Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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79 of 85 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Belkin N52TE -- Not Ready for Market Yet, March 17, 2008
The purpose of a macro enabled gamepad is to ease the use of multiple game commands and improve both the timing and execution of commands as compared to a player who is pressing keys on a normal keyboard.
The Belkin N52TE comes with a lot of marketing hype. It is easy to assume that it will soon eclipse the Belkin N52, which has been the standard for gamepads for several years. Unfortunately it falls a bit short.
The N52TE has an improved keypad that seems to be mechanically better than the N52. Unfortuantely, the spacebar on the N52TE must be depressed precisely in the center and travels nearly 1/4 inch to make contact. This makes it difficult press and to use quickly.
There is a conveniently located thumb button that could be a real asset but has a mushy feel with no 'click' to indicate when it has been depressed. This makes it useless for quick, momentary functions.
The backlighting feature, instead of only showing the key tops, surrounds the entire perimeter of the keys with bright, blue light. Since one of the reasons to use a keypad is the convenience of not having to look at the keys for finger placment, this is more of a distraction than a help. Fortunately the backlight can be turned off.
The new N52TE has three, selectable keybanks. The N52 had four.
The software has a completely new UI. If you are a N52 user, you cannot transfer any of your current macros to the new unit, you must start from scratch. The new programming software contains most of the fuctionality of the current N52 software but lacks several features that most users consider essential:
---As currently offered, if a macro is running, hitting any other key will stop the macro.
---There is no access to the timing between KEY-PRESS and KEY-RELEASE. The timing between events within the macro is limited to a preset value and cannot be edited.
---While you can create and save macros by selecting [RECORD] and entering the keystrokes, there are bugs that prevent the effective editing of the macro.
I find the software to be unusable and I have put the N52TE on the shelf until the developers come up with something that works.
Belkin n52te Tournament Edition SpeedPad
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101 of 117 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
$70 for half a buggy keyboard!? I don't think so., March 24, 2008
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.
***
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.
***
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...
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32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
With respect to all the negative reviews.., June 26, 2008
You'll find plenty of negative reviews about this little guy anywhere you look. I took all the negative points very seriously (there are a lot of very valid points) and decided not to buy it. However, I saw it at bestbuy a few days ago and man, I kind of drooled a little. Looks even better in person, so I thought what the heck, if I really don't like it I'll just return it and make up a story about bogus Mac software (which works impressively well, by the way. Not at all like your typical Razer software).
Its important to note that I never used the original n52, but I couldn't be happier with the n52te. Firstly, The spacebar isn't giving me the problems I was expecting. I see what people are talking about, when they mention not being able to hit it on the edges, but hitting the space bar at the far ends feels uncomfortable and unnatural to me anyways. I haven't hit space bar without it registering unless I try to get it to miss. I thought I'd have to pop the key off and put something in there to make it a little more stable, but it's really just fine the way it is.
The thumb stick comes off to reveal a d-pad, which I prefer. The small hole in the middle isn't a problem for me now and I don't see it being a problem later on.
I spent two days away from WoW just getting my macros in perfect order, and I honestly can't imagine needing more than is available with the n52te. Sure there are only 3 KeyMaps, where the original apparanly had 4, but I think I've got more than I could handle anyway.
There are blue, red, and green lights under the spacebar to let you know, out of the corner of your eye, which keymap is currently active. Very helpful, but these three lights are way too bright, in my opinion. I put a few layers of tape over them. Problem solved.
I'm just writing this to encourage folks not to give up hope, if you were initially really excited about this and swayed by all the negatives. I'll honor all the negative reviews and assume that if you're already accustomed to the original n52, you'll probably be disappointed. For everyone else, I really recommend you give it a shot. This thing works very well. Its made of quality materials, its comfortable, and dead sexy to boot. Looks incredible next to my blue DeathAdder. Five stars, absolutely.
Feel free to comment and ask me questions. I'll be more than happy to respond.
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