Gaming Gear Showdown, Simplicity vs. Hype

Slack3r78 writes "Gizmodo is running a feature putting the gaming marketing hype to the test and seeing whether it really makes your playing any more 1337. They match up the latest products from Razer and SteelSeries along with some five-year-old Logitech products and come to the conclusion that ... it doesn't seem to matter that much. It looks like maybe you can't buy your way into finally beating that annoying 13-year-old at your favorite FPS after all."

Re:You don't say?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. I got a metal mousepad with teflon surface and it helps more than a $100 gaming mouse would. Plus those mice with tons of buttons are a pain to use, it's almost impossible to hold on to the mouse securely while contorting my fingers to use those stupid buttons.
A couple side thumb buttons is more than enough.

The only thing fancy about my keyboard is that it's LED backlit so I can see it in the dark.

Um

[dreamchaser]

I'm 41 and at most games I've play online, and they are many, I totally own the 13 year olds. They don't like it much either. Then again I've been playing various games in arcades on on PC's since I was...hmmm about 13. Maybe experience and natural dexterity is better than good gear or having too much time on one's hands?

Re:You don't say?

[vux984]

an optical mouse is better than a ball,

And a laser mouse is better than an optical mouse.

a silent and/or small motion motion keyboard helps

I tend to say, "go with what is most comfortable". Quality keyboards tend to have 2 crucial gaming features:

1) more simultaneous key presses. Nothing sucks worse than side strafe moving while crouching and flicking the reload button and having nothing happen.

2) quality = durability/consistency. the only thing that sucks worse than 1) above is playing on a keyboard where one of the w-a-s-d has gone 'squishy' or 'sticky' or otherwise doesn't have the same feel or travel as the other 3, for example. Any keyboard can fail, but cheap ones fail sooner and more often.

most of these 15 button mice are useless because only the standard 5 buttons can normally be mapped without having to run some special software in the background which impeeds the performance

Trading 0.1 fps to be able to run a useful mouse macro is nearly always worth it. The trick is coming up with useful macros -- some games have them... some don't.

Re:Um

[Colonel Korn]

Eh, I think it's not a bad point to make. The 13 year old uber gamer stereotype gets passed around a fair bit, so it's worth pointing out that it's not very common.

Coding keyboards?

[atrus]

Now for what really matters, how do those keyboards do for coding? :-)

I'm always interested in "better" keyboards for large volumes of text entry. It does get minus points for putting the Ctrl key in the wrong spot - who uses capslock anyway?

Re:I only partially convinced

[realmolo]

You do realize that mouse sensitivity is COMPLETELY dependent on software, right? The "DPI" rating of your mouse hardware is totally irrelevant.

Think about it. What's the smallest distance you can move your mouse pointer on screen? One pixel. No matter WHAT the DPI rating of your mouse is, this will never change. It's the sensitivity settings in software that are determining how far you have to move your mouse in order to move the pointer one pixel on the actual screen.

DPI ratings are a scam on mice.