STACK #187 May 2020

GAMING FEATURE

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GAMEPLAY UPGRADE

With time to kill, it’s high time you upgraded your gaming PC’s accessories to gain a noticeable edge. Words Adam Colby

F or most of us, the real beaut of IRL time to kill means plenty of time to invest in your digital fragging. Regardless of whether your fully armed arm’s length social interactions are mostly spent in the online fragging fields or lower-pressure offline gaming these days, it’s definitely worth reappraising your peripherals to friggin’ boost your fraggin’ prowess. If you do wanna tap into gaming gains, there are three core peripheral categories that can gift measurable results. First kit item off the rack is a gaming mouse for greater accuracy. Next up, consider a gaming keyboard for responsiveness and versatility. Last but nowhere near least, you also want to give your ears the kind of surround-soundscape advantage that’s provided by a solid gaming headset. Mouse tale The core differences between a regular bundled-with-your-’puter mouse and a gaming mouse are the always-reliable tracking tweaks and an almighty emphasis on pinpoint accuracy. While we’re somewhat conditioned to treating bigger tech numbers as better, when it comes to dots-per-inch (DPI) values, bigger isn’t better: it just means faster. In (p)lay terms, once you shift that slider above 1600 DPI, ditching the daily commute is glorious unallocated free time. Of course, more minor mouse movements translate to Flash-like cursor speeds, which is more likely to inaccurately confound you than give you an accuracy edge over your human or AI foes. What this means for the budget- conscious peripheral purchaser is performance improvements don’t have to come at a great expense. Take the Logitech G402, for instance. This sub-$100 gaming mouse is a great starting

DeathAdder V2 combos a play-all-day ergonomic design (built with medium to massive mitts in mind) with an impressively accurate sensor to boost reliability, and optical mouse buttons for impressive click accuracy. For a few dollars more, you can get your hands on the Logitech G502 Hero. Built around the heart of an incredibly accurate sensor, the G502 is an all-genres gaming mouse because of its 11 programmable buttons and up to five profiles that are stored on the mouse (so it travels well between PCs). You can even tweak how it feels by slotting in one of five included weights to tune the physical balance. If you’re not shy of the investment, there’s also a wireless version in the Logitech G502 Lightspeed that’s absolutely worth the price tag to ditch the mouse tail and have fully unfettered wireless movement.

point care of its accurate optical sensor and eight programmable buttons, which includes on-the-fly DPI switching to boost or lower sensitivity. To step things up a notch, you’ll need to crack that $100 best-bits budget barrier, but there are perks for your investment. The Razer

HAND POSTURE There are three core mouse grips that’ll actually impact the kind of mouse you want.

Palm grip is the most popular, whereby your hand is effectively flopped on the mouse and your wrist (higher sensitivities) or arm (lower sensitivities) is used for movement. It’s the most common grip because it’s the most natural grip. Palmers should look for longer mice with steeper backs. Claw grip reduces hand contact with the mouse, but offers faster gliding. Clawers should seek out shorter mice with more pronounced arches. Tip grip offers ultimate speed via minimal friction. Tippers should hunt down short, light mice with flatter back arches.

76 MAY 2020

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