Hey, I heard you liked joysticks, so I put a couple of joysticks inside a mouse, so you can joystick while you mouse while you joystick!
In all seriousness this thing is super cool! It’s a mouse that has a couple of joysticks within it so it functions as both a full functional joystick, but also a gaming mouse. The concept, to me, is rather neat, but I’m a little skeptical on whether they can pull it off or not. I’ve had my share of products that promised to fulfill multiple roles at once, only to fall short and provide a product that has very limited usability for any of those roles. Regardless of how skeptical I am, I can’t help but be intrigued by the concept of having a joystick on your mouse. I can’t wrap my head around whether I like the idea, or just how it would work as both a mouse and a keyboard at the same time.
The company that brings us this product is ARK INNOVATION. Who is ARK INNOVATION? I’m not quite sure to be honest. What I can tell you is they appear to be edging their way into a new type of gaming peripheral, the Joystick Mouse all in one.
One thing I was worried right away is the laser of the mouse. As I stated above, I’m rather skeptical of any product that claims it can do it all. Therefore I automatically assume that the mouse won’t have as accurate a laser as a real gaming mouse. They choose to go with a laser sensor instead of an optical sensor, which isn’t entirely bad. If you ever used the Mad Catz R.A.T. PRO X Ultimate Gaming Mouse, you’ve used the ADNS-9800 laser. It’s not horrible, but like many lasers has a lot of smoothing involved. When you have that much smoothing involved, you get some lag. Again, it’s not horrible, but for a gaming mouse you can do a lot better. Lag aside, you’ve got a range of DPI up to 8200. That should be plenty for most users, but if you’re like me, I’m using to having a range upwards of 12,000 or more.
I like the idea of having a side mounted joystick. It reminds me of my Thrustmaster throttle control. I have multiple finger and thumb pads that make it just an ease to fly in space flight simulators like Elite Dangerous. Whether or not this feature will stand up to my Thurstmaster only time will tell. However I’ve got high hopes for it!
Below is a current list of games the mouse supports. Good to know Warcraft 3 is supported!
Only time will tell if the company will succeed in its ambitions to create such an awesome mouse. This is a great concept. Regardless of if you would actually use it as it was intended to, or just to have as a novelty item, this is a really cool idea. The company is currently in the middle of a kickstarter campaign. You can read the full list of specs and product information, as well as back the campaign with a pledge to preorder here. If you like what you see so far, head over and check out the full details!
All images and data were pulled directly from the Lexip kickstarter page located here.
