Review: Tt eSPORTS Level-10M Gaming Mouse
By: Christopher “Synther” Wilson
Let’s imagine for a moment that BMW made a luxury
motorcycle. The type of bike that had
all the options: a heated leather seat that was adjustable up and down for the
rider’s comfort, custom gauges and lighting to the owner’s preference,
Bluetooth wireless stereo surround sound to the rider’s matching helmet, and
horsepower with handling that would make a crotch rocket blush. Makes you hot, doesn’t it? Oh wait…they probably do actually make
that. Then just imagine that a similar
kind of luxury could be found in a PC gaming mouse, also designed by BMW. Thanks to ThermalTake’s Tt eSPORTS, they make
that too.
I’m not going to lie, I’ve wanted to get my
hands…err…hand on one of these mice since I first heard about it last year and
saw the early prototype design pictures.
I literally wrung my hands and drooled at the prospects of this
mouse. And I’ll be honest; I’ve read
some of the other reviews out there. “People
expect the Level-10M to be the end all of mice," says Shannon Robb of Tt
eSPORTS. "But that's really not the case. You're either going to love this
mouse or you're not. There is no in between." This is pretty evident in all of the other
reviews I’ve seen. Knowing this ahead of
time, I opted to plug the mouse in and use it extensively for a few days before
writing this review so that I could get and give an accurate feel of what the
average end-user is going to deal with.
The
packaging for the box is nothing short of striking. This looks more like a box that a fine, if
large, piece of jewelry would come in.
Everything about the packaging is designed to show off the aesthetic
look of the mouse. Upon opening the box
fully, you will not be disappointed with the actual product. The design of the Level-10M is about as
innovative as one could imagine for a product that we’ve literally been using
and taking for granted for the last 40 years.
It doesn’t just look like a mouse. It looks like you have a freaking sports car
for your hand sitting on your mouse pad.
The three cards that are included in the box are not advertising;
they’re post cards. Nice touch!
The Level-10M is designed with a completely open
body. You might think that this would
look strange or awkward, but the reality is that it just looks plain sick (in an OMG that’s freaking awesome
kind of way). The top palm portion of the
mouse is designed with an hexagonal grid of holes that serve two purposes: 1.)
It allows air to pass through the open frame of the mouse and thus keeps your
hand from being overly sweaty and 2.) To show off the LED Tt eSPORTS Battle
Dragon logo underneath that calmly pulses with life.
Similar to Shannon Robb’s completely humble attitude
towards such a product, when looking on Newegg, or even the box, I found that
Tt eSPORTS seriously sold themselves short on showcasing some of the more
pertinent features of this mouse.
Continuing with my aesthetic motif of the mouse, let’s be sure to let
you know that it includes three separate
multi-color LED lights. Not
one. Three. And each can be set to a different
color. The Battle Dragon logo can be set
to one color, while the standard left click button can be set to another color,
and the mouse wheel can be set to yet another color. Go crazy.
I did. While this may not be a
huge selling point, I think that they have highly underestimated the fact that
the gaming community, at the least, prefers this kind
of
customization. Say it loud and
proud! Do I hear it? No?
Ok…let’s move on.
Getting
down to the mechanics of the mouse, I immediately noticed that the box didn’t
mention the number of buttons.
Meanwhile, Newegg lists the mouse as a 7-button mouse. Really, this is a misnomer. It’s not a 7-button mouse. In reality, it’s an 11-button mouse! If you take
it at its stock configuration and do not reassign the DPI buttons, you can
claim it is a 9-button mouse. Tt eSPORTS
is forever humble in their description of this mouse! “We’re just trying to be honest,” says
Shannon Robb. The buttons obviously
include the now standard left, right, scroll wheel, and wheel click
buttons. The left side of the mouse has
two buttons that, by default, are the typical Forward and Back buttons for your
favorite web browser. In addition, the
left side also includes a 5-way rocker switch that, for some reason, is called
the Z button (I don’t know why they called it this…perhaps it is an inside
joke).
Pressing
the rocker “in” changes the profile of the mouse with up to five different, and
very specific, profiles stored onboard the mouse. These profiles can include macros, DPI
settings, and specific LED colors.
Pressing forward will lower the DPI of the mouse, while pressing back
will raise it, as per the DPI settings you specify in the driver (DPI can be
set as low as 100dpi to as high as 8200dpi).
The up and down position are set for macro key or command settings, by
default. On the right side are another
two buttons that exactly mirror the left side.
These buttons are blank and set to macro or command settings by default.
This
button configuration may lead one to believe that the mouse favors a “claw
grip” style for gaming, as opposed to the “palm grip.” I always chuckle when bringing up the typical
gaming grips…they sound so Kung-Fu. In
this case, the Level-10M actually promotes a hybrid of the two. It does this by allowing a 3-dimensional
adjustment of the palm rest, with 5mm up/down and 5 degrees left or right via
an included hex-key. This may not sound
like a lot of adjustment, but let me tell you right now: It’s huge.
I’m a palm grip style of player. My initial reaction was to raise the grip all
the way up and all the way to the right, since I’m a right handed player. Just for giggles, though, I tried adjusting
it all the way to the left while at max height.
I actually found a much more
comfortable grip to my palm. Looking at
it, and thinking about it, this sounds illogical. But the hand doesn’t lie and it likes what it
likes. It is exactly this kind of
customization that makes the Level-10M shine.
If you are willing to fiddle with it, you can find the comfort level
that is just right for you. Not some lab test monkey intern, but you specifically. And this is why I wanted to play with the
mouse for a few days before writing a review; I’d seen many reviews where the
reviewer took it out of the box, messed with the adjustments for five minutes,
and declared the mouse as uncomfortable.
This simply isn’t the case. Like
a brand new car with leather seats, you’re going to be adjusting the steering
wheel and the seat for a few days after owning it to find that perfect, “I’m
cool, but not too cool ,” look and
feel. Because, you
know…this
mouse is going to get you chicks.
All kidding aside, the first couple of hours that I
actually used this mouse for gaming, my brain was so focused on making the
mouse physically comfortable that I forgot what buttons did what. As per my standard gaming usage, I’ve coupled
the Level-10M with the Tt eSPORTS Gaming Glove (a review of which can be found here.). One game that I absolutely love is
Mechwarrior Online. I found that my aim
went up using the Level-10M. I suck at
Mechwarrior Online; I make no boasts of being an excellent pilot. I have a 25-ton Commando that I’ve decked out
with literally everything available. I
die a lot. But with the Level-10M, I was able to kill a
100-ton Atlas Assault mech on three
separate occasions. Maybe I was just
having a good night or maybe it’s because this mouse is freaking sweet. I then tested the mouse out in my other
highly regular game, Dungeons & Dragons Online. I immediately took a huge shine to the macro
keys with my Rogue of the larcenous persuasion.
I
like to play with upwards of 10 quick bars (or more) on screen and having the
macros set to Search and Sneak for the two right buttons worked beautifully (in
this case that macro would be CTRL+1,1,CTRL+3 and CTRL+1, 2, CTRL+3 with CTRL+3
bringing me back to my standard bar of thieving and Shadowdancer abilities
respectively…just to show you that I know what macros are). I’ve yet to come up with any spectacular use
for the up and down position of the Z-Button macro keys, but time is a beast
and my mind is a steel trap. It will
happen.
As a side note: At 184.8 gram total weight, not including
the cable, I did not feel the need to “adjust” the weight of this mouse during
gaming. There was never a need to add
more weight, nor take any away. And the
habit of lifting the front end of the mouse is almost alleviated completely
(what remains is habit and will be easily remedied). Personally, for weight, it’s exactly
perfect. Casual users may find the mouse
to be heavy, but I find it to be exactly right.
As I stated, the mouse actually has five profiles
onboard. To test this out, I setup my
personal five profiles, complete with custom DPI, LED lighting, and even gaming
buttons. For the Default Profile, I’ve
selected Copy to the D button (back right side button) and Paste to the C
button (front right side button). I then
unplugged the mouse, grabbed the Hex-key, and plugged it into my 62 year old
left handed mother’s computer. As
expected, the profiles remained completely intact, even though her computer did
not have the driver software installed.
To be fair, I know that she is a palm grip and left
handed, so I set the mouse for that position.
Like me, she found it uncomfortable.
Her small hands had a hard time reaching buttons and her thumb could not
reach the back/forward buttons.
Switching it to a “right hand” configuration and lowering the palm a bit
allowed her to fully use the mouse and reach all of the buttons. “Wow…this is really comfortable! It’s so nice!
I love the colors! How much does
one of these run?” I told her what the
Diamond Black model was going for on Newegg.
“This is like getting a brand new car!
I’d need a couple of days to mess around with it to get it comfortable.”
Exactly
my point. Please note, that while my mom
is not a gamer (she’s absolutely devastating at Bubble Witch Saga on Facebook),
she has proven my point precisely. You
just gotta ease your butt…err…hand…into this mouse.
Being
one for extremes, I like to mess with the software for the mouse too. The first thing I’ll say is that the
interface is “cluttered” but not unusable.
The question mark icon at the top is supposed to open a help document
that, to be honest, is no help whatsoever.
But, while cluttered, the whole thing is not terribly complicated to
figure out if you’re a gamer: we’ve all seen it before. If you’re a first time user or a casual
user…Tt eSPORTS could seriously work on this part of their implementation.
The
software works extremely well overall, but could use a few tweaks here and
there. For instance, it allows you to
create a macro as shown in the following picture. But that macro then has to be attached to a
new profile, which in turn then has to be attached to one of the five onboard
profiles. This is great, but it still
leaves you having to manually activate the profile via the Z-Button on the mouse. If it was me, and obviously far greater minds
have created this stuff, I would give the option for the new profile to
automatically start with the executable file for which it was created. In my previous example I had stated that I
had created macros for DDO. If I had
created a new profile, attached it to Profile II, and told the profile to start
automatically when dndclient.exe was started, this would cause the mouse to
automatically function and save me a mouse click or even having to remember to
do anything at all. Unfortunately, this
is not present in the current version of the software. Insert frowny face.
The last two options on the software, Air Through and 3D
Axis Movement, are completely pointless and should be omitted from the software
entirely. They’re nothing but videos
showing me how great the mouse is. I
already own the mouse; you don’t have to keep proving to me how fantastic it
is! As Fry would say, “Shut up and take
my money!” Except you already took my
money…so, stop. And the driver would
likely not be so large of a download, either.
Wait…the mouse isn’t going to get hammered into my hand, is it? Does that cost extra? Shut up and take my money!
So, we now come down to the rub of it. Should you go out and burn a hundred bones on
this mouse? That’s why you’re reading
this review, right? I’m giving the Tt
eSPORTS Level-10M a solid 9 out of 10.
So, yes, you should go get one.
If they tweaked the software just a bit, they’d get a solid 10/10 from
me. I’ve been using computers for almost
35 years and this is, without a doubt, the best and most comfortable mouse I’ve
ever used. If you’re on the fence, you
should go get one.
And yes…it did get me chicks.
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