Speedlink Styx

Testing

To test the mouse, I put it against the Razer Deathadder, Lachesis, Krait and Ideazon Reaper. The other mouse in the same price bracket as the Styx is the Reaper, so that will be the mile-stone to set this mouse against.

First of all, I found that the mouse was reasonably comfortable; not overly so, but comfortable enough for long periods of intense gaming. Its definitely better then the Reaper, but not as good as the Deathadder and on par with the Lachesis. The mouse is quite large, and while my average sized hands could easily use it, people with smaller hands will find it very difficult to press the main buttons. People with larger hands complained that the two side buttons above your thumb got in the way, but was comfortable otherwise.

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Strangely, while I thought the sensitivity and the special fire buttons would be pressed easily during gaming, they are surprisingly out of the way. They are easy to press when you feel the need, but otherwise they are left alone. When you decide to change the sensitivity, the button scrolls upwards through the levels before repeating. The actual DPI is signified by the small DPI gauge on the bottom right, with red being for 800 DPI, blue for 1600 DPI and 2200 DPI is green. The LED’s are bright, but only if you look directly down on top of the Styx, but are still visible from the normal gaming sitting stance.

The special fire mode is probably the worst idea for this mouse. I tried using it in Battlefield 2142 and it’s shocking. It’s far too fast, so you end up having to use the highest setting (quad fire) to maybe fire three shots (the mouse asks your gun to fire faster than it can, so it skips shots). This isn’t the mouse’s fault as such, but I doubt there are many games that allow you to press the fire button so rapidly. The other issue is that normally when you are using a single-shot rifle/pistol, you want additional accuracy rather than going full auto on your enemy. When you use the special fire mode, it gives you recoil for three shots in quick succession meaning that you’ll normally only land a shot or two before your gun is far too high to hit your target.

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To signify which mode the mouse is in for special fire, it changes the colour of the scroll wheel, from off being normal mode, red for double shot, blue for triple shot and purple for quad fire. The brightness is quite low, and it’s easy to miss the fact that it’s on. Normally this isn’t a great issue, but in Windows you’ll get very odd behaviour if you try to double-click something and the mouse is sending out 8 clicks instead. You learn in a very short time to leave the ‘F’ button well alone.

Back to the polling rate, there are programs on the internet that allow you to check how fast data is coming from your mouse. This has significance as while Windows can be set to poll your mouse every millisecond (1000Hz) the electronics of the mouse may only be able to shunt out 125Hz, effectively meaning that your CPU is having to ask for data that the mouse can’t provide.

By using one of these programs, I found that even if you have Windows set to at 1000Hz, the mouse only sends out the basic 125Hz. Looking at the diagram on our glossary pages you can being to see why this matter, especially if you are using the mouse at is full rated 2200 DPI mode (or just more than half an inch of movement to move the cursor across your screen at 1280×1024). Briefly, if you pop open Paint, drag the editing area to maximum, choose the paint brush and move the mouse in a circular motion, you get an angular shape rather than a circle. Using a higher polling rate mouse, and you get a more circular shape.

It’s unfortunate that the Styx doesn’t poll at a higher rate as it then doesn’t differentiate itself from a standard OEM optical mouse bar the sensitivity. The Reaper is a similar 125Hz maximum piece of hardware.  Granted you are unlikely to notice unless you compare directly to a high-end mouse, but the problem is still present.

That said, during Windows usage, its perfect with no negative deceleration or jumping providing that you use it on a standard mousing surface. Something like the SteelSeries SP and you’ll run into problems, but if it’s a normal opaque pad it’ll work perfectly.

I found that no matter what game I chose, the mouse just did exactly what it was meant to do, and that was to accurately portray my movements on screen. The on-the-fly sensitivity works instantly, with no lag between moving to a different setting which is better than the Deathadder in that respect. The shape of the mouse is quite fat, and elevates your hand off the mouse pad by a fair distance and is an odd position to play from when you’re used to using a Deathadder. You do get used to it, but personally I can’t say that I enjoyed the shape as much as my trusty Deathadder.

Peripherals