| Genius DeathTaker USB Laser Gaming Mouse |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Input Devices | |||||||
| Written by Joey Peng | |||||||
| Monday, 19 March 2012 | |||||||
Page 5 of 5
Gaming Mouse Final ThoughtsGenius made a good move to enter the gaming market under its own brand as opposed to manufacturing for other name brands. That is definitely one way to increase margins. However in today's market they really needed something "greater" to make a splash. This could be achieved either by pricing competitively or coming up with a product that's genuinely unique. Razer made a name for itself with slick designs, the Razer Naga is an iconic MMORPG gaming mouse. Steelseries has their minimalistic designs. MadCatz came up with the most customizable mouse ever. How about Genius? At this point simply filling in check-boxes for functionality isn't enough. 
Genius DeathTaker ConclusionThe Genius DeathTaker has solid performance in gaming. At 5700 DPI, and 1000Hz polling rate, The DeathTaker's raw performance matches any high-end gaming mouse. While small, it's still fairly comfortable to use for long durations. How powerful is the laser? Well, the mouse can function perfectly fine even when lifted up a couple of millimeters off the surface of a mouse pad. The appearance and visual design of the DeathTaker is mediocre. The entire mouse surface has 4 colors, 2 logos, 1 line of text, and 6 labels. The customizable lighting of the mouse doesn't help the situation at all. The unfortunate reality is if Genius took some time to remove all the "extra stuff" this would've been one slick mouse. But as it stands today, the extra visual elements are as useless as the text sitting etched in the middle of the mouse. The Genius DeathTaker has a solid construction and the only noticeable flaw is the stickiness of one particular macro button, which fails to "pop" back up unless you lift your entire finger off the button. The vast majority of its surface is plastic, with only the thumb rest coated in rubber. However even so the mouse's build feels very solid. The compartment for adding weights is magnetized and snaps on easily. You would think a magnetic lid is a recipe for disaster as it would fall off easily, but in reality genius positioned the magnet and plastic inserts perfectly so that it is almost impossible for it to uncover it unless you purposely try to. In terms of functionality, the DeathTaker sports a long checklist. This mouse has everything including custom lighting, macro buttons, on-board memory, profiles, adjustable weights, x/y axis adjustments, quick DPI toggles, and more. However while this list is impressive, not everything came together in the optimal way. Only half the macro buttons are accessible during game-play, the macro management is limiting and only records up to 40 sequences (or 20 key presses). However the profile toggling feature of the Genius is something truly robust and interesting. If assigned, profile buttons can act as a "shift key" to allow more macro bindings, or can be used to toggle between profiles instantly. For those optimizing for a game, this can truly be powerful. The current suggested price by Genius for retailers is $79.90. This isn't particularly cheap. Having used this mouse for a while it's apparent that the DeathTaker has a huge and powerful feature set. However the appearance really could be better. If an MMO/RTS mouse is what you're looking for, take a look at the Razer Naga and Steelseries Ikari first to make some comparisons. You will notice that the DeathTaker has a larger feature set but when it comes to style and usability, it falls behind. Pros:
|
|||||||
Comments
Just a point, according to Wiki, "The scroll wheel was invented at Microsoft in 1993 by Eric Michelman[2]. The first example of a scrolling mouse is the Genius EasyScroll mouse made by Taiwanese company KYE Systems in 1995, but it was popularized by the Microsoft IntelliMouse in 1996 along with support for the mouse wheel in Microsoft Office 97."
Considering these guys patented assigning a macro to "up and down" on a scroll wheel (I'm amazed that can even be patented considering it's so obvious), you'd think they would also have a patent on the mouse wheel if they invented it.
Sheesh, they'll give out a patent for anything these days.
"How powerful is the laser? Well, the mouse can function perfectly fine even when lifted up a couple of millimeters off the surface of a mouse pad."
This was one of the most ridiculous lines.