Belkin n52te Tournament Edition SpeedPad
by Belkin Components
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List Price: Our Price: $62.04 You Save: $7.95 (11%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Belkin n52te Tournament Edition SpeedPad
Customer Review: Expensive, but very nice
Summary: 5 Stars
I purchased this from a local retailer on 3/24/2008. My son choose the Saitek PZ31A Pro Gamer which I purchased at the same time.
First, others have complained about buggy software. I have not had any problems with either software or hardware.
For each game you use this unit with, you'll want a profile. In each profile, you can map each key (minus one to actually switch maps) to three different functions, one for each mapping (which goes by color).
This isn't as useful as it sounds, but it's still nice.
The software iteself is extremely easy to use. There is a picture of the controller on screen, you choose a button, then choose what you want that button to do. Each button can be mapped to up to tree different keys, functions, or macros. Switching is easy, however, I've found that switching between keymaps isn't that useful during a game. While not in battle, switching has some usefulness, but when you are trying to kill that last demon, you don't want to switch maps just to get to another weapon.
There are fewer buttons than I would have liked, but realistically, the fourteen buttons available for the fingers of the left hand are about all that can be reached comfortably. There is also a scroll button which can be used for up to three different keys. (One key for scroll up, one key for scroll down, and one key for press.)
The scroll button can cycle between keymaps, something I believe only it can do. My one disappointment was that the scroll button can't cycle between other keys. For example, if I have weapon sets mapped to F1, F2, and F3, it would be nice to be able to use the scroll wheel to quickly scroll through my weapons.
The thumb controls three keys -- a lower key, an upper button, and a D-pad. Each can be mapped to anything you choose, including all eight directions available on the D-pad. The thumb can only do one thing at once, however. Don't expect to use the D-pad and another button at the same time. This is important if you choose a thumb key to momentarily shift to another mapping. Since my D-pad is set for movement, and the upper thumb button to shift, I can't do both at the same time.
A manual is included on the CDROM, but simple exploration with the mapping application will give as much information except for two things. The D-pad has a removable joystick, and the hand rest is adjustable/removable. In either case, you simply pull the component off the base. The hand rest can be moved back about an inch, or the whole thing used without it.
Now, I wanted to make a couple of comparisons to the Saitek I bought for my son. First, the software for the Saitek is difficult to understand, and the colors the software talks about aren't the colors on the keypad. It also has several more keys available, which sounds good, but I'm not sure it would actually work well in practice. The one thing I really like about the Saitek is that it has a shift key that can be pressed by the base of the thumb, allowing use of the joystick and shift key at the same time.
Finally, my son has had issues where in the middle of a game, it seems to lose its programming and the profile has to be reloaded.
As for the n52te, I love it. I bought it specifically for Hellgate: London, and once I got the keys mapped for it, it worked wonderfully. I have also experimented with a profile for Starcraft, and while I don't believe it works as well for that game, it still speeds up my commands.
Customer Review: For my intent and purpose (World of Warcraft)... fantastic!
Summary: 5 Stars
I first want to preface this review by saying that I have NEVER owned anything like this. I am not some kind of strange Belkin fanboy, nor have I ever owned any other kind of gaming keyboard or any other product in this line. I am used to using the mouse and keyboard that came with my computer to play my game of choice, which is World or Warcraft.
My keybindings were becoming to plentiful to map comfortably to my keyboard so I found this device and decided to give it a try. From what I can see with the reviews here, some people really like their N52 (non-TE) and while I can't comment because I have never used it, I would think that once you get used to the layout of a gadget like this, any change will be for the worse.
I have good sized hands, they have no problem with reaching the keys, I had to actually move the hand rest back to get comfortable... but once I did, it was PERFECT. I have so much more dexterity in my ability to reach more buttons than ever before. I had no idea my thumb could accomplish so much...
Unless you have tiny hands like my wife (who can't reach most of the keys) you will LOVE this thing... It does have a learning curve, I got used to it with my 42 Warrior and it took a few hours of playing for it to become second nature, now once I get on my 70, because I am already completely used to the device, I will have ZERO problem getting all those extra abilities mapped correctly.
The program it comes with is CAKE to use. It doesn't matter what you map the keys to do, I mapped every key to a random keyboard key it doesn't matter, I just mapped a couple of them to a function modifier key (Shift, ALT, TAB) and re-did my bindings IN GAME to get it all straight, took altogether 3 minutes.
Great product, great looking, EXTREMELY comfortable in every regard, and gives me more buttons for comfortable binding then I ever thought possible.
I don't see what there is to dislike about this thing, I was a little skeptical at first, but I have grown to LOVE it in the 4 days since i got it.
PHENOMENAL!
Customer Review: $70 for half a buggy keyboard!? I don't think so.
Summary: 2 Stars
This is a long and comprehensive review for those of you who really want to get informed about this particular product. Should you wish to skip the main dish and go straight to the point then please read the disclaimers below and go to "MY CONCLUSION" at the end.
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DISCLAIMERS:
I will attempt to make this review as unbiased and neutral as I possibly can in order to give the reader a better ground from which to make the decision of whether purchasing this product will be a good deal or not.
I often do a lot of research and reading before buying something, especially if it is a device as unique and expensive as this. If my research convinces me, I proceed to buy the item from a local retailer and try it out for over three weeks. If I like it I keep it, if not I return it (thus the three-week deadline). I strongly believe that with items like these that carry a hefty price tag and incessant bragging by the manufacturer, if I am not sold by the end of the second week, it isn't worth it.
Why do I say and do all of this? Simple, we are a community and our only line of defense is each other. Companies seem to be slowly phasing out of their commitment to please the consumer, and most consumers are ignorantly riding along with that. I believe that it should be the other way around; companies have to be driven by consumers who, by being informed, should encourage a healthy corporate competition in order to force technological evolution to everyone's advantage. That way we end up with the best that industry has to offer as the industry ends up with our commitment and money. Which then goes into another cycle; thus we all win. However, the only way to achieve this is by having informed customers who stick out for each other and healthily share all they know.
With that said, my goal is to save you time and effort as others do for me and you can do for others. Hey, it is your and my hard-earned dollar, if I already did the work, why should you do it all over again?
N52TE DISCLAIMER:
I am not a hard-core n52 owner, matter of fact, I have NEVER used a gaming pad of this kind before. This was my first attempt at expanding my gaming prowess with such a device. Also, unfortunately (or fortunately?), due to mere time limitations, I am not a hard-core gamer anymore; I am too busy with life and work that I just cannot play as often as I'd like. However, I do have a lot of previous experience with gaming and, because of my job, a keen eye and feel for good Industrial Design, Hardware, Software, Technology and overall Usefulness of something, particularly within the realm of tech-gadgets.
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REVIEW (INDEX):
My review is structured by "CATEGORIES" depicting the several aspects of this device: Opening, Aesthetics, Design, Hardware Usage, Software Usage, and Conclusion. The paragraph following the title is the "neutral and unbiased" review and the paragraph following that (marked with a *) is my personal opinion on the "category" being discussed.
OPENING:
Included in the box are the n52te, a quick-start guide, an "n52te" bumper sticker, a drivers CD, and an orange piece of paper instructing the user to download the latest drivers on-line instead of using the supplied CD.
* I found this orange paper to be rather interesting -good and bad in its own right, the rest is pretty much standard content.
AESTHETICS:
Overall, the n52te looks very good. The chassis is made of a shinny black plastic with sparkles, a matte black rubberized palm rest and thumb-stick, matte black plastic keys, and "gamer-blue" LED lighting. The USB cable is of enough length and feels sturdy, the connector tip is gold-plated, and comes with a plastic cap.
It should be noted though that the LED lighting is a little overdone; however it can be turned off. Some may be able to easily tune it out off of their peripheral vision, but others will be bothered to the extreme with this as it bleeds A LOT through the slits between the keys (about 200% more than what actually shines through the symbol on the key). However, it is a nice touch as it gives the effect that the keys are "suspended" in a pool of light. Nevertheless, the same cannot be said about the LEDs that indicate which profile you have activated as they are REALLY bright and seem to be pointed right at your face; most will find these are quite hard to tune out and are impossible to turn off (to my experience).
* Personally, I loved the looks because it matched perfectly with the rest of my peripherals (Razer Lachesis, Razer Lycosa to name some), I am building up a dream-rig and am being vain enough to try and match everything together (function far overcoming form though). However, the only thing that turned me off was those sparkles, I assume they were trying to emulate that top-of-the-line car paint, but to me it just looks like it got dipped in high school lip-gloss... Yeah, you know what I mean!
- I didn't mind having it with the light on, it looked nice and, as I said, it matched the rest of my set-up. However, with the on/off switch being below the device, I think that you can accidentally turn them on and off with a modest push/pull (commonplace to mid-game intensity), though it never happened to me.
DESIGN:
The ergo-design is both its forte and biggest flaw. You must have larger hands to physically exploit the n52te fully; otherwise you will find yourself unnaturally stretching your fingers to hit certain keys and using some of its features.
* Personally, my overall ergonomic experience with this device was a catastrophe (see "USAGE" for details).
HARDWARE USAGE:
I used the n52te only with Battlefield 2142. Judging by the design of the device it is easy to see that it was designed to be used primarily with FPSs.
However, this by no means implies that you cannot use the n52te with other genres, you very well could; however, chances are it will be very inconvenient. To illustrate, in order to fully exploit the n52te over other genres; say RTS, such a venture will require a lot of time wasted through clever trial-and-error mapping of all the desired shortcuts and macros into the device, possibly even extending out into the other memory banks for one single game. Adding to that is the time that will be wasted in getting accustomed and ultimately memorizing all these changes in order to execute them with the needed speed and accuracy that will actually make you competitive.
Therefore, you can conclude that though it IS possible to take this device VERY far, it will be a major effort consisting of a major waste of time.
* Personally (and here is where all my gripes are), I have "below-average" sized hands and, though I make up with very dexterous fingers and Belkin did their part with the adjustable palm-rest, I still found the n52te to be more of an inconvenience than anything else.
- I found myself uncomfortably stretching to press highest leftmost pinky and ring finger keys, the pinky one being just plain unusable for me.
- The "mouse wheel" felt strange, its click is inconsistent and the "steps" are too defined and offer way too much resistance to be of good on-the-fly use. Moreover, it is located too far back; I had to lift my other three fingers out of their place to have my index comfortably stretch down to move the wheel.
- The "spacebar" was simply out of bounds for me, I understand they tried to emulate a real space bar, where you just quickly slam your thumb down to press it, but they failed horribly. The n52te's spacebar is pretty stiff, it is located too far down from the natural resting position of your thumb on the device and, as hard as I tried, I never really found its "sweet spot". As others have noted, even if you could comfortably and quickly slam your thumb down, it is just unclear where and how to hit it to make it work 100% of the time. It WILL piss you off.
- The D-Pad felt rather stiff and it is a mind-battle to map it, I will try to explain my struggle. I was debating whether to map it in a "local" sense where my thumb defines direction, the nail being north, so pushing will be up (down in my case, I am used to "pilot-style" axis inversion) and so on. Or, on the other hand, a "global" mapping where just up towards the ceiling will be north. Still after this struggle I never used the D-Pad because it was too stiff for efficient use.
- The "alt" button above the D-pad was too flimsy and seemed that it was about to fall off, I mapped the space bar to this button.
- As you can assume, I barely trifled with the Macros and extreme customizations available.
SOFTWARE USAGE:
After downloading and installing the 1.02 drivers (as instructed by the orange paper), I proceeded to update the firmware from v1.01 to v1.02, and I was unable to. Razer's update program failed every time under every circumstance.
As stated above, I never used the original n52; however, I have found there is a very solid consensus of complaints about Razer's new take on the mapping software interface. It seems that (again, based on the seemingly unanimous on-line opinions) the new software is a severe step-back from the original n52's. Unfortunately I cannot confirm this but I can still give my opinion:
* Personally, as I stated above, I own two other products from Razer and I really like their interfaces, simple, useful, and with an added bonus of eye-candy. There is no question that the n52te's interface was designed by Razer; but I think they could have done a MUCH better job (again, based on the interfaces from the Razer products I own).
- The window is way too small for such a big device that has so many keys to map, I literally had to either squint or put my face up to the screen to make sure I was highlighting the desired key. I have read that the original n52 software had a feature through which you could physically press a key on the n52 and it would light up on the software; THAT would have definitely helped -proving that sometimes, it really isn't necessary to re-invent something.
BUILD QUALITY:
I cannot say anything neutral here; I didn't take the thing apart to examine it or anything like that, so I do not have a neutral opinion of its literal build quality, all I can say comes from my usage of the device.
* Personally, based on my gripes above, my honest opinion is that the n52te is of a questionable build quality:
- The keys, chassis, and palm-rest feel very good and very solid; however, the "space-bar", the "D-Pad", and the "ALT-Button" feel VERY cheaply made, to the point that I think that those parts were sub-contracted out to another manufacturer.
- Overall, the n52te is halfway up the build quality spectrum.
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MY CONCLUSION:
I returned the n52te.
I see this device to be more of an inconvenience than anything else and I believe it is aimed either at the hard-cores of hard-cores or at those who do not know what they are getting into. Meaning that for most of us, the n52te will just feel like a re-invented wheel which we might never use to its full capacity. However, for those of you who have the time, patience, and available effort to attempt to exploit this device to its fullest, keep in mind the actual physical minuses I stated above; those are a deterrent to anyone and I am almost sure that they will be the reason that will eventually make you quit.
For me, with no time to "fully exploit" the n52te, it all boiled down to: "I do not see how I can dish out $70+tax for half a keyboard and how that is supposed to up my game so darn much." Moreover, as many have noted, I also felt I had a batch-one beta model and was being a Guinea Pig to Belkin -no thanks!
I rated this item 2 out of 5 stars simply because of the aesthetics, the concept, and remotely hidden potential behind this device.
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I hope this review was helpful to you! If it was, please make sure to click "yes" below to help others find it. Thank you!
- Seb
Customer Review: Think before you want to waste your money
Summary: 1 Stars
Well, n52te is here, and Belkin wants you to pay $70 to test their product that appears to be not even in beta stage (alpha is more appropriate)
As it stands now, n52te is a total waste of money.
Pros:
Very pretty. Improved buttons over n52. ummm.. thats it
Cons:
Dont know where to start.
The software is so buggy, it is hard to describe it. I gave up on trying to get the macros to work. It really seems that the product has not even been tested. I cant believe that they released a product that does not even work. They say "we are working on it". Why release the product? Hold off another year if you need to, and release something that works.
Total waste of money, and this is getting returned to Amazon, so they can sell it to another sucker.
Maybe I will buy it in a year, after they work out their bugs.
Do not buy.
Customer Review: Not perfect, but a nice upgrade from my n50
Summary: 4 Stars
Please note from my title that I upgraded from the n50 and not the n52, so what was an upgrade in many categories for me may not be for the average n52 user.
That being said, there were several things I really liked about this controller and only a few things I didn't like. Overall, the construction is solid and the controller is comfortable to use. I have experienced none of the rocking that some have reported. I have not tried to remove the optional joystick, so I cannot attest to whether the supposed hole that is left in the directional pad is as bad as some have said. I also don't use more than three shift states, so losing one shift state wasn't a loss to me. The space button does have some "quirks" in that you must press near the center or it does not respond. However, all other buttons were extremely responsive. The backlighting option is nifty, but I found myself turning it off after a while because it was a distraction. I do miss the scroll wheel having an "on/off" state, but that was changed for the n52 as well and not just the n52te.
The software wasn't as bad as I had read before buying it. Yes, all the delays are preset. However, delays can be as little as 50ms and you can stack multiple delays between key presses. So unless you need a response time of less than 50ms, there shouldn't be an issue except that instead of the editor auto-timing your delay you'd have to figure it out yourself and insert the appropriate delays. I don't know about the one macro at a time issue. I know that I can fire a macro while moving with the directional pad and it works just fine, but I don't use two macros simultaneously. Overall, the software seemed more intuitive to me than the editor packaged with the n50. The fact that the profiles are persistent to the controller was a huge selling feature for me and has been a pleasure to take advantage of.
My general assessment based on what I have read and experienced is this...if you are upgrading from the n50, this controller is probably a very nice upgrade. The additional buttons and features were nice. If you are upgrading from the n52, you might want to look at what new features this controller brings and what features you lose. Some may find that the n52 does everything they need it to and this controller may be a disappointment unless you specifically want the persistent profiles or backlight features.
Lastly, bear in mind that there were some screwy shipment issues when on this controller early on. I am not sure what the situation is like now, but pay attention to the estimated shipment dates so you don't get hit with an unexpected delay.