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Belkin n52te Tournament Edition SpeedPad

Brand: Belkin
Category: CE

List Price: ~~$69.99~~
Buy New: $52.85
You Save: $17.14 (24%)

New (44)

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

30 reviews
Sales Rank: 310

Platform: Mac Os X
Color: Black
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Operating System: Mac OS X
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3
Dimensions (in): 4.1 x 8.5 x 9.1
Warranty: Lifetime

MPN: F8GFPC200
Model: F8GFPC200
UPC: 722868643150
EAN: 0722868643150
ASIN: B000WMEHYG

Release Date: March 10, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Promotion: Save $10.00 when you spend $50.00 or more on Qualifying Items offered by Amazon.com. Enter code BMLSAVES at checkout. Terms and Conditions
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

Features:

•	Gaming accessory incorporates keyboard and gamepad functions into one easy-to-use device
•	15 fully programmable keys built for complete customization and speed
•	Programmable 8-way thumb pad with removable joystick
•	Adjustable wrist pad and backlit keypad and scroll wheel
•	Embedded memory powered by Razer allows you to personalize multiple player profiles for all your games

The Belkin n52te offers:

Keyboard and gamepad functionality
Adjustable soft-touch wrist pad and backlit keypad and scroll wheel
15 fully programmable keys built for complete customization and speed
Personalization options powered by Razer

Dominate your opponents with Belkin's n52te. View larger.

Dominate your opponents with Belkin's n52te, an innovative gamepad and keyboard that integrates crucial gaming functions into one, sleekly designed device. Whether your passion is rooted in FPS, MMORPG, or RTS games, Belkin's n52te is built to deliver wicked-fast response to whatever mayhem comes your way.

Keyboard and Gamepad Functionality
The n52te puts keyboard and gamepad functionality into one small and easy-to-use unit, delivering more tools for customizing your game than ever. Using feedback from hundreds of gamers, Belkin's engineers designed the n52te's intuitive nature and stylish versatility to give you easy access to your arsenal of deadly maneuvers.

An adjustable soft-touch wrist pad offers maximum comfort and endurance, while the backlit keypad and scroll wheel give you total control in dark conditions. Gamers demand speed and instantaneous response, so the n52te features enhanced tactile feedback and button responsiveness for rapid key presses. Non-slip, rubber stability pads keep the device in place so you can concentrate on firing, bobbing, and weaving.

Supreme Customization
Need to custom tune your device to match your unique fragging needs? Not a problem with the n52te. Fifteen fully-programmable keys and three keymaps are built for complete customization and speed, giving you intuitive setup and performance. The 8-way thumb pad is programmable, as well, and it sports a removable joystick.

Powered by Razer
Thanks to Razer Synapsea embedded memory, you can personalize multiple player profiles for all your games and access killer performance tools. The inclusion of onboard memory also means that you get plug and play versatility with no additional software installation.

What's in the Box
Belkin n52te, quick start guide, and Nostromo Array Programming Software.

Customer Reviews: Read 25 more reviews...

2 out of 5 stars

Not impressed with the quality. A downgrade from the original... October 13, 2008
I thought I would give the Belkin n52te a chance and 'upgrade' from the original n52 Nostromo I've been using happily for over 4 years. Well, I wouldn't call this an 'upgrade'. To tell you the truth, I fell like I downgraded my gamepad with this new product.

First, the product I received didn't function properly. When pressing the thumb key (mapped to the Space bar by default), nothing would happen. I tried the device with and without the Belkin drivers to make sure the problem was not software related. In fact there appears to be a mechanical issue with the key pad, which could originate from bad design or poor manufacturing quality.

Second thing I noticed is that the new n52te is much lighter than the original. And if you have large hands, it doesn't lay flat when in use. The keypad would lift up and tilt with just a slight push on the palm rest. This makes it very difficult or impossible to use when gaming since it bounces back and forth.

If you're looking for a good gaming keypad, don't fall for the pretty lights and the sexy look of the n52te. It's all superficial, only skin deep, the quality is lacking. I would recommend the original n52 without hesitation. Belkin seriously dropped the ball with the n52te. I wish I had not purchased this item.

4 out of 5 stars

Very nice, there are a few missing features though October 11, 2008
Picked up this sweet, sweet controller. One of the things that has always bothered me about MMOs is the sheer number of abilities jobs/classes/whatever the hell you want to call them have, and how practical it is for us as humans to access them when it's vital. We only have so many fingers, ya know? This really comes into play when PvP is introduced, where split-second timing is incredibly important. It doesn't do anybody a lot of good to have spell interruption abilities if you can't find the right Ctrl-Shift+Number key fast enough to use it before your face is melted off with a fiery blast.

So with that in mind I went on a quest to find a controller that would meet my needs. I wanted something that I could rapidly mash buttons on in a way that wouldn't require me to have to hunt them down visually, so being able to place my fingers strategically on the device was a must. It would also have to fit on the smallish slide-out keyboard tray that my desk has, and easily share the space with my mouse, which also sits on the keyboard tray. It would have to have enough buttons to make the most useful abilities my class has a button-push away. I had originally thought that a device which mimicked MMO ability bars would be perfect (something like 2 or 3 rows of very large buttons that you could smack, mounted above a keyboard.) However, that wouldn't be practical for a lot of MMO games which rely heavily on abilities, WAR being one of them. So I dropped that idea (such an accessory doesn't exist anyway) and moved on to browsing through pages of controllers.

I examined gaming keyboards as well as gaming mice. I decided to get a new mouse, as the one I had was just a standard 3 button mouse, and picked up a Razor DeathAdder. Great mouse, extremely sensitive, good feel, but holy crap I was in the usersettings.xml changing the mouse sensitivity faster than a grasshopper jumping off a hot skillet. Even the slightest mouse movement caused my screen to whip around so fast I almost fell out of my chair. I digress, however. One of the top rated controllers was the n52te. I read the feedback from users on this one, as well as other highly rated controllers, and the n52te, while disappointing to people who owned the original n52, had good reviews from people who had never owned the older version. I took a chance and bought it, because it looked like it might meet my needs.

A couple of days later it was in my hands; yesterday, as a matter of fact. Plugged it in, went to the website and downloaded the latest drivers, and away I went. Placing my hand on it I knew that ergonomically it was fairly well thought out with the placement of the various buttons, as well as the thumb hat switch. There are a few buttons that are just not practical, depending on how you use the controller. The way I use it is the thumb hat switch controls movement, and the buttons laid out on the top row are for the most commonly used abilities. The second row is for debuffs, and the third row (which is pretty awkward to use, requiring the user to have to curl their fingers up to reach) is morale abilities since they're used infrequently. The mouse is used for camera panning, and the mouse wheel is used for jumping. The right mouse button is held in almost all of the time to facilitate camera panning. The middle button is assigned to jumping, and the easiest to use side button cycles through enemies, while the button next to it targets the nearest enemy.

It took a bit to get used to moving around with my thumb instead of WASD keyboard input, and getting a feel for where the buttons are for abilities is something I'm still getting comfortable with. However, the potential for rapidly and intuitively selecting abilities is really obvious. Once this controller becomes second nature to operate, woe be unto Order!

Now for the cons.

- The buttons directly above and below the thumb hat switch are next to useless when using the thumb switch to move your character around. When you're running an enemy down, you certainly aren't going to take your thumb off the direction controls to try to press one, otherwise the enemy will be out of range or worse, strafing around you pwning your face. As a result, they're assigned to really infrequent tasks. Namely bringing up the map, and I don't think I even have the bottom button assigned to anything at all.

- The hat switch doesn't depress to act like another button. This is such a HUGE miss on Belkin's part. Why? Because the controller has the capacity to operate in 3 different modes, each one mapping to different sets of keys. This means that all of the character abilities that could be accessed with regular number keys, ctrl+number keys, and alt+number keys could have been selected if a hat switch button was present to cycle through the different modes. As a matter of fact, as far as I know, there's no way to cycle through the different modes using the controller! I could be wrong (and probably am), but looking through the documentation it never mentioned how to map a key to cycle through modes. The point is, being able to cycle through different abilities using a hat switch button would enable the user to continue moving around while selecting upwards of 42 abilities! As it stands, the controller relegates its users to only 14, which is still really REALLY freakin' nice, but I can't help but think about how awesome it would be to have access to 42.

- The controller's key mapping editor. It's HORRIBLE. Apparently they thought it would be a good idea to use some fancy graphics which doesn't scale at all on large resolution displays. So, if you're like me and run at a high resolution, good luck trying to read all that tiny text. The way the help is integrated into the editor is also horrible. HORRIBLE! It has these bizarre slide-outs that allow a user to interact with the index and subjects. You just have to see it to understand how bad it is. Couple it with high resolutions and it's made of pure fail. Also, the fact that you can only map a SINGLE key, as opposed to key combinations, to a button is retarded. I'm sure if you delve into making a macro you can use key combos, but why the hell can't I just do it in an easy fashion? Overall, the editor is clunky, ugly, and incredibly counter-intuitive.

- The rows of buttons aren't spaced far enough away from one another. I think it would have made people a lot happier if the buttons were a bit smaller so the spacing between them would be distinctive enough to know which button is which when feeling for a selection. As it stands there's not enough room to really know which buttons your fingers are aligned with without having to glance if you've moved your fingers for whatever reason. It would also help if the buttons were more concave, to really give a user good tactile feedback that their fingers are centered on them.

That's about it. Overall it's a great controller, and if and when they fix that god-awful editor it will be a hell of a lot better. That missing hat switch button is truly a huge oversight on their part though, and one that can't be fixed without a new revision of the device itself, unfortunately.

1 out of 5 stars

I didn't receive my product!!!! September 19, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful

I was supposed to receive my product on september, 17 and I didn't receive yet. I don't know what's happening. I'm very upset.

1 out of 5 stars

One to AVOID for Mac OsX users... September 9, 2008
1 out of 4 found this review helpful

This product was unusable out of the box with my iMac (Intel). More than 4 calls to Belkin customer service later, and Belkin still refuses to honor the "Lifetime Warantee" as noted on their website. In fact, each call starts with the (overseas) tech-support person insisting that this product doesn't work with Macintosh (even though it is advertised for PC and Mac and Belkin lists Mac drivers on their website.)

1 out of 5 stars

Well constructed but software/drivers are the worst September 8, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Right from the start I was very impressed with the construction of the N52TE, felt good on the wrist, the buttons had a good feel to them and the thumbpad-button area was a nice feature. That's where the praise ends. I installed the latest drivers and software from Belkin as instructed on the orange card and at first everything went well. I liked the three profiles that could be loaded onto the device, the game play seemed easier on my left wrist (I was using the factory keyboard w/my HP) all was well. The only beef so far was the profile editor was very tiny and hard to read, I have a 22" widescreen monitor and it was still tiny. I went to use it again about 3 days later on the profile indicator light was off and the N52 did not work. I unplugged and plugged in the device with no hope. I rebooted the computer and it still didn't work. I contacted Belkin support and was on the phone with them for about an hour and after manually deleting drivers and software about 4 times, it finally worked. About 2 hours later the buttons began "sticking" with the N52TE doing constant keystrokes, VERY frustrating when playing FPS, and the onboard memory kept failing. I unplugged and plugged again and rebooted and the drivers disappeared once again.

The next thing I did was start the refund process with Amazon. I purchased a Logitech G15 in its place and I cannot be more pleased with it and highly recommend it.

The product may not have been to blame but with quirky drivers and/or software it was never going to anything but an annoyance.

I am running Vista and that may or may not be the problem so XP faithful may have better luck.