Armaggeddon Alien Craft IV G17 Mouse

PRICE $ 149.95 www.impactsystems.com.au

The ridiculously named Armaggeddon Alien Craft IV G17 mouse has a number of impressive looking features, or at least these features would have looked impressive when it was released four or so years ago. Unfortunately nowadays, no matter how good these features were then, they just can’t justify the price now. The G17 boasts 11 macroable mouse buttons, onthe-fly switching of polling rate, eight levels of DPI adjustment on-the-fly, a weight management system and 512k of onboard memory for macro and profile storage. The chassis is huge but deceptively comfortable, fitting neatly into the hand for a good palm grip, though claw grippers should probably look elsewhere. Button placement is a little awkward, with the DPI and profile switching buttons centred, two forward-mounted buttons on the right hand side and a forwardback scroll bar under the thumb, but after a bit of practise things start to feel a little more natural.

Performance-wise, the Alien Craft IV G17 is a bit of a mixed bag. The Avago 9800 laser sensor is decent, but, like many laser sensors (especially aging ones) suffers from some random acceleration and moments of lag. All in all it’s not too bad a mouse, and if it were under $50 we’d recommend it as a rather flashy and feature-packed gaming mouse, but given the fact that there are so many excellent, superior mice around at the $99$110 price point, it’s extremely difficult to justify a $149.95 price tag for an old, outdated product. DANIEL WILKS