First Impressions and Setup
SpeedPad
All three controllers come in some form of vacuum moulded clear plastic which makes them all easy to see in the packaging and quite striking in appearance. The Belkin packaging in particular is rather interesting in that it keeps cardboard down to a minimum to show off the SpeedPad as much as possible.
The pad is very professional looking in its design and finish and is clearly built to a very high standard and has been well thought out. It is a nice uniform black with all characters and decals kept subtle to leave a finished appearance that I feel is best described as black minimalist. Once it’s out of the packaging it feels as well built as it looks and fits under the hand comfortably.
It is very simple to install so long as you read the instructions first and do everything in the right order. On the disk are the drivers and configuration software to customise the controller for each game. Also due to its compact size and shape it happily fits on the left hand corner of my desk alongside my keyboard making it ideally placed with the mouse being in an identical position on the other side of the keyboard.
Tactical Board
My first thought on this is that it’s huge! When sat alongside the diminutive SpeedPad and Claw it dwarfs them. It probably takes up almost as much space as a keyboard being slightly less wide than most keyboards and has more depth to it making it a bit of a beast. Because of its size fitting it on your desk may pose some problems so make sure you need to make sure that you do have the necessary space to accommodate it.
The packaging again uses a vacuum formed plastic shell exposed by a cut out section of the cardboard box. Unfortunately the box and tactical board feel to me like they could do with a slight rethink in terms of the finish chosen. It just doesn’t look as well finished as the Belkin or the Claw for that matter. I realise packaging isn’t really that important but I’m just picky and it’s details like that can ruin its first impressions.
The board itself is black and the buttons are silver or varying shades of blue, I’m not quite sure why but it just doesn’t quite work for some reason. I don’t think the colour scheme is the problem though it’s more due to the fact that the buttons look and feel cheap and seem to be for the most part fairly randomly placed.
The Tactical board does have a Gel type wrist rest that moves in and out with 5 different positions and the “thumb zone” buttons are mounted on a moveable section that slides up and down a bit and rotates 30° to allow for users with different sized hands. You can chose to tilt the command zone up with two feet like you’d find on a keyboard. Again the drivers and utility software was easy enough to install and the board was soon fully functional.
The Claw
The Claw’s packaging differs from the rest only in that the claw leaves a different shape cut-out in the cardboard, exposing the plastic contoured bubble that is all that separates you from the controller. The claw has also plumped for a black colour scheme and apart from the logo, which sits under your palm; it doesn’t feature any other markings. Again like the Belkin SpeedPad it is compact enough to happily sit on the desk as a partner to the mouse.
The packaging seems naively simplistic and a bit childlike in terms of design; it just doesn’t match up with the ultra slick and contoured game controller that it holds inside. The Claw itself takes ergonomics very seriously and the plastic shell is extremely contoured and shaped to fit the human hand with maximum comfort. The software installed easily along with the drivers and apart from the little problem I had, persuading it to automatically start up with windows, caused no real hassle. In fact the Claw has labels on several key locations, incluing the USB plug, warning the user to install drivers and software before plugging it in. This is the kind of thing many users wouldn't notice if it was in the manual and I can see it preventing many users from problems.
