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it did exactly what i wanted it to do, and that's all i really ask for. but i got the keypad as a birthday present, and let me tell you, it does exactly what i want it to do.which is make pc gaming--especially WoW--feel a little more natural. i just like the occasional round of counterstrike, and spend my days off playing WoW. as soon as i booted up WoW with the n52te, i rearranged my hotkeys, bound them all to the pad, and watched everything become that much easier for me.i dunno. i'm not sure what's up with all the negative reviews here. maybe because i'm not a serious PC gamer. for some reason my left hand just naturally attunes to the thing.
Yeah, Belkin. and talk with two different 'techs' neither of whom were easy to understand and neither of whom understood me.they would call me back they said, within 24 hours.which they did not. Shall I go on. India.
and you get 22 instead of 14.in this case more is better. If it doesn't work out, read my review on subject. I bought a Logitech G13 Advanced Gameboardand hope the install goes better. Before I even installed it, I had to buy an extension for the USB, since the one supplied was about six feet long. And guess who makes an extension for about $20. After several calls to. And from what I could understand, they were teching from a check list and had no idea what they were doing.
BTW, It has a 10 foot line.I might also add.The keys on the G13 are better positioned and those closer to your palm require less curling of the fingers to attack. This is not the pad you are looking for. After my install of hardware and software I could not get it to work. A.no, I shan't.
The learning curve was a bit steep (retraining 15 years of muscle memory) but after a month I would never go back to the laptop keyboard. I withheld one star because the paint is wearing off one key already, purely a cosmetic fault, but still am I really hitting the key that often. The macro function works fine and the many options in the excellent software make this an easy product to customise. The d-pad allowed me to use the keypad to map other functions to, what I feel, is a more intuitive position. The last piece I needed to complete my laptop armchair simpit (see my profile for a picture). I love this device. Was originally put off by all the poor reviews but I'm using it for FPS and the ability to map the WASD to the thumb d-pad (including diagonals) has vastly improved my gaming experience, freeing up my fingers for other functions. Now I use the same key for similar functions across multiple games.
It would be a five star product otherwise. Would make skill use a lot easier since my in game hot keys are limited to 12, leaving the other 3 buttons useless. I only wish the macro ability were more versatile, so far I haven't been able to figure out how to create a macro to auto type a line of text that I can bind to one key. Everything else works well, except for the former complaint about the macro ability. I use this for MMORGs, it works extremely well in that capacity and has made hot keys a LOT easier to use. Documentation for the software is almost zero, but that isn't a problem for most gamers who can figure things out very quickly. There is also NO "Repeat until SAME key is pressed again" option, but there is a "Repeat until any key is pressed" option which is pointless because I WANT certain macros to remain in continuous use while I use the other keys, but I guess its an impossible feat of programming or hardware limitation that prevents that option.I haven't used the D-Pad, but from what I hear this is one of the biggest complaints about the N52TE.
My best guess was that there was some FOB in the housing that was causing a short when it was screwed together tightly. The only caveat though is that since my thumb is on the d-pad all the time, physically hitting the space bar while moving forward is next to impossible, so I bound jump to one of the side buttons of my mouse (a logitech MX518) which worked out fine. Its a fairly large control scheme shift with a correspondingly long learning curve.*did the n52te break. Since the d-pad is way to spongey to control movement, I found myself reverting to the old WASD scheme. It doesn't really get in the way which is nice and I've occasionally used it for an extra 3 buttons (you can rebind scroll up/down to any keystroke or macro) but its presence is almost entirely superfluous.*************************Software and Macros***********************I hear a lot of people bitching about how it doesn't have this feature or that doodad from the old version so its not worth buying, but I've found it to be completely adequate.
I was playing an FPS and noticed that my gun wouldn't reload anymore. -The evidence points to the original n52 as being the best*is the original n52 still available. If you're looking to press one key down and have the controller go through 15 abilities, things may get a little dicey. This, by the way, is my greatest disappointment with the n52te. nice. I play in a pretty well lit room so I just turn it off. -if you spend the time to get used to it yes.
I can see that some people out there would want to have more than these three keymaps, but keep in mind, these are only the firmware keymaps, ie. If you need more than three maps, the software gives you the option of saving a key layout and loading it back up at a later date. First being the placement of the space key. It is worth pointing out that my $10 dell keyboard has lasted almost two years though and shows no signs of quitting (and its filled with even MORE beer).So yes, the life-cycle on this device is somewhat shorter than I would have liked. Uhg.So I wound up determining the exactly point of the housing reassemblage before the key stopped working. -No, so its irrelevant to these reviews. After spending an unfruitful half hour trying to figure out why this was, I wound up jamming a shim made out of a folded up piece of cardstock between the two halves of the housing and screwing it back together sans a few screws.This worked for a while until I noticed that the 'r' key stopped working when the ctrl key was depressed (no more crouching and reloading). Thinking that I had just sovled the problem by happenstance, I proceeded to screw the whole thing back together only to find that, when put back together, the key had stopped working again.
They have a slighty rough texture which, as a one with sweaty hands, is quite nice. I've seen some people here complaining about the backlight, as for me, I could take it or leave it. And as far as bringing this thing over to your friends house, if you're nerdy enough to have to take this everywhere you go, you're not above bringing along a usb drive with all your keymaps anyways.*************************In-game Performance***********************In my opinion this pad really shines in games like World of Warcraft. As of this date, the key works for the most part, but fails to register strokes with enough frequency to prompt me to shelve the gamepad.In a nutshell:*is it worth $60. I even spilled a beer on it once to no immediate ill-effect (was a bit sticky to the touch for a bit though). With this pad, I have to lift up my thumb and put it back down on the desired direction. It probably cost $4 bucks for some chinese kid to make this.*is it the best gaming pad out there.
-possibly*************************Ergonomics and Layout***********************This is definitely one of the stronger points of the gamepad. I personally only use two of them, one for WoW, and another for first-person shooters, I just alter the keybinds in individual games to match up with my general FPS keymap. -Probably not. Granted though, I didn't do anything crazy with the macro editor, I essentially just added 10 Hz turbo mode to some of my keys (a very nice feature in WoW). However if you're the type that has trouble guzzling mountain dew, eating cheetos, and playing WoW in the complete darkness of your mother's basement, it might be a handy replacement for a desk lamp.Last note on this subject.
And that just feels clunky to me. The palm rest provides nice support and guides your hand into a graceful position--unlike the claw I frequently find my hand in with a normal keyboard. If you insist on using the d-pad, you'll find that the tip of your thumb is extended far past the space key thus requiring that you strike the far corner of it with the knuckle of your thumb. I think its a great idea to give more control to your most dexterous digit which has tragically been relegated to merely making your character hop, but the d-pad on this thing just doesn't feel right.Aside from the thumb area though, the other keys work fine.
I opened it up (fairly easy to get inside of with a small phillips screwdriver) and noticed that when I had its guts splayed out on my desk the 'r' key started working again. It took me a few days to get used to this new setup and chances are it will for you too, but don't be discouraged, it will make you a far better player.As far as first person shooters go, some of the utility of this pad diminishes. I wound up binding my guns to the cardinal directions of the d-pad, but if you have more than four, then you start to run into trouble. Sure you could move Mario with it, but it just never felt right. Turns out that when the portion of the housing nearest the ctrl key pressed into its seat all the way, it caused the 'r' key to bug out. Furthermore, they made it too big. The space key I wound up rebinding to open up my inventory which worked out quite nicely. You'll probably be happier with that in the long run.*************************Durability***********************As I mentioned at the top I had the "r" key fail after about 5 months.
And while the n52te doesn't have the bajillions of buttons that other comparable pads have, you'll find that you can press all of them without having to move your wrist up and down which greatly decreases hand strain. While I did not have the experience that other reviewers have reported of the key not registering if you don't hit it dead in the middle, the space key on my pad did have kind of the sticky feeling if it was pushed off-center. I'm not the kind of guy that chucks my keyboard across the room in a fit of rage, but I can get slightly heavy handed in the heat of the moment. So if you only play first person shooters, I recommend getting a full-sized gaming keyboard. While there's a lot of different ways to set it up, I found that the best configuration for my warrior tank was to bind movement to the d-pad and bind all of my abilities to the keys under my index through ring finger with the pinky in charge of ability sheet swapping (alt, shift, ctrl). the ones that are stored in the controller so you can bring it over to your friends house and change the mapping.
And honestly, with the exception of a very small number of games, theres little use in having more buttons than the n52te provides as long as you set it up intellegently.However, it does have some knuckleheaded design choices. And since it allows you to have your hand on the mouse at all times, you no longer need to employ the dreaded and nubbish tab-targetting. It only served to make a d-pad that felt squishy even more unresponsive. If you see the analog stick and think that you're actually getting an analog pad, don't be fooled. That is, games where you have one entire buttload of spells and abilities, but super-precise movement is not necessary.
The interface might not be great, it took me maybe an hour or so to get everything set up exactly the way I wanted it with some trial and error. I have no idea why they decided to add a scroll wheel to this thing. So I took it apart again and cleaned it pretty thourougly only to find that the key was still broken. But it wasn't broken out of the box which was. Which was where I decided to just give up on it.You might think that I'd be angry that it broke, but honestly, I put it through a lot of abuse. -yes, but only after I enjoyed using it for 5 months*will I buy another one.
If you don't already have a mouse with a scroll wheel, you have no business buying this pad. -yes*will the n52te make you a better player. While it took a few days to get used to, I found myself preferring it immensely to a normal keyboard while playing World of Warcraft. Unfortunately, after about five months of persistent usage, the top-right key (equivalent to the 'r' key on a normal keyboard) stopped functioning and required some jury-rigging to revive. Honestly its not a huge problem if you've got a mouse with some buttons to take up the slack (I use the side buttons on my mouse for grenades and such) but if you want to play a game like ARMA II which has literally every key on the keyboard bound plus ctrl-bound plus alt-bound, you'll need to go back to a full sized keyboard.
Unlike most of the other pads out there, this one actually looks like it was designed to have a hand placed on it. Effectively allowing you as many maps as you'd like. Normally with a d-pad, I expect to be able to to keep my thumb in the middle and be able to pivot it in the appropriate direction. In the case of first person shooters though, I didn't find it to be a huge improvement over my $10 dell keyboard. But screw it, learn to play.The most legitimate complaint I've seen about the software is the ability to have only 3 firmware keymaps. Stop talking about it.*is the n52te better than your $10 dell keyboard. This was really not a huge problem though as the key layouts I used never required the heavy use of both the d-pad and the space bar simultaneously.Another thing I didn't like about the design was the shoddy quality of the d-pad. But once its set up the way you want it, there little reason to be screwing with it anymore.
Which feels nice enough, however theres one big problem here, the pad has no keys that correspond to the number buttons, so you'll either have to cycle through the weapons with your scroll wheel, or be fairly creative with your keybinding. Really it's just a crummy old digital pad akin to the one on that off-brand super nintendo controller you bought because it was 15 bucks cheaper than the real thing. *************************Overview***********************After shopping around for a few weeks, I finally settled on this pad. Right out of the box I tried using it with the stick on, but wound up trashing it after about 10 minutes. Granted you have to be very comfortable with mouse moving for this to work, but it gives you full access to all the abilities and macros you'd ever want to use while maintaining constant control over the movement of your character.
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