Element Gaming Iridium 820 Mouse Review

Overview

 

We have already taken a look at the awesome Element Gaming Neon 250 and the impressive Element Gaming Thorium 300, so that’s the Headset and Keyboard, but what about the mouse? Enter the Element Gaming Iridium 820, a right handed, ergonomic Gaming mouse with an adjustable palm rest. The mouse features a Laser sensor with a 8200 DPI maximum resolution with user definable settings, 8 programmable buttons and LED illumination. In addition to this there’s also the Scalable Design…

 

 

 

The Iridium Gaming 820 mouse arrived at pcG in smart steel blue and grey box with a large image of the mouse at the bottom. The front of the box also features an Element Gaming logo and the mouse name, the same can be found at the base of the box. The back of the box features another large image of the mouse (this time at the top) as well as a list of specifications (see Specifications and Features below).

 

 

The angular sides of the box are also rather smart with the left side featuring a couple of images of the Iridium’s Scalable Design (READ: extendable palm rest) and the right side featuring another image of the mouse along with brand, product name and web address.

 

 

The top of the box simply lifts off (once the sticky seals have been removed) allowing us a sneak peek of the Iridium 820 hiding within. It’s quite an unusual design and one that I rather like…

As you can see the mouse and the box contents were simply packaged within a plastic tray with a clear plastic blister. Other than the mouse, inside the box we find a Technical Brief and a mini Driver CD (unusual to see a Driver CD, but even more unusual is its size!).

At the time of writing the Element Gaming Iridium 820 is retailing on Element Gaming Mouse Iridium 820 for approximately £23 and comes with a 1 year warranty.

 

Specifications/Features

courtesy of Element Gaming

* Additional details available here

 

First Impressions

 

 

First impressions of the Element Gaming Iridium 820 are good, the mouse appears to be well made and constructed from high quality materials. The shape is a little unusual being very low and flat and quite wide, suggesting that it would favour the Palm Grip Gamer more than any other style of grip. The ability to lengthen the mouse is also welcome courtesy of the adjustable palm grip. On face value the Iridium 820 appears to be a good Gaming mouse, but let’s take a closer look…

Looking at the left side of the Iridium 820 we can see its ergonomic design with contours for your thumb to rest upon, the thumb buttons are some of the best positioned (for me) that I have ever seen, which is nice! This is due to the fact that my thumb rests just below the centre line of the two buttons.

Being a right-handed mouse there’s very little to see on the other side of the Iridium, but what you can see is the ergonomic shape and the glossy strip that runs across the right side and along the top of the mouse. This helps to add a little bit of bling to the Iridium.

 

 

Looking at the front of the Iridium 820 we see the captive 1.8m braided cable attached, rather unusually to the left of centre. You can once again appreciate the Iridium’s ergonomic shape, buy looking at the humps to the left and right of the central mouse body.

At the back of the Iridium there’s not much to see, but there are a couple of points of interest. At the very top in the centre (on the gloss plastic strip) you should be able to see an Element Gaming logo, this lights up through the plastic when the mouse is powered up. This illumination can also be controlled via the supplied software. At the very bottom of the mouse we can see a large gold thumb screw, winding this in and out allows the palm rest to be positioned for maximum comfort, neat!

 

The top of the mouse is very flat, again suggesting that the mouse would be best for a palm style of grip. At the front we have the two main left/right buttons with a 500 million click life cycle (according to Element Gaming). In the centre we have a nice rubber type style scroll wheel with illuminated (when on) blue surround, but it’s positioned too low in the chassis making it difficult to operate unfortunately. To the left of the scroll wheel there’s an additional button (attack!), this button can be setup for pretty much anything via the included software, but again it’s difficult to activate due to its low profile. Behind the scroll wheel we have two further buttons that by default operate DPI Up/Down, again these can be programmed to do anything from Macros to button presses and Multimedia functions. Behind this we then have the glossy strip with Element Gaming logo, and then on to the extendable back of the mouse.

Looking at the underside of the Element Gaming Iridium 820 we see the slightly offset Laser sensor, surrounded by four glides, one at the front, two on the sides and one at the back.

 

 

At the back of the mouse the mechanism that you can see is for the extendable palm rest that allows the back of the mouse to be extended by a further 6mm. The image on the right shows the palm rest at its maximum extension. Note that if you keep on unwinding the mechanism the whole mechanism will fall out (not ideal!), and you’ll have to reassemble. Not sure why Element have done this and exposed the mechanism like this…

 

Hardware Installation

 

Testing Methodology/Setup

 

The Element Gaming Iridium 820 mouse was tested using our Test Rig, a fresh installation of Windows 7 64Bit (service pack 1) was installed along with all appropriate Drivers. The supplied Driver/Software was installed from the mini-CD provided and used throughout testing.

 

The following games were used during testing:

• Survarium (BETA)
• Battlefield 4
• Grand Theft Auto V
• Warface

 

Hardware Performance

 

We’ve seen mice as low as around £20 before here at pcG, so while the Element Gaming Iridium 820 is not the cheapest at £23, it’s still very cheap! We’ve already looked at the mouse and ascertained that it is well made and features good quality materials and the ergonomics seem to favour the Palm style of grip.

During testing I used the default DPI setting of 1800, as I found 1600 to be a little too low. I was disappointed to see that the software only supports increments of 200, as I would have liked finer granularity. The Iridium 820 seemed to glide well on my Aorus Thunder P3 mouse pad, regardless of the position of the adjustable palm rest that actually houses the rear glide. I used the mouse mainly with the wrist rest fully forward as with it further back the mouse forces more of a palm grip than I would like. I also felt that while the mouse scroll wheel and its fire button (to the left of the wheel) were usable, they were both too low in profile to be utilized easily. But how does it perform?

In Games such as Survarium and Warface I had no issues with the mouse at all, I found the tracking to be good and the mouse to be responsive. To be fair the Iridium 820’s a solid Gaming mouse with impressive performance considering the asking price, the (unknown) Laser sensor performed its duties admirably, whether fast or slow. But I did have an odd problem…

During testing the cursor (as this only ever happened in Windows) would become very jittery and at one point it just stopped completely. Initially I thought the unit had failed but after much checking and re-checking I could find nothing wrong!? As a last resort I turned the mouse over and blew on the sensor, just in case something was obscuring the sensor, and Voila! It worked like a charm… But then the same issue cropped up again two more times during testing, with the same solution fixing it. At the time I write this I haven’t had any issues for 3 days, so it seems like the issue may have well have been fixed…

 

 

The illumination of the Iridium 820 is basic at best the front illuminated scroll wheel is permanently lit blue (shame!), which in my mind makes the fact that you can change the logo lighting (at the back) to a multitude of other colours a little, well pointless. By default it also cycles through a raft of other colours, which I’m not too keen on either. Via the software though this can be controlled and the rear logo can even be turned off. Although, as always, that little bit of lighting helps to add a little bit of bling!

 

SOFTWARE

 

The Iridium 820 software has been seen before and is almost identical to the Ozone software for the Neon. The software consists of a basic single screen with five main options. This is split with two options that appear on the left of the central mouse image and three options that appear on the right.

The first on the left is the Light settings, here you can customize the colour of your illumination (Red, Orange, Blue, Pink, Green, & Cyan), turn the effect off and enable the Breathing effect. Overall colour representation is a little poor, with the orange option turning out green!? The next option Sensitivity settings is where you can set your five DPI settings from 200 to 8200 in 200 increments. You can also modify X and Y axis independently if you so wish (surely a crazy idea!).

 

 

Looking at the right hand side of the central mouse image the first option that we’ll take a look at is System settings. Here you can alter basic Windows settings such as Double Click Speed and Mouse Wheel Scroll Speed. Lurking here is also an Enhance pointer precision option that is off by default and I left it that way as it smelt of some form of hardware assistance! The Advanced settings option allows you to alter the Polling Rate (I set mine at 1000Hz for testing), modify the On-To-Go Speed (which is actually the Response Rate) and there’s a handy Reset to factory defaults option also. The final right hand option is Button settings here you can bind any of the eight buttons (ignoring scrolling) to any of the supported mouse functions, multimedia functions or even record a Macro. Unfortunately with Macros there seems to be no support for recording mouse clicks or inserting them after the recording is complete.

There’s also support for up to five Profiles that can be stored on Disk or on-board the mouse, illumination is also stored along with the mouse settings. There’s also support to bind an executable to a Profile, should you wish to do so.

 

 

Overall the Element Gaming software for the Iridium 820 is good, it’s a little difficult to navigate at first, due to its split screen, but once you get used to it it’s easy to use and has most of the features your average Gamer would wish for.

 

Final Thoughts

 

It would appear then that Element Gaming have done it again! The Element Gaming Iridium 820 is a good Gaming mouse, not it’s not the best and yes there’s some niggles, but at £23 surely we can’t complain, can we…

The Iridium 820 arrived at pcG in smart trapezoidal steel, blue and grey box, the items within were well packaged, especially when you consider the relative low price. It’s unusual to see a Driver CD provided these days too, especially when it’s a mini CD!

Once out of the box the right handed, ergonomic design of the Iridium 820 was apparent, as was the fact that the mouse appeared to be well made from high quality materials. Looking the mouse over and in use it was apparent that the overall design was suited to my bastardized palm/claw grip, with the thumb buttons being beautifully placed. It’s a shame then that both the mouse scroll wheel and the additional Fire (attack!) button are somewhat difficult to access, as they both sit very low in the mouse chassis. Of course the party trick of the Iridium is the fact that the palm rest can be adjusted, which is kind of neat, although further extension of the rest seems to favour the palm grip more than a Claw grip.

In use the 8200 DPI Laser sensor aboard the Iridium proved itself well, with great tracking and precision at the 1800 DPI that I used during testing. Although the issue I ran into during testing (it seems to go away!) does give me a small concern, see main review (Performance) for more details.

The software supplied (on that mini CD) also seems to be more than adequate, with the ability to program any of the eight buttons, support for five DPI settings and five Profiles and even Macro support. Although I would have liked greater control over my DPI settings as the software only supports 200 DPI increments, the lighting effect (especially orange, my fav colour) also leaves a lot to be desired, as it came out green.

But all in at £23 the Element Gaming is undeniably a good Gaming mouse, and it compliments their other peripherals (Neon 250, Thorium 300) really well. The fact that you could have a great Gaming peripheral setup for around £75 is impressive, especially when you consider that’s what some (and that’s me!) spend on a mouse alone!

 

Verdict

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Many thanks to Element Gaming for providing this sample for review