[JohnTC02]

My main keyboard decided to give up the ghost last night, looking around I found these, Cyborg do a gaming keyboard and mouse so I was thinking about treating myself to both of them.

Anyone had any experience of the Cyborg gaming stuff.

These are not cheap but are getting good reviews around the net.

Cyborg V.7 Keyboard

Cyborg Blurb.
Amazon.


R.A.T 9 Gaming Mouse(pic is the 5 but it looks the same as the 9)

Cyborg Blurb.
Amazon.

[Tinker]

Will follow topic, looking for both myself but not in a rush. Problem is, the expensive cool looking stuff seems to end a lot sooner than some more moderate stuff.

[NightCrawler]

Don't know about the keyboard but a buddy of mine has that mouse and raves about it constantly. It's to the point I'm considering one.

Let me know if you get one John and how you like it.

[ApexMods]

Wow! That mouse looks freakishly cool! Might want to get one for the design alone!

[JohnTC02]

Thanks for the feedback.

Order placed.

I can test these for a few days and if I'm not satisfied they will go back.

I'll post my thoughts when I've had them for a while, that way I can give a more informed opinion.

[NightCrawler]

That mouse is supposed to be very moddable, you can change the size and weight to your liking. I'll be watching for your feedback. If this G15 every goes belly up I might take a look at that keyboard also.

[CrowmanUK]

For a mouse i've got a Logitech G5 and its possibly the best mouse i've ever had, you can weight it to whatever your preference is and the buttons are in just the right places, if you do a lot of typing the i'd definitely say go for a natural style keyboard, weird to start with but after a week they're just so damn comfortable its untrue.

[JohnTC02]

Ok, I've had both the keyboard and mouse for just over a day so I thought I would post my first impressions.

Mouse:
Seems to be made of a good quality material, if feels very robust and looks like it could stand up to a fair amount of abuse.

I'm surprised at how adjustable the body of the mouse is, you can change the width, length and the hight, even the weight can be altered by adding or removing small weights that fit inside the body.

I comes with interchangeable palm rests and different rests for your small finger, the palm rests are all different thicknesses which you can use to alter the height of the mouse.

What I find useful for gaming is you have a switch on top to alter the DPI, this comes in handy when playing games as you can change how sensitive the mouse is to movement, it even has a sniper button which when pressed you can aim your scope much more accurately.

The mouse comes with two rechargeable batteries so you will never be stuck when one runs out of power, the receiver doubles up as a charger so you can charge one battery while using the other.

One thing I'm not sure of is what the thumb wheel is for, so far I haven't got it to work in any game or application.

So far all seems good.

Keyboard.
What can I say, it's a keyboard and does what it says on the tin.

First thing I noticed was how heavy it is after my old Logitech, again like the mouse it feels very sturdy and well made, what I like about this is all the gaming keys WASD, space bar and the arrows keys are metal plated to make them hard wearing as these will get a lot of use.

The keyboard has a back light, you can change the colour and brightness of the lights, the gaming keys can be set to a different colour and brightness to the other keys which I think is a cool option.

There is a touch sensitive panel at the back of the keyboard, there are plenty of options to customise how the keyboard works, when in gaming mode all the windows keys are disabled so you don't suddenly find yourself back at the desktop if you hit the wrong key.

The keys are very nice to use, they have a good feel to them and are not clunky when used.

Both the mouse and keyboard comes with software where you can setup macros for most of the buttons, I need to explore this a bit further.

Again, first impressions with the keyboard is very impressive.

[Tinker]

I was googling this last night.

The thumb scroll is for horizontal scrolling. Say you only have half a forum page showing and need to scroll left or right. Should work in games for menu selections, maybe like graw2 kit selection screen.

Only issue I noted, worth keeping in mind, I bookmarked:

While adjusting the mouse, the plastic mounting arm that holds the bottom part of the thumb rest broke. The mouse remained functional and even adjustable with little noticeable wiggle after the arm broke, but latter thumb rest adjustments required some effort (and could probably benefit from a drop of epoxy) to get it in the right position. The mounting arms should really have been the same metal found on the mouse's base plate or adjustment axles. The arm itself doesn't seem weak, but over-torquing with the wrench broke it. It won't randomly snap while you use the mouse in day-to-day use; just be careful when using the allen wrench to adjust the thumb rest.

LINK

[JohnTC02]

Yeah, I read that but had no problems myself.

It's easy to tell when the adjustment screw has come to the end of it's travel, it becomes stiff to turn so it's obvious that you need to stop turning the screw, they must have used a lot of force to break the plastic mounting.

[NightCrawler]

Thanks John.

Sounds like that keyboard could be coming to my house in the future. Metal plated gaming keys, I like that.

[Tinker]

Also thinking about it too, looks really nice and my G15 is getting old.

Save a few pounds at Ebuyer too.

[ApexMods]

Thanks for the first impressions, John. Looks like you made the right choice with your purchase. I like the detail about the metal keys.

[JohnTC02]

Had the keyboard and mouse for just on a week now so an update is due.

Keyboard:
Nothing here to realy add from my first impressions above, IMO it's superb. If I was to be picky I could say that the small touch sensitive buttons that control the volume are a bit fiddly, having large fingers I find it's sometimes difficult to set it at the volume I want but the rest of the touch sensitive buttons are a real treat to use.

For gaming this keyboard does it's job flawlessly, the metal plated gaming buttons are easy to locate and having them back lit a different colour and brightness is a real bonus.

I have programmed a couple of buttons using the supplied software, I still find getting macros to do what I want a bit fiddly but once done it works ok.

Mouse:
Like the keyboard not a great deal to add apart from a couple of small gripes.

The biggest is the battery life, I get about eight hours of use from a single charge, I do find this a bit surprising with a modern mouse as I expected more, however, it's not such a big problem as two batteries are supplied and you can charge one in the receiver while you are using the other so you will never be stuck with a flat battery, unless of course you forget to charge it up.

The other small gripe is the button for the 3 Cyborg Modes, no mater how hard I try I cant put enough pressure on the button to change the modes using my index finger, the blurb states that they made this button harder to press to stop you from accidentally pressing it when in the middle of gaming, IMO they have overdone this a little. Having said that I have yet to find a need for these extra modes so I haven't used it.

Some of the problems I have with the mouse maybe down to me having huge shovel like hands, this was one of the reasons I bought the mouse as I find normal mice are just to small to fit comfortable in my hand, I have no such problems with this one though, after adjusting the size of the mouse it feels very nice to use.

Would I recommend these to anyone here? the answer to that is a big yes, they were not cheap but I think money well spent.

Please don't buy these on my say so as others may not have the same opinion as me but if you do a quick search online I don't think you will find many people disliking them other than what I have mentioned above.

[Tinker]

Had the RAT 3 arrive today. £40, a lot cheaper than the new version, but a better chance to see if I like the feel of it in general. Hard to chuck £100 at something like this, though I was in need of at least 1 new.

First impressions is really good, like it a lot.

I have 2 mouse here normally, my main PC runs a basic cheapo that never fails, then I have a G5 which I may of pressed down on the middle button to hard once while being hit from some camper,as there was a cracking noise. Anyhow it shakes all over the screen, ok for changing movies with. And navagating though files / folders

Happy with this so far,and from playing with this, and John`s notes, very tempted to get that newer version soon.