Razer's DeathAdder V4 Pro won an esports tournament before its release, hiding in plain sight with a camoflage colorway

Esports legend NiKo appeared at PGL Bucharest in April this year and went on to win against G2 in the final, his former team. He did all this with a mouse that was still three months out from its official unveiling, the Razer DeathAdder V4 Pro. That's one hell of an endorsement.

The version of the mouse that was used in this win comes in the camo variant Razer calls "Erlkönig". NiKo's mouse is a hexagonal black and white camo. Razer told me that this mouse was designed to catch all the lights in those esports arenas, rendering it much harder to work out. It also lacks any branding, should people pay attention to it.

This is similar in concept to what was done in pre-season games for F1. So that car companies wouldn't give away what's new in their builds, they would implement liveries that would obscure the shape. It's not clear how effective this is, but it does look pretty neat.

Erlkönig, detailed as the king of the fairies in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's poem, feels like a very fitting name for something both fast and deceptive by nature. Despite Razer's attempts, keen-eyed watchers on Reddit still managed to make out the DeathAdder's iconic shape and correctly guessed it was the V4 Pro.

I had a chance to hold this mouse variant at the Razer store in London, and the utter lack of any branding, even on the bottom, really appeals to me. The DeathAdder series, due to its esports ambitions, does away with RGB and has more of an understated look, but the standard models still have the Razer logo slapped on the bottom half.

Razer's new DeathAdder V4 Pro won't win you tournaments (unless you're NiKo), but it does come with some very impressive stats. Claiming to be 'the biggest tech leap in a decade', Razer's new 56 g mouse comes with a max DPI of 45,000, max IPS of 900, and is packed with not only an optical sensor but optical switches and an optical scroll wheel.

Having had a play with it myself, I can say I was mighty impressed. Compared to the V3 Pro, a mouse we very much like, it has a smoother texture, stiffer side walls to avoid the mouse flexing under pressure, and it still managed to be lighter despite that. It also separates the buttons on the left-hand side to avoid misclicks and has a smoother texture, which I found to be less of a fingerprint magnet.

The dongle, which enables Razer HyperSpeed Wireless Gen-2, is a sturdy little hemisphere that you connect with a USB Type-C cable, which means you can place it on your desk near the mouse. The dongle comes with three lights, which can give connectivity status, battery readouts, and polling rate information.

The Razer DeathAdder V4 Pro is available for preorder right now for $170 and is due to arrive on July 25.

My only problem is that, after seeing both the black and white models of the new Razer DeathAdder V4 Pro, I want the Erlkönig model instead. Come on, Razer, you know what to do.