Armadillo is a two piece unit.

What you basically do is unscrew the top of the item, insert your mouse cord like so

and then screw the top back on. Its that simple and there really isnt anything to it aside from making sure you leave your self enough play in your cord that the Armadillo isnt actually going to be a hindrance.

Well, there you have the installation, if you want to call it that, of the Armadillo. Not much to it is there? Now that we have it on the cord, how does it perform? I decided to play a bit of CS:S and Rise of Legends to get a feel for the Armadillo and to see if I could actually feel a difference.

The jury was out for a while on this one but it came back a bit upset. I am not going to say that the Armadillo is a bad product but I honestly could not feel a difference. There was a slight reduction in cord pull but being a grown man [When did that happen? Ed], I have never really had a problem moving my mouse around in the first place. I know this is not the point and perhaps it might provide others the opportunity to get more precision shot without having to deal with the pull of the cord but with many people going to wireless mice, where does this leave the Armadillo? I am not sure but I will gladly let you hear my ideas.

The Armadillo serves its purpose and with Razer only focusing on wired gaming mice, this would be something nice to include in the Copperhead package. Maybe make a bundle out of it, who knows? What I do know is that I would not spend 20 dollars on this product, especially with similar products being sold for less. I would however be more prone to picking up a retail Copperhead should it ever include this as an extra. This will however make a nice addition to my desk, as a paperweight. It does look cool, I will give it that. But for 20 dollars? The price is something that many people can justify spending on something like this, but I cant.

    Pros:

  • Cool Looking
  • Small
  • It will never break. EVER.
    Cons

  • Price ($20 US)

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