The gaming peripheral recommendations thread

So, I'll start with a "I don't recommend" peripheral/s comment... and heck, brand even.

This was a millennia ago, but anyways.

Saitek/Mad Catz. The wannabe side Thrustmaster started making Fly sticks and that kind shit. Pretty cool looking stuff, went into the "others" peripherals like mouses and keyboards later on.

I got a mouse, the RAT 7, which was their top tier shit back then (I think it still costs like 90 dollars) and also the top tier keyboard, Cyborg V7 (to complete the set, so to speak). As I've said, great looking stuff, they were one of the first companies to create this super weird ass looking mouses and anything really, that other companies "borrowed" the designs for their own stuff later on.

As for reliability? let's put it this way. The mouse started to malfunction 1 and a half years after the purchase whereas the keyboard started to malfunction after 6 months. We are talking about really expensive peripherals, these used to be one of the most expensive shit on the market, yet left a lot to be desired.

Mouse tracking sensor is ass, so sensitive than a single particle of dust (I'm not even joking on this) can mess up with the tracking causing the cursor to wiggle around the screen for no reason like if it was possessed by Satan himself. Double clicking, and the track sensor of the wheel has the tendency to stop working at all after some time. The construction of the body seems solid, but it's a facade for really horrendous and cheap hardware under it. You could go back then to Amazon actually and check 90% of the reviews back then mentioned everything of what I've said. Not sure if they ever decided to start making their stuff a bit less flimsy.

The mouse is also pretty heavy because of the aluminum frame, and not very comfortable especially for the pinky, even though you can customize so much stuff with it, it's still feels off.
It has a decent enough software for customizing buttons and stuff, although I've seen better.

RAT 7


So, now onto the keyboard. I've said that it started malfunctioning 6 months after purchase, basically a few keys just would't work or would work at times only. Not very useful. It was the first and only thing I ever RMA'd since the brand amazingly enough has/had an office in my country so I could actually send it for replacement. The guys there fixed it only to have the same issues on the same keys one week after. Not sure if it's normal Saitek behavior or it was just these guy's incompetence. Never used the keyboard again and the brand is blacklisted to me.

As for coolness factor, it had lights and shit, a few colors to choose from and differentiation for WASD keys and the likes (you can see in the picture the different "sections" you can change). A no "Windows Key mode" for gaming that was interesting. It also had reinforced keys for WASD and arrow keys. That at least, felt solid. The keys in general were a bit small sized for my taste though.

Cyborg V7


So, would I recommend any of these two things? Hell no, not a chance on hell. I wouldn't touch this brand with a 20 feet sarisa honestly. Overpriced garbage imho.


Anyways, after the mouse fiasco I bought the Razer Deathadder for replacement. Bad idea too.

About 1 month after the purchase the wheel got stuck somehow without me noticing it fast enough and broke when I tried to scroll. Since it has a 1mm thick plastic rod connecting to the sensor, what can be expected really. The mouse itself was fine for the most part, after a year it started to double click, I opened it and tried to fix it adding thin pieces of cardboard below the buttons, it worked for quite some years. Now it double clicks again, the mouse has about 4 years. So much for "gamer" stuff, these companies think gamer means "pay more money" and "RGB lights" it should mean construction quality and reliability, 2 things this mouse doesn't have.

In terms of ergonomics, I'll give them credit, it's the most comfortable mouse I ever used and it's not heavy at all, which is exactly what you want on a mouse.

I wouldn't touch anything made by Razer ever again honestly, seems like they don't care about building their shit properly. I'm not paying a premium for trash, just because it happens to have a "popular" brand labeled on.

I play with an Xbox 360 controller. My mouse is a cheap ass plastic piece of shit my uncle gave me. BUT it has worked for over five years! Funny thing is, my boyfriend can't seem to figure out its weird way of clicking on things. It's hilarious seeing him try to open any folder! You need to apply a specific double click speed or something...

Until about two weeks ago, I used an ANCIENT keyboard that I bought 15-20 years ago!!! Grey and HUGE. I should have taken a picture... dropped it so many times that it ended up with a weird kind of keylock issue. Sooo I inherited an old no frills keyboard.

I'm currently on my second second-hand headset. (Yes, I shamelessly freeload off my friends' old stuff.) First one was an SteelSeries Arctis 5. I liked it a lot. Then one ear cup went silent. Now I have a Kingston Hyper X which I was told makes my voice come off clearer but the other one was more comfy. Both are good enough but of course no comparison to my regular headphones. For co-op gaming both are fine.

As you can see, I care greatly about my peripherals.

I just bought this keyboard a couple weeks ago. Corsair K70 with the Cherry MX Speed switches.

It is great for typing and FPS games like Counter Strike:Global Offensive, but it could be a little too sensitive if you weren't used to it.



Normally, I'm not too crazy about fancy keyboards but I've been using the media controls a lot for the music and podcast that I listen when I play games.

GOML!



Well it's a little loud, just one light-color (no biggie, based on brown keys) and I often use its G buttons for Microsoft Office and Windows uses instead of video games (too lazy to setup them for games)

I'm a bit old fashioned when it comes to headphones and I much prefer normal corded headphones with a corded mic attachment over any headsets.

Right now I'm still using my old Audeze LCD-2 as my everyday headphones, but they are a bit too heavy so I'm about to replace them with a pair of Focal Utopia. The Utopia is pretty much one of the best headphones that you can buy right now without getting into electrostatic headphones. They are kind of overkill for gaming but I've been spoiled by those high-end headphones so much that even the $1500 Sennheiser HD800S sound pretty mediocre to me.



I can't wait to get these for my birthday. 

Here's the perfect peripheral for guys who want to keep their girlfriends or wives entertained while they game.

T.16000M. Cheap. Accessible. Fucking awesome.

If you wanna do flight sims and don't have the dough to shell out for the likes of the Warthog, look no further and grab yourself a T.16000M.

Can personally speak for the stick which is damn precise (should be same tech as the Hog, actually) and will work perfectly fine with warbirds and jets alike. If you watched a bit, you know I fly the F/A-18C in DCS with it. The throttle gets solid reviews from many of the more knowledgeable people, and it doesn't surprise me. Difference from standart is that the throttle is a slide instead of a lever (which is more realistic for the Hornet, not so much for the Mustang, to name the examples I'm familiar with).

So, yeah. Don't read my chaotic "review" and just go grab the stick if you feel like flight simming.
Unfortunately, if you prefer arcades, last I heard the chances of it working in Ace Combat 7 are pretty slim.

So yesterday I got the new stuff, not actually reviewing anything since I believe when it comes to peripherals the only worthy reviews are the ones from people who actually used them for more than 10 hours (which never happens on youtube videos or dedicated so called "reviewers"). This is more of a "out of the box first impressions".

So the mouse is the Rival 110 from Steelseries, in comparison to the trashy Deathadder this one is smaller which concerned me a little bit because the Deathadder was so comfortable as it was, and I consider myself to have average sized hands at best, so finding smaller mouses feels weird. But, I'm pretty much used to its size already. It's pretty light too, which is good.
The Cord is made of some sort of soft rubber which concerns me a little bit, but okay. It has some sort of fancy sensor that honestly I don't care about, so long as it's not a shit sensor like the RAT's I'm good. Software is good also, and you can change the led colors if you're into that, personally don't care. Another thing is the grips on the side, they are part of the mouse body, unlike the Deathadder's (which I forgot to mention in my previous post), the Deathadder has rubber grips glued into the body (yes, glued) and they fall apart after a while just by the heat your hand transfers to them. Absolute garbage.
Anyways, So far so good.


The headset is the Siberia P300 from the same brand. Compared to the other cheap headset I had, this one is way more comfortable and light, although after some hours I still get this weird feeling on the top of my head, like it hurts just having it on after a while. It might just be me, the headset itself as I've said is very comfy. Honestly I don't know how streamers can hold with a headsets for 6 hours straight without the need to take them off for at least one hour.
The "leather" material on the earcups concerns me deeply. It's fine, but I have the impression that it eventually will fall apart like my other headset did. Let's hope not though. The cord is pretty short and made of the same soft rubber material, however it has an extension/spliter of sorts for people who want the mic/audio in two separate cables. So that works for me since my PC case is on the right side of the desk, and I like having the thing connected on the back, thus I need more cord length.
As for sound, it sounds super good IMO, but you need to understand that I only ever had one headset before this one and I also thought the audio was decent in that one. This one is way better thought, I've read in user reviews that it has the same sound quality as other 80-100 dollars headsets, so that's a good bang for the buck. The mic sound quality, I have no idea as I haven't use it yet.

I like Logitech products, a month ago I upgraded my keyboard and mouse.
www.logitechg.com/en-us/products/gaming-keyboards/g910-orion-rgb-gaming-keyboard.html Keyboard
www.logitechg.com/en-us/products/gaming-mice/g502-hero-gaming-mouse.html Mouse
Even though I haven't used them at their full potential yet, they're good just like the old Logitech hardware they replaced.

I use a box standard MS wired desktop 600 keyboard and mouse along with a 360 controller. Nothing fancy and works fine. Also don't cost an arm and a leg.