"Jesus, Bob, what button did you push?"

Product: Belkin N-52te
Manufacturer: Belkin
MSRP: $69.99

Are you a gamer? Do you get tired of reaching all over the keyboard for the right buttons in the middle of a firefight? Is the stretch between F1 and F12 too long for your tiny fingers, well then the Belkin N52te just might be perfect for you. The n52te is an updated version of Belkin's well received n52 with a few tweaks added. What tweaks you ask? Looks like it is time for more reading.

Now, I actually owned two n52s because I was tired of dragging a single gamepad up and down the stairs with me if I was using it on my laptop or my desktop. Just recently my original n52 (bought shortly after they were released) up and died on me in the middle of a Left 4 Dead fight. After soundly thrashing the device for choosing so a poor time to bite the bullet (and of course blaming it for any skill issues I had during the game) I opted to pick up the n52te, which was released earlier this year.

Before I go on about what's new with the n52te let me stop and explain what the n52 series is in the first place. The n52 gamepads are a left-handed game controller that put 16 programmable buttons right in the palm of your hand as well as a D-pad and a mouse scroll-wheel. Technically there are more than 16 programmable buttons since there are three modes for each button: green, blue, and red. The colours themselves are unimportant. What they can do is allow you to change the "batch" of keys on the fly. Let's say you have the blue setting set to defensive attacks in a game and now you need your offensive set. You can simple switch to the red 'batch" of programmed keys.

Programming the keys is about as easy as it gets. Using the tools supplied by Belkin you simple pick a button, assign a corresponding key on the keyboard to that button, and click OK. On top of that you can set .ldt (Loadout) files which you can easily switch through for different games or applications. In short, you're World of Warcraft key set-up might not quite work as well when you are playing Call of Duty 4. Again, this is easily accomplished through the tools. In fact, you can set the device to be linked to particular executable files so it loads your set-up when you start the game.

Now, the biggest downside to this device is that it is not "South Paw" friendly. There's is no "swapping" it out for left handers. The device is pretty much conformed to fit in the left hand only. Other than that, it's one hell of a USB gamepad that can give you an edge in a lot of online games. Well, at least it has helped me out a lot.

The n52te added a few new features this time around. Some of them just there for show, but at least one is there for function. The original n52 was just a black, silver, and orange gamepad pretty much in the same shape as the n52te. The n52te has added blue LED backlighting behind all the keys which is always nice to have. They also smoothed the D-pad out this time by adding a thumb stick to it and making it a little less spongy than it's ancestor. The mousewheel has also been improved by having a much more sensitive and precise feedback than that of the n52.

So there have been some functional changes and some "Ooh! Pretty lights" changes. The best addition, though, is the Razer Synapse feature. What this does is bascially provide a BIOS-like storage function on the device. You can upload a configuration directly to the device, unplug it, go to another computer, and that same configuration will still apply because it is stored on the n52te itself, not the computer to which it is connected. This is a nice little feature for those LAN gamers out there. No worries about bringing back-up profiles or any of that jazz. Just bring the n52te.

The Review:

Design:

The improved design is damned near perfect... if you were a fan of the original. Even if you were unfamiliar with its ancestor device you will probably see the benefit of the n52te.

Cost:

At $70 MSRP (yeah, I don't fall for the $69.99 BS. That worked in the 40s. I am not thinking "Oh, it's not quite $70". Get a new trick) it is a bit pricey for a casual gamer. However, if you are anything more than casual it can pay for itself pretty quickly. It's a better option than buying all those game-specific keyboards out there. The n52te can be set-up to do anything they can, but you only need to buy one device, not a new keyboard for each game.

Functionality:

This is a trickier area to review, so let me break it down like this. If you are a fan of the gamepad design, you will love it. It works great and everything is so nice and smooth. Key clicks are responsive without being horrifically noisy. The backlight is nice just for the ambient lighting, if nothing else. If you're not a fan of gamepads, well it still functions well you just won't like it because you have something against gamepads.

The Good:

The uploadable configuration is a great new feature. The improvements to the feel and the asthetics of the device actually make it hard to go back to my older n52 on my desktop.

The Bad:

I really don't have anything to call "bad" here save perhaps the price, but that's speculative.

The Ugly:

Shockingly enough, for something that I couldn't list as having many "bads", I can definitively say there is a HUGE "ugly". I love LEDs, I truly do. But the blue LED showing with of the three confirgurations the device was in (the red/blue/green lights) was so freakin' bright that I had to cover it with electrical tape. For some reason someone decided to aim the LED pretty much in your face, so unless you're fond of being blinded by what is probably about 50 lumens of LED light, you'll be needing some electrical tape too.

Final Vote: Golden Egg