Belkin Nostromo Speedpad n50 10-Button

by Belkin

Product Details

Product Manual [3.72mb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00005U2DX
• Item model number: F8GFPC001
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #74,343 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: February 18, 2002

Product Description

The n50 SpeedPad is the first gaming device of its kind, a completely new gaming tool that transcends conventional categories such as game pads, joysticks, etc. The SpeedPad can best be described as a combination keyboard and game pad. The 10 keys on the n50 act as keys on a keyboard with the advantage of being easily accessible and intuitively configured. The n50 also has an eight-way directional pad, much like the d-pad on a standard game pad. It’s an innovative, multipurpose tool that will lift your gaming experience to a whole new level.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars was the best, now a bit long in the tooth, December 20, 2003

By 

Todd Greco (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Belkin Nostromo Speedpad n50 10-Button (Personal Computers)

i loved this device, and had it for almost 2 years... but i've since upgraded to the n52 and will never look back. the n52 is heavier, has more buttons, and has a slicker layout than the n50.

that said, the n50 is a great tool. i used it mostly for fps games (mostly b1942), and it's a champ.

by default, it'll try to map the movement keys to the dpad, which is a total mistake. do yourself a favor and set the keys to something close to your actual keyboard layout (with the wasd keys in the center), then program the dpad to the other functions that you use all of the time but usually have to take your hand off of the home keys to reach (like jump, reload, crouch, prone). with this sort of setup, you'll find that you'll be able to reload on the run, duck, and jump while doing other things - which will greatly improve your game.

some things to remember with the n50 -

the scrollbar is next to useless, and, unless you work for a circus full-time, you'll never be able to reach it. i'd say that the same holds true for some of the keys to the left and right of the 'home' area. also, the rest area on the n50 is somewhat uncomfortable and way too light in comparison to the n52. also, make /certain/ that you install the drivers that are up on their site (3.0), not the ones that come with the cd (which are older and buggier).

anyway, if you're looking at this product, i'd suggest dropping the extra 10 bucks and getting the n52. it's a more refined product, and really works better.

see you on the battlefield.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Latest update fixes all problems!, October 11, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Belkin Nostromo Speedpad n50 10-Button (Personal Computers)

This is a great FPS game controller, designed to be used with the left hand (think: WASD) while your right moves the mouse. The latest free update (as of this writing) v2.6, allows it to work perfectly on XP machines, plus adds a bunch of new features that some people were whining about. For example: you can now use the D-pad for shift keys! This lets you quadruple the number of functions of each of the ten main keys without sacrificing any of them as shift keys! (That right there takes out most of the user complaints about how it wasn't quite perfect enough for them.) Someone was saying that there are 8 keys, but no, there are 10. Two rows of 5 = 10 last time I checked. Plus the 8-direction D-pad. The throttle control is useless, but so what? It doesn't get in the way, and is easily ignored. The macro programmability is extremely powerful and immenently useful. Oh, another change with the new v2.6 update is the ability to edit macros that you have recorded! Yes! And, as always, you can easily set it up so that a particular key-mapping "profile" is automatically loaded when you start up a particular game -- and you can just leave it plugged into its USB port when not playing games, it doesn't take over any keys on your regular keyboard when inactive. If you play a lot of FPS games, you will LOVE the way this thing handles! You can frag for many more hours now before feeling any fatigue in your left hand. After you get used to it, you will not want to go back to your keyboard. The only thing about it is that southpaws need not apply (unless they use their mouse in their right hand. I know a few that do.)

36 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Nostromo Is Not For Everyone, December 17, 2003

By 

Gavin B. (St. Louis MO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Belkin Nostromo Speedpad n50 10-Button (Personal Computers)

I'm an avid gamer and I'm always looking products to improve my left hand performance in the games I play. A lot of excellent players in the Unreal Tournament and Quake gaming communities swear by the Nostromo game pad. Essentially, Nostromo weans the user from the keyboard, to a programmable pad designed to provide quick access to programmed sequence commands. For instance, in UT, the complete sequence to translocate involves three commands, 1. Get the translocator, 2. Fire or toss the translocator, 3. And finally hitting Alt Fire completes the translocator command completes the translocation. Notromo allows the user to complete multi-tiered commands, like translocation, in the stroke of one key, instead of three. This sort of shortcut will save time and as every gamer knows time is of the essence in executing a game command.

The more savvy gamer will recogize that what I've just described is a simplified program to write "raw keybinds"; or programmable commands that can be tied to specific keys by accessing the game console and typing the word "preferences". It is admirable that Nostromo is providing a simple keybind program for the novice gamer, who knows nothing of the arcane mysteries of programming keybinds. Every gaming newbie should do everything in their power to level the playing field with the pros and Nostromo helps. The veteran gamer will realize that Nostromo is providing a program to do what he or she can already do themselves by writting and executing their own raw keybinds.

The second advantage of Nostromo is the actual design of the game pad itself. It is designed to replace the keyboard with a compact unit that has ten keys, a directional pad and a throttle to replace often clumsy method of searching for the correct key on a full sized keyboard. Using the efficency of a well designed gaming pad, the user should be able to improve his or her game speed by improving reaction time. Yes and no...Nostromo does help some folks improve their fragging, but again the savvy player knows if they use the standard key pad on the keyboard, they will have 15 readily accessable command keys instead of Nostromo's 10. The design of the key pad on a computer keyboard is even faster and more than Nostromo's double-decker design of "Five over Five" command keys. Nostromo's design is too wide and the user must finger stretch to touch keys, while the compact design of the computer key pad requires no finger stretching.

If you decide to use the Nostromo game pad, be forwarned: there is learning curve for the user and until you master the Nostromo device, your game will suffer. In my case, it made no sense to master and use the Nostromo technology because I had already developed a playing system using raw keybinds and the standard computer key pad that was superior to Nostromos. A final word of caution on Nostromo: The newer anti-cheat enviroments of Pure and CSHP are very unfriendly to any suspicious keybinds. As a result, many of the more exotic keybinds will not be usable in the newer anti-hack playing enviroments. To veteran players: I am a founding member of the notorious Magnificent 7 Crew. The Nostromo game pad is far and away the most popular gaming device in the world. Many awesome clan players from the Hairy Zark Assasins, the Virtual Space Cowboys, Guns of Death and the Black Legion swear by the Nostromo pad. However when I questioned some of the Nostromo enthusiasts in more detail, most of them admitted to me that they never tried the standard key pad, instead of hunting and pecking on a big keyboard. Before you spend 28 bucks on Nostromo, try using the key pad as your left hand command central, along with a Logitech MX500 mouse for your right hand. For advanced gamers the single most important improvement to your game will come from adding good graphics card, if you already have a reasonably good rig. The ATI Radeon 9200 graphics card (about a hundred bucks) will make a real difference in your game play. As we already know, however, it matters not whether you have a monster computer, an Logitech mouse, a Radeon graphics card, or a Nostromo game pad...what matters in the world of gaming is practice, practice and more practice.