A good gamepad

I've been thinking to get a gamepad and currently have my eyes on the Logitech G13. Anyone have one of these and would like to share their experiences with it?

Also, what other gamepads would you recommend?

 

If you have a PC with Windows, you know the XBOX 360 is fully supported in most games now and with Windows is usually Plug and Play since Microsoft makes the XBOX. Just a thought...

 

I think he means keypad, not gamepad; that's what the G13 is:



Reizo - I recommend the Belkin N52TE, powered by Razer:



It has a few less keys (14 + 1 thumb key/spacebar compared to the G13's 22 keys), but it's definitely more comfortable. Ergonomically left-handed (good for right-handers since your right will be holding your mouse) with an adjustable wrist rest, and it also has a D-pad, which I think is more useful than the G13's joystick thing. It doesn't have the GamePanel LCD, but I would personally never use it.

 

Hm... ._. It does seem much better. I'll look into it right away. Thanks Mastershroom

 

I have the N52TE, its cool for some games, but honestly I only use it half the time. You can move the hand rest in two different positions, but for my hands the position between the two would be perfect. The keys closest to the hand rest are kinda hard to reach, so I hardly use them.

But overall I like it, its really great if you game on a hot laptop, and fits where an external keyboard wouldn't.

Hope this helps.

 

Yeah my laptop does get hot most of the time ._. And i tend to press the wrong keys so I'm looking for a keypad that gives me comfort and is easy to use The N52 does seem awesome so I'll be reading around reviews and make comparisons with others for now

 

Yeah, most people think of Xbox, Nintendo, Dualshock, etc. when they see "gamepad". Technically these left-handed keypad things are called "speedpads".

 

While the product does function, and quite well, Belkin has abandoned the product completely. No drivers are available outside of the CD that comes with the device. No udates to drivers or software have been released in over a year.

Taken from Amazon.com

 

Yeah saw that part :/

In the end I went for the Logitech G13 to see how it's like. Friend of mine has the Belkin and said he likes it so far but I'll try something different

 

False, Belkin has the drivers right here:

http://en-us-support.belkin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2571/p/475

 

Hey, I know this is sorta a dead thread but I thought I would throw in my 2 cents for anyone looking into the key pad market.

First of all, for laptop users I think key pads in general are a great idea. They allow you to sit a little further back from the screen if you want and are easier to carry around in a backpack than a gaming keyboard (which is really the whole point of a laptop isn’t it?).

I have been using the Logitech G13 now for about a month and love it. The keys are easy to use and very natural once you get over the learning curve of what does what (which took me about 10hours of play to be totally fluid with it). There are more than enough for a first person shooter (my FPS of choice right now is Borderlands) especially if combined with a multi-button gaming mouse. I haven’t been playing WoW recently, but a quick count of the buttons on the G13 combined with the G700 that I use shows more than enough for what I did in WoW. To help me make the transition from the keyboard to the G13 I printed out a page with the key bindings mapped out on it, although I suspect that if you were starting a new game and you had never used the keyboard for it before it would be less of a problem. In the learning curve I also include getting used to the position of things. Although I have never used the N52, it is obviously more shaped to a person’s hand. The G13 is a little flatter, but it works well once you get used to the position of everything and I have not had any problem with hand cramping so far.

I also really like the built in display. It is the same as the G15 and any applications that interface with the G15 will also work on the G13. This was particularly useful for me during the short time that I owned an Envy17 because by installing CoreTemp I was able to monitor the temperature information as I played full screen games (incidentally, as the sig says, I don’t own the Envy17 anymore). The built in applications for the screen with show you things like time of day (which isn’t displayed in a lot of games, when you receive new email (for instance an eBay auction sold while I was playing Borderlands yesterday), RSS feeds (which seems of limited use to me), stopwatches, and CPU and RAM usage. While you can do all of these things without the G13, it’s nice to have the ability to do it if you’re playing a full screen game on a laptop without an external monitor.

My only complaint about the G13 would be the two buttons around the joystick. While I find the joystick itself easy enough to use the buttons surrounding it have to be pressed down in a completely vertical manner otherwise the key stroke won’t register. I have gotten used to this and don’t have much of a problem with it anymore but I wouldn’t recommend using either of them for mission critical functions.

Finally, the software for the G13 is good, as long as you’re using the most recent version off the Logitech website. The version that shipped with my keypad in Aug. 2010 was an older version and had no game profiles with it. The latest version, however, is great: no problems, straight forward, easy to use. My only suggestion, for those who might be having trouble working with it, is make sure you have the profile from Logitech for your game first, us that as a starting point and customize from there.

Anyways, sorry to be “that guy” who bumps the 9 month old thread but there’s my 2 cents.

 

Out of curiosity, if you don't use the two thumb buttons, what do you use for jumping as a spacebar equivalent? Or is jumping just not "mission critical"?

Also, what exactly do you do with the joystick?

 

I use those buttons as the "enter" button equivalents, which in Borderlands is used for making purchases at the vending machines or selecting the highlighted item in a menu. The joystick I use as arrow key equivalents, which in Borderlands is used for navigating menus like the main user menu, and the vending machine interfaces. The game was designed first for consols and then ported to PC's so mouse navigation is clumsy at best, having the joystick allows quick navigation in the way the game was originally designed for. Jumping is G19 which is a big, easy to hit button, in the same place in relation to the WASD equivalent keys (G4, G10, G11, G12) as the space bar would be on a real keyboard. Further, if you were using the buttons surrounding the joystick as your jumping buttons and using the joystick for movement, I really don't see how it would be possible to run and jump at the same time (since your thumb is the only digit positioned over the joystick or either of its surrounding buttons) so I wouldn't recommend it.

 

I see. Sounds pretty similar to how I've got my N52te set up...I use the 03, 07, 08 and 09 keys as WASD for motion, the D-pad to emulate the directional arrow keys, and the 15 key as the space bar.