n50 Features

Buttons!

Once we get beyond the superficial, the meat of the product is akin to combining steak and chicken on the same plate - both have their places but you'd rather not have them together. Our first issue with the keypad deals with the amount of keys. Since you aren't using a normal keyboard anymore all those extraneous keys for things like the score board and chat functions have to be mapped somewhere. Once you have those, you still need the quick weapon switch buttons. That's where the problem comes in. If you look at the normal keyboard, and use the WASD configuration, look at the array of buttons around you. Within the immediate region, you have a whole range of keys available to you.

Let's look at the simplest key mapping approach for one of the more popular games, CounterStrike. Aside from the WASD for movement, you absolutely need the following within immediate reach: the four weapons, reload, chat, drop weapon, the scoreboard, jump, crouch, use item, and walk - a total of twelve buttons for a fairly basic setup. We could drop the scoreboard, but then you wouldn't know how many enemies are left. Now count the buttons available to you on the SpeedPad, withholding the movement buttons. Giving a generous amount, we end up with a figure of ten. The throttle wheel is useless in CS, and the D-pad on the side, although it can map eight functions, can only realistically handle four keys. Trying to hit one of the angled spots is too much of a gamble when playing a FPS game. That leaves us two keys short of an effective setup. Mind you, we haven't even gone into the buy menu setup yet.

Theoretically...

On paper, the available amount of keys is a rather staggering amount. The SpeedPad supports three key configurations at the same time. You are allowed to allot a key to switch to each function set. The only problem here is that you have to give up three buttons every single time, in order to gain access to each of the setups. If Belkin had thought to include a switch that could serve this purpose, nine more keys would be freed up. But that isn't the point here. The key thing being, a fast paced action game will not allow for you to switch key sets quickly enough to be effective. Why press three buttons on the SpeedPad to accomplish what you could have done with one on a conventional keyboard?

Buying time

Now, if we were to incorporate a buy menu setup for CounterStrike on the SpeedPad we would have to use at least one or two of the buttons on the original key configuration to change to the other setups. Reducing the total number of immediate action buttons to eight. Nowhere near enough to play the game with this controller and be better off for it.