Largely out of curiosity, I picked up this Taiwanese mouse on eBay. It arrived a few days ago. Here are my impressions:
The Good:
-Build quality. Feels solid in the hand. When disassembling it, I noticed that the sides (which snap on and off) are easy to remove, but not the slightest bit wobbly, which indicates careful production tolerances. Another nice touch was the routing of the wires for the USB cable around part of the shell, taking strain off of the connector.
-Decent button configuration. One design aspect I found rather clever was the way the upper side buttons were executed-- these buttons are higher and use stiffer switches than the main buttons, so even though they're easy to access, you never press them by accident.
-Sensor tracking quality is...decent. I'm not going to run in-depth tests here, since this is only a mini-review, but to my hand, it feels around equal to, say, an Avago 9500, though not as good as a top-end optical like a 3090. Runs into negative acceleration when you apply fast movements, but at least it doesn't freak out constantly like many non-gaming sensors.
-Appearance. I know this is subjective, but in person, it looks much more stylish and professional than I expected from pictures. In person, if you put it next to another mouse, it will almost certainly make the other mouse look junky by comparison.
-Lots of features. 50dpi sensitivity increments, macros, onboard script capabilities (can be more complex than macros, with conditionals, multi-stage execution, and more), sensitivity and profile indicator lights, weight system, and probably some other stuff that doesn't come to mind at the moment.
-Comes with a spare set of glides and a 2-year warranty (though I'm not sure how you'd take advantage of it if you don't understand Chinese).
The Bad:
-Doesn't achieve advertised polling rates. The mouse is advertised as being capable of 1000hz polling, but even when set to 1000hz, it generally won't go over ~430 or so. Does this actually affect the performance? I'm not sure; the cursor seemed responsive to me, but it's worrisome that the mouse can't do what it says.
-Very surface-sensitive. I tried using it on my desk (shiny black wood), and it couldn't track at all. Seemed OK on the Mouse Arena, though.
-Glides require some use to break in. At first, they're very scratchy, though this goes away with use.
-Fewer effective buttons than there seem to be-- the top side buttons are actually combined with the upper thumb buttons in terms of how the mouse sees them; they both count as "mouse4" and "mouse5".
-Onboard scripting could be handled better. It's not nearly as powerful/versatile as the implementation of onboard scripting on the GWS Omnimouse that I used to have (pity the Omnimouse is fairly terrible in many other regards, such as sensor quality and build quality). The fact that the documentation is all in Chinese doesn't make using it any easier, either.
-Sensor is offset slightly to the side. This didn't bother me, but may bother some users.
-The shape. It's not comfortable for prolonged fingertip grip use. Maybe I'm just spoiled by the extreme light weight of my Zealot, but after a day of heavy gaming with the Phorcy, my arm was hurting, and I couldn't wait to get back to the Zealot, despite its inferior tracking. But at the same time, a middle-of-the-road 12cm length isn't going to be great for palm-gripping fans of large mice, and it's a bit low for a claw grip. So I'm not really sure who this mouse is meant for, shape-wise. Of course, different people have different shape preferences, so your mileage may vary here.
Conclusions:
The Phorcy is a well-made and elegant mouse, with some clever features. It's good enough for me to keep it as a backup mouse, and because of the build quality and thought that went into it, I'd consider Hades Gaming products to be worth investigating in the future. But it is not without its flaws, and at the end of the day, I prefer the superior comfort and control of a lighter mouse. Is it worth the price? It's $6 less than the similarly-sized Roccat Savu, with more buttons and more features. I'd say it's also more stylish than the Savu. But the H8's flaws, and the difficulties in buying a mouse outside of its supported markets, and the Savu's excellent sensor, make it difficult to give the Phorcy the win in that comparison. It's worth a look, especially if you're looking to buy something a bit different, but probably not at the level where it would need to be to be considered a "first choice" mouse.
Edited by FoxWolf1 - 2/22/13 at 9:47am
The Computer
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The Computer
(16 items) |
