Four Keyboards And Four Mice For LAN Party Gamers, Rounded-Up

Round-ups
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We have four portable keyboards and a quartet of gaming mice that could turn heads at your next LAN party. We put the boards through a number of performance-oriented metrics, and handed the hardware off to some gamer friends for their opinions, too.

Comfort Rankings From Regular Folks

Keyboards

At the end of the day, the popularity of a peripheral at least partially comes down to the subjective preferences of individual users. With that in mind, we isolated three different hand sizes, and chose three different LAN party gamers in each category to use and rate the four keyboards.

To best represent the preferences of all nine participants, we applied a simple point system: the most-preferred peripheral receives four points; the next-favorite is given three, and so on. This helps ensure that an appropriate weight is given to each choice, while allowing us to easily represent their opinion in a chart.

In most cases, the BlackWidow came out ahead, though its noise was often cited as a potential issue. The Kensington, Logitech, and Siig were all called out for not having the same satisfying tactile feedback as the Razer. Several people complained that the Logitech K800 felt cheap and plasticky. Siig's keyboard was said to feel sturdy and well-built, likely due to its aluminum frame. On the other hand, the Kensington was said to "feel like its price." Though, when we asked if our panel would purchase the board, respondents generally said yes.

Mice

All of the benchmark data in the world doesn't mean anything if your mouse just doesn't feel right. Your hand needs to reach every button without stretching or contorting. Its feet need to have the right kind of glide. The texture of its shell also has to be just right. Each of these attributes is generally subjective though, and figuring out which features are best for a wide range of people isn't particularly easy.

As with the keyboards, our solution was to give our mice to the same group of gamers and rank their preferences.

Logitech's G9x received unanimous praise. Its interchangeable grips, weights, shape, and smooth cursor movement were all cited as pluses. The testers also really enjoyed using Thermaltake's Theron, though they claimed it put their pinky fingers in an awkward and uncomfortable position.

The Logitech G500 and Razer Orochi, on the other hand, weren't as well-received. No one felt that either mouse was particularly comfortable to use. The G500 was reported to be too long, while the Orochi too small. In fact, respondents claimed that they’d rather buy a cheap laptop-friendly mouse alongside a larger high-end mouse than spend their cash on the Orochi.

Whether or not the dual-mode wired/wireless, portable size, or detachable cable is worthwhile is your decision. With that said, if you have even moderately large hands, you almost certainly will not be a fan of Razer’s portable gaming mouse.

Daniel Starkey
64 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Hadoe
    "high-quality console graphics"

    Heh, good one Toms... good one.
    Reply
  • atavax
    i wonder at what dpi's they tested acceleration. It was my understanding that a lot of mice have acceleration issues at different dpi's. I have seen multiple sources that say the G9 has negative acceleration at low sensitivities.
    Reply
  • samwelaye
    I've had my g9x for quite a while now, love this mouse!
    Reply
  • Trewyy
    G9x now down to $55 on Newegg :) I should mention that it was a good review, as always!

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826104261
    Reply
  • ShadyHamster
    Five programmable buttons near the thumb rest, a mechanical button below the scroll wheel, and a battery indicator set the G500 apart from standard mice.

    That should be DPI indicator not battery.

    And whats up with pitting 1 mechanical keyboard up against 3 membrane keyboards? Before even reading the article i knew that the mechanical keyboard would be the clear winner, who would care about the loudness of the keys at a lan party, 99.9% of people would have headphones.
    Reply
  • Swordkd
    Before I bought my Razer mouse(Imperator 2012), I read reviews on newegg and decided to discount the issue that they seemed to be having. After a few months of use, the mice would start to double-click from a single "click". Sure enough, less than 6 months of light to moderate use, my mouse now suffers from this malady once out of every 20 clicks or so. Enough to annoy me.

    I will not recommend that brand mouse to anyone ever again.
    Reply
  • Soda-88
    No 6Gv2?
    Reply
  • kitsunestarwind
    Logitech G9X is a fantastic mouse, been using mine since they first came out, never a complaint and has led to me having very sharp and accurate aim in games like BF3. Buy one it is worth it!
    Reply
  • alidan
    das keyboard professional
    razor naga

    that's my setup...

    that said, sound and weight to press are not lower or higher is better... they are prefferences, i personally love the sound that a cherry blue makes and wish it was a bit louder because i make more sound on each key by bottoming them out apposed to activating the switch.

    and weight, i hear it more often than not that for gaming heavier presses are better because its less likely to accidently activate.

    now, impersonally just because of prior things i have had, i can never recommend razor... but at the same time i use a razor because i want that 12 key pad, and Logitech mouse is even smaller than the already small naga, and i cant get use to its bad form factor... its really the only razor anything i recommend just because there is no other competition that i can tell people to go with outside the small logitech and only if they have small hands.

    also, i dont know if it was mentioned, but the razor keyboard from what i remember has such a strict policy, that if you remove a key cap, you void the warranty. there are story's of the s and j key switched, but because of razors warranty, they have to send it in and get it replaced that way, and its a razor product, you know it will fail... the keyboard doesn't have a mounting plate, so its more likely to fail than other mechanical keyboards because of the solder point stress before the keys naturally give out.
    Reply
  • blubbey
    'The G500 was reported to be too long,'

    I know of course this is personal preference and everyone's different, but either their hands are small or mine are of reasonable size because I can almost cover the entire mouse (fingertips and base of my hand can just about hit the mouse mat at the same time). Unfortunately I don't have much else to compare it to, only random mice however it is larger than any I can remember, so I might just have larger than 'normal' hands.

    Something else you might want to consider that others have found is that the scroll wheel is very 'light' to use. I'm indifferent about it seeing as I'm used to light scroll wheels but a few people have raised that point in reviews that I saw before buying it (~$45 on sale). I've also found that the weights are prety much useless, it's already quite a weighty mouse so an extra few grams really didn't matter for me.
    Reply