QPAD 8K Laser Mouse Review
Overview
Today we are looking at the QPAD 8K Laser
We have also been supplied with a QPAD FX36 Pro Gaming Mouse Pad to take a look at, so we will also use this during testing as well as our regular mouse mat.
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‘In fact, your mouse is the most important link between you and the game you play. When bullets fly, and the difference between victory and defeat is measured by micro-millimeters and fractions of seconds, everything counts. Precision and accuracy are key factors that will impact the gaming experience greatly. Amongst professional gamers, QPAD is well known as a reliable provider of top-notch gaming gear with high quality and premium feel.’ |
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The QPAD 8K Laser came to pcG in a very strong black box with a slip on cover. The cover features an image of the 8K Laser along with the product’s name and QPAD logo. The cover highlights some of the main features for the 8K Laser and really puts emphasis on the fact that it features an “RGB Colour LED”.
The back of the slip cover highlights a list of features (various languages) for the 8K Laser, three smaller images of the mouse, overview of the mouse and QPAD’s mission statement. All of this needs a magnifying glass so don’t expect to read it until you get the product home. 😉
The QPAD FX36 Pro Gaming Mouse Pad was contained within a long black box with a clear plastic window enabling you to see the product inside, which is of course the FX36 mouse pad. The box highlights the cross-weave rubber underside of the mat giving it a superior grip (as you would expect). QPAD also wants you to know that the mouse pad is very portable and it can be rolled up, put in your pocket and “Slapped” down for your next game (hmmmm!!!).
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Taking off the slip cover we get our hands on the very sturdy black inner box which is adorned with the QPAD logo and their “E-Sport for Life” statement. On opening the box we are welcomed with the sight of the mouse itself which is a plastic bagged and safely contained in a well fitting foam insert. There is also another little box inside which with “QPAD 8K Pro Gaming Laser Mouse” printed on it in silver, the whole package is very deluxe and by this point I am getting pretty excited about what else we might find…
Inside the box and also the little box we have the 8K Laser mouse and a bag, yes a bag! Imagine for a moment you are busy gaming during the cold Swedish winter and your friend calls you up to go and play over at his place (because he has a better PC of course!), how do you transport your 8K Laser there? Well in a bag of course (stuffing FX36 mouse pad in pocket!), QPAD has kindly provided you with one just for the job. As gaming mouse bags go though (I have not seen many, any!?) it has a quality feel to it. There is nothing else in the box which I found surprising as the slip cover does say “Software” with an aimge of a CD. The Driver is actually found on the QPAD website (please see link in Testing Methodology/Setup).
At the time of writing the QPAD 8K Laser (Pro Laser Mouse) is retailing on Amazon
Specifications/Features
courtesy of QPAD
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* Additional details available here
First Impressions
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First impressions of the 8K Laser are of the width, this mouse is really wide, measuring in at 90 mm/3.54 in! There is no doubt that the ergonomic design of the 8K Laser is for right handed palm grip gamers (no lefty’s sorry). The other thing that strikes you is that the 8K Laser is somewhat lacking in the features department. There are no extra buttons, no weights and not the slightest hint of adjustability. Let’s just hope that the 8K Laser makes up for this and works well as a Pure Gaming mouse!
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Looking at the QPAD 8K Laser from the left side we have the two thumb buttons which are placed a little bit far forward but still better than some others that I have come across in the past. The left side is also contoured so that your thumb stays where it should be whilst using the mouse. Apart from this there is nothing else going on here.
The right hand side is where most of the ergonomic design for the 8K Laser has gone into and it has been heavily contoured so you can comfortably rest your two rightmost fingers.
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Looking at the front of the 8K Laser we have the attached 2m braided cable which I found to be a little stiff still retaining the shape from the loops from when it was packaged.
From the back of the 8K Laser you can get a good view of its ergonomic design which gives you a lot of support and really fits snug into the palm of your hand. The QPAD logo is prominently positioned here as well.
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Looking at the top of the mouse we find the very malleable rubber scroll wheel with very fine notches. Also, we have the left and right buttons which sit upon the Omron switches and (as advertised) they do have a distinct mechanical feel to them. Behind the scroll wheel there are two buttons which change the sensitivity of the 8K Laser. On the left side of the mouse there are two LED indicators for the three sensitivities, yes you heard me right, three settings and two lights (more on this subject when we get to performance).
Looking at the underside of the 8K Laser we can see that the 8200 CPI Gaming Grade Laser sits right in the centre of the mouse. There are four long glides which are at the front/back and left/right sides of the mouse. It’s from looking at the underside of the 8K Laser that you can really get a good view on how wide this mouse actually is.
Overall there is not a lot to complain about and equally not too much to get excited about. The 8K Laser has a very ergonomic design, matte rubberised coating, standard buttons and illumination. Not much more to say…
Hardware Installation
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The QPAD 8K Laser simply connects by way of its USB plug found at the end of the 2m braided cable. From that point it’s just simple Plug ‘n Play! |
Testing Methodology/Setup
The QPAD 8K Laser was tested using our Test Rig, a fresh installation of Windows 7 64Bit (service pack 1) was installed along with all appropriate Drivers. No software is supplied with the 8K Laser but is required for full functionality. The QPAD Gaming Software software can be downloaded (here) and version v1.0 was installed and used throughout testing.
The following games were used during testing:
Hardware Performance
At £49 the QPAD 8K Laser sits in the mid-high end price bracket for wired PC Gaming mice and there are certainly a lot of other mice around this price. So what makes the 8K Pro stand out from the others and convince you to part with your hard earned cash? How does the highly ergonomic design stand up, is the software comprehensive enough and what about the Laser sensor’s performance, lets find out…
Well, I am glad to say that the Avago 9800 Laser sensor performed really well during all the time I tested the 8K Laser. Whilst playing the fast paced Battlefield 4 I found that the tracking was very accurate when the CPI was on a lower setting (1000) and also when it was on a higher setting (2000). The Laser sensor on the 8K Laser always put my gun sights just where I needed them, I saw the target, moved my hand and the mouse relayed this perfectly lining up my shot just right. I cannot fault the mouse in this department at all.
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QPAD have obviously put a lot of thought into the comfort of the 8K Laser and as long as you are a right handed person who favours a palm grip then they have got it spot on. Bear in mind that the 8K Laser will take up the whole of your hand and force you as to where you put all your fingers. The 8K Laser is not a mouse that you can bring your own grip style to, it tells YOU exactly how it wants to be held and offers no alternative. That said, for me I found it very comfortable, its ergonomic design and matte rubberised coating suiting my style of grip and comfort level.
Now here is the downside, the 8K Laser offers very little else apart from comfort and accurate tracking, a mouse in this price range should have a few more features than this for me. The 8K Laser only features the standard (ish) seven buttons, no weights and no chance of adjustment to suit your style of grip. QPAD did thankfully put a CPI sensor on the 8K Laser but, yes there is a but! Why are there only two LED lights for three CPI sensitivity setting? Someone at QPAD obviously thought it was great idea to have a blue light for setting one, red light for setting two and then blue and red for setting three! Give us another LED QPAD please, red, green and blue, three LEDs for three settings. Maybe less is more but for me in this scenario I thought less was pointless.
The FX36 Pro mouse pad went perfectly together with the 8K Laser and I enjoyed using them both together during testing. I did find that the 8K Laser was a bit slower on the FX36 than my usual mouse mat because it had a more coarse feel to the surface of it. I changed the CPI setting up 400 more than I usually have it at and this gave me the speed and tracking on the mat that I was used to with my own. There is an automatic surface calibration option in the software which I tried with the QPAD 8K Laser and FX36 but I found that it made little difference and that is why I reverted to changing the CPI setting to give me the feel I prefer.
The software for the QPAD 8K Laser is not on a disc and inside the packaging which is what the slip cover would seem to suggest. The v1.0 Driver for the 8K Laser can be downloaded from the support section of the QPAD website which can be found here. Once installed you are welcomed by a very colourful 80’s Top of the Pops style Home screen. I could not understand why the “Basic” option came after the “Buttons” option, my OCD 🙂 nature really wanted to swap them round (arghh!!!). From the home screen you can decide which area of the 8K Laser you want to configure…
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The Button Assignment screen allows you to change the functionality of any button on the 8K Laser, given that there are only seven of them your options are somewhat limited. You might as well leave most of them alone as you will probably want to leave the two buttons on the top of the 8K Laser to change between the sensitivity levels. If you did desire to do so then you are able to assign Macros, media control or bind a key to the button of your choice.
Next we have the Basic Settings screen, from here you can change basic Windows settings such as the mouse cursor speed lower or higher than the recommended 6/11 setting. Also, we have the Acceleration on/off, this is set to off by default and I did not change that. The scroll speed double click and visibility options are also available here.
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The Advanced Settings screen is probably the most important part of the software as this is where you can adjust your CPI sensitivity settings. The CPI levels can be lowered or raised in increments of 50 which I found very useful as sometimes you are stuck with a 200 higher/lower increments. Also, from here you can change the angle snapping, lift off distance, USB polling rate, and surface calibration which I talked about in the FX36 Pro mouse pad section.
The Macro Recording screen is very easy to use and comprehensive, you can customise the delays and also have multiple replays on the buttons you assign for the Macro. Both keyboard and mouse functionality can be recorded at the same time, which is always nice to see. It’s a shame that there are so few buttons on the mouse to make more of use of this…
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The last software configuration screen is Light Settings and from here you can change the colour of the scroll wheel and QPAD logo with a choice of 16.8 million colour variations. Not having or even wanting the time to count them I put my trust in QPAD and played with the different RGB LED colour variations, to tell the truth I always ended up using red, green or blue! Other colours are achievable yes, but to tell the truth they are very weak and rather flaccid. I was excited to see two colour wheels one for the scroll wheel and one for the logo, I set about changing them to be different colours only to find this was not possible. They both have to be the same colour, I feel that whoever designed the software had my thoughts in mind but ended up not following through with the grand scheme of things. There are also the options of having the illumination constant, pulse, wave or colour flow, the latter is the most visually impressive so I stuck with that option.
There is also a Support/Update screen which has contact information and shows you what software version you are using with an update option next to it. You are also congratulated by the founder on this screen for your purchase of their QPAD 8K Laser premium gaming equipment! 🙂
Overall the software for QPAD 8K Laser is of a high standard… if the mouse itself would support this! What is the point in having such a comprehensive Macro screen when you only have the basic buttons to play with? Why have 16.8 million colour combinations and two colour wheels when they cannot be set independently? The software also looks a little childish in its design but you could forgive this if it had been thought out a bit better…
Final Thoughts
The QPAD 8K Laser
The QPAD 8K Laser came to pcG in a very well designed and heavy duty box once you remove the slip cover. The main black box containing the mouse has a very high quality feel to it, this feeling continues inside once you open it. The 8K Laser is securely nestled in its foam insert and the USB connection and QPAD bag is found in another small black box.
The 8K Laser does not disappoint style wise, it is a very well designed and ergonomic mouse and if you have big hands like me you will be happy with its wide girth. The 8K Laser is a pure gaming mouse with the standard amount of buttons and no weight management, at least it has some sort of CPI indicator (two LEDs for three settings!?). You need to make sure though that you are right handed and want a palm style grip mouse or you will be sorely disappointed. The 8K Laser takes no prisoners when telling you how you should be holding it, it’s the 8K Laser way or no way!
The main problem with the 8K Laser is apart from the unique ergonomic design and good tracking there is very little else to get excited about. If the intention of QPAD was to put out a no frills Gaming mouse that forced you to hold it the way they wanted then they have succeeded. Although the software is very comprehensive and user friendly, having a mouse with a lack of extra buttons, the in depth Macro settings seem a little pointless. The 16.8 million colour variations would be put to better use if you could have independent colour configuration for the scroll wheel and logo like the software seems to suggest. Plus, what’s with going to all the effort to have a CPI indicator that only has two LEDs for three settings, let’s not try to be smart, just give us an extra LED, please!
The bottom line is that if the QPAD 8K Laser costed around £35 then it would be an amazing Gaming mouse with its highly ergonomic design and great tracking. But, sitting in the mid-high end bracket of Gaming mice with a price tag of approximately £50 you would expect more features, more buttons and just simply more…
Verdict
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Where possible we always use Amazon’s price for Value… |
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Many thanks to QPAD for providing this sample for review
