Firefly V2 Pro mouse pad review: a luxury for your desk

Opinions are divided when it comes to mouse pads. Some people don’t use one at all, others are sticklers for mouse pads with a particular look and features. Naturally, there’s a wide selection of mouse pads out there, including in our range. We recently added the Firefly V2 Pro from Razer – a light-up mouse pad on the pricier end of the spectrum. It’s aimed at users who’re into brightening up their desks with RGB lighting.

Although mouse pads with light-up edges have been around for a while now, having lighting across the entire surface is new. In my review, I’ll aim to demonstrate whether the lighting really looks as nice as the ads suggest. I’ll also give my impression on other aspects of the mouse pad.

LED backlight? Not quite

Razer calls the Firefly V2 Pro the «world’s first LED backlit gaming mouse pad». A potentially misleading statement. As a matter of fact, the surface of the mouse pad doesn’t light up on its own. It’s indirect lighting that makes the surface appear to glow.

Like on the previous model or the Goliathus Chroma (which I have myself), the 15 LED zones are located on the edges. They only occupy the back half of the mouse pad.

The light beams from there into the other edges and the milky-coloured surface of the pad. This results in sometimes intense, sometimes very soft lighting effects – something I already liked about Razer’s ads. There are no visible, abrupt transitions between the lit and unlit edges.

Doesn’t take a complicated setup to look great

The first thing that strikes me when unboxing the Firefly V2 Pro is that it’s quite a bit larger than my own Razer Goliathus Chroma. It measures in at around 36 × 28 centimetres. Instead of being flexible, the pad’s as stiff as a board. It has a slightly rough plastic surface.

The USB-A to USB-C cable that comes with the mouse pad is 180 centimetres long and easily reaches my computer under my desk. I really like the fact that you can remove it from the mouse pad.

After plugging in the pad, you’re met with a spectrum effect almost immediately, the zones slowly transitioning through different colours one after the other. It looks really pretty. But there’s definitely more to it. I open the Razer Synapse software to have a look at the pad’s RGB settings.

The LEDs switch off without letting me know why. After a bit of trial and error, I find out what’s going on: the effect controls in Synapse are set to Advanced instead of Fast. I also use the software for my Razer keyboard and my own mouse pad, and I’d created custom settings for them. Basically, the software recognises the Firefly V2 Pro, but notices there’s no effect assigned to it in the advanced settings. Activating an effect causes the lighting to work again immediately.

Fiddly RGB settings

Using Razer Synapse, you can manage any compatible devices and coordinate their lighting. For instance, I can set the slowly rotating colour wheel of my keyboard to be extended to the RGB zones on the mouse pad. As a result, both devices mesh really well together.

However, the Synapse software isn’t quite self-explanatory. It takes a bit of playing around before I understand the system of effect layers and their application to the different RGB zones. But that has nothing to do with the mouse pad. Eventually, the software starts doing whatever I want it to at all times.

In the end, I decide to give the mouse pad its own colour wheel, separate from that of the keyboard. I want the Firefly’s 15 colour zones to play to their strengths, making use of the fact that they can be controlled individually. I’m keen to get the mouse pad to glow in different colours. This works very well with the colour wheel effect, the corners lighting up in one colour after another. You can also combine different effects so that the mouse pad briefly lights up when you click the mouse. But that’s a little too chaotic-looking for me.

I discover my inner poet as I’m trying to describe the lighting effects. They make me think of a glowing aquarium. Or light shimmering through a sheet of polar ice. Or a portal to another world.

Usability

Before my review, I was curious to see whether the mouse cursor would be easy to control. The surface of the mouse pad is milky transparent, which I was concerned would be a problem for the mouse sensor. However, that fear turned out to be unfounded. The potentially scattered laser light coming from the mouse didn’t cause my optical mouse any precision issues.

Quite the opposite, in fact. The mouse glides smoothly and easily over the pad, even slightly better than over the fabric surface of my Goliathus Chroma. The firm, slightly rough plastic seems to help the mouse glide. When I test the mouse on the smooth tabletop, it feels a little more cumbersome.

The downside to the pad’s solid surface is that mouse movements are clearly audible. It sounds similar to using a mouse on a tabletop, albeit slightly quieter. On my own soft mat, mouse movements are barely audible. All that being said, the sound doesn’t bother me. The mouse is still very quiet compared to the rattle of the keyboard. Not only that, but I almost always wear headphones, so I can’t hear the mouse anyway.

Unfortunately, after just 40 hours of everyday use, I’m still unable to tell whether the surface of the Firefly might eventually develop unsightly traces of use and whether they would affect the lighting.

I also use the mouse pad’s additional USB-A port to plug in my mouse’s Wi-Fi adapter, as suggested by Razer. As expected, it works perfectly.