Product Details
Customer Reviews
5 stars for ease of use - lose a star for build quality & Vista compatibility
The N.50 is to first person shooter games (like "Quake III Arena" or "Half-Life") what Thrustmaster products are to flight sim games: a programmable game controller designed with the idea that you need never touch your own keyboard again. With a shape suggesting a hand, the N.50 has 10 keys - in 2 rows of 5, a traditional 4-way keypad ala your console game-pad and, for those moments in which your thumb might get bored waiting to use the 4-way pad - and for those even rarer moments when you might need throttle control - a throttle wheel! Entirely programmable using bundled software, the N.50 can be customized to fit your preferences for the most convenient fragging. Though combining many controller functions, the N.50 does not replace your mouse, which would have freed up a USB slot. (On the other hand, it's not like you'll be scanning pictures and downloading from your digital camera while blasting your closest pals to a pulp in some virtual deathmatch; and anyway, there's probably a limit to how many functions a single controller can handle at a shot).
Fitting on your USB slot, the N.50 is a breeze to install. Belkin's "Profile Editor" makes it easy to map the keys for specific games. (The software that came with my N.50 was not optimized for Windows XP. An XP-friendly version was available on Belkin's website back in 2003; finding it online today may be more difficult).
Customizing keystrokes is incredibly easy - as compared to working the bugs out of my Thrustmaster setup. So far, I've used the N.50 on "Star Trek: Elite Force", both All three "Jedi Knight" games and the original "Half Life".
I am now totally spoiled for keyboards.
Two issues.
Build quality shows a shortcoming in relation to the directional keypad: even with practiced dexterity, I found that the control would sometimes move every way but the direction I actually wanted it to. Also, after about 6 years, one of the buttons has suddenly gotten stuck.
The other issue is that N50 will go no further than Win XP (and I can't even vouch for 64 bit version). Confirming that it still works on my older XP laptop, I have given up getting it to work on my Vista desktop. Though it shows up in "Control Panel", it does not appear connected as far as Belkin's "Profile Editor" is concerned - meaning that I can't customize keystrokes, which is a large part of the N50's reson d'etre. (Sp?) I have a Saitek X45 joystick that connects seamlessly - for all the hatemail MS got over Vista, the N50 is the only hardware that won't play ball.
Nevertheless, price-wise, the N.50 approximates a good programmable joystick. For ease of use, it's an indispensable peripheral for shooter games. If you're still running on XP, let this is your boomstick.
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