Customer Reviews for Belkin n52te Tournament Edition SpeedPad

Belkin n52te Tournament Edition SpeedPad
by Belkin Components

	List Price: ~~$69.99~~ Our Price: $62.04 You Save: $7.95 (11%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more product details

Customers in the UK, Buy this product at amazon.co.uk for British Pounds

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Customer Review: Swing and a miss.
Summary: 1 Stars

I play a ton of different games, but mostly Team Fortress2 and Warcraft. I've been looking for some sort of an extra gamepad or keyboard to improve my gaming experience over my craptastic Dell keyboard and 5 button mouse, but this isn't it.

I've never used a N52 or any other gamepad, but I could tell 5 min out of the box that this wasn't going to cut it, for anyone, so it really makes me wonder what they were thinking. The main advantage of a gamepad is it gives your left thumb something to do other than hit the spacebar, which mine does a lot. Placing all your movement on your thumb is a great idea, and it's the main reason I bought it. The rest of the pad is completely irrelevant, just the thumb's area is really important, and the N52te fails horribly.

First and formost, the Dpad. it comes with a removable joystick button, which is almost as big as the dpad underneath it. it's also made of hard plastic so your thumb has nothing to grip. In trying to use the joystick, I usually was pressing the edges, which is a lot of unnecessary thumb movement, which slows you down considerably. Easy fix, either rubberize the button or make it half it's size, it'd be perfect. But when it comes to moving the dpad, I wanna meet the gorrila that ok'd that one. It's stiff as a rock, and completely unresponsive to any level of finesse short of Hercules.

And I'm simply disgusted the other two thumb buttons. the alt button above the dpad is very mushy and lacks a clicky response, you don't know if you're hitting it or not, and that's very bad. The 15 button below your thumb is too far toward your palm and needs to be hit dead center to register, requiring complete repositioning of your hand to use it.

Now, I could go on about how the upper key's faces are too close together, causing fingers to get "lost," a scroll wheel with 1/4" of play, or really overly bright backlighting, but I think you get the point. The software was OK and the rest of it I really didn't mind, but when the thumb area, the only advantage a gampad has fails so completely, kinda makes you wonder.

Don't buy it, whatever you're using now is probably better.

Customer Review: Great for gaming...
Summary: 5 Stars

I bought this mostly for first person shooters and it's been great so far... I can't say it's improved my gaming at all but it's MUCH more comfortable than using the left side of a keyboard.

Customer Review: Belkin n53te
Summary: 5 Stars

Great item, it improved my gaming aibility 10 fold. I am very pleased with the simple set up, ease of use and quality! Well worth the cost to improve the agility and speed my "toon" accomplishes in PVP. I now top the list in damage done on our battlegrounds. Thanks to my gaming partner for finding it for me too!! I think he just wanted a better "wing man"

Customer Review: A giant step backward for Belkin.
Summary: 1 Stars

I am gonna make this short and aim it squarely at fans of the Nostromo who know basically what they are getting into and what they want. I used the old N50, the N52 for years, and recently purchased a N52TE.

1. The old programming interface was much simpler, more attractive, and allowed more customization.
2. The old N52 allows 4 different keymap states, the TE only 3. Huge difference if you are used to making full use of the N52 shift states.
3. The lights are too bright.
4. The giant foot on the bottom of the standard N52 is worlds better than the TE's six rubber feet. Like wobbly keyboards? Me either.

There are a few positives, including the feel of the keys, the much improved thumb button above the d-pad (if you know, you know) and I actually like the new "space bar" location though NOT as a spacebar.

Overall this is a downgrade and I for one would urge serious Nostromo fans to just buy an extra N52 for later, as I fear this new edition is the end for Belkins gamepad division. Or is it Razer now?

Mmmhmmm. Skip it. Do not buy. The original N52 is still the best.