XSReviews

The Omnivi Core is a palm grip mouse from Speedlink, complete with multi-colour LED backlighting, ten programmable buttons and an aluminium base plate. We were impressed with the comfortable Decus Respec that we reviewed earlier, so how’s the higher-grade Omnivi? Let’s take a look!

See the Speedlink Omnivi Core on Amazon

Features

• Professional gaming mouse
• Ultra-precise 12,000dpi optical sensor
• 10 freely configurable buttons
• Adjustable LED lighting glows in any one of 7 atmospheric colours
• Solid finger rest and aluminium base plate
• Profile management with any number of game profiles
• Powerful Macro Editor
• DPI switch for rapid toggling between resolutions
• 6 sensor precision levels from 800 to 12,000dpi
• Illuminated 2D scroll wheel indicated current dpi level
• Illuminated 2D scroll wheel indicated current dpi level
• Adjustable USB polling rate up to 1,000Hz
• Incredible ergonomic comfort with grippy scroll wheel and finger rest
• Rubberised finish
• Maximum acceleration: 50g
• Maximum tracking speed: 250ips
• Sensor frame rate: 12,000fps
• Flexible USB cable with hard-wearing sheath (1.8m)
• Dimensions: 87 × 131 × 52mm (W × D × H)
• Weight: 145g

Design

The Omnivi has a fairly sharp and complex design, with exposed aluminium towards the bottom of the mouse — including on the pinky rest that juts out from the right hand side (left in the photo below). There’s a corresponding rest for your thumb too, but this one is coated in soft touch rubber.

Like other Speedlink mice that we’ve reviewed, the Omnivi comes in a metallic red colour, with areas of black plastic on each side. There’s also multi-colour LEDs that provide lighting in three areas: below the mouse (left and right), the logo on the top, and the scroll wheel. Ground (‘underglow’) lighting makes a lot of sense as it isn’t covered by your hand during gameplay, so we’re glad to see it here.

Let’s have a look at each side of the mouse in turn. First, the left side, which features four side buttons, including the usual back and forward buttons and two extras.

Next, we have the top, which has two extra tiny buttons near the left click button and a DPI button below the scroll wheel.

And finally the right side, which is happily free of buttons so your pinky finger can just chill.

The bottom of the mouse is clad in aluminium as you can see, and there are no removable weights as we saw in the Decus Respec. There are, however, four skates on the cardinal sides of the mouse.

Finally, let’s see how it compares to the Speedlink Decus Respec we reviewed earlier: arguably as wide, but with a thinner body section, a more angular shape and more buttons.

Software

Let’s have a look at the software. Surprisingly, it’s a completely different software package to the Speedlink Decus Respec, with four sections: buttons, performance, lighting and macro. Buttons mode allows you to program each button (sensibly enough); you can from actions including keyboard keys, program launches, media commands and macros.

Performance comes next, and provides a place to change your DPI stepping — there are five levels available. Sadly, it’s impossible to type in a DPI, you must select it by clicking on the bar on the left hand side. Polling rate is the only other setting you can change here.

Lighting is the third tab. You can choose various effects and set their speed. The effects are:

• Solid (always on / red, yellow, green, teal, blue, purple, white, rainbow)
• Breathing (fades in and out / same colours)
• Running (underglow zones light up in sequence / rainbow only)
• Flashing (underglow cycles through colours / rainbow only)
• Flowing (underglow wave / rainbow only)

Surprisingly, the scroll button cannot be reconfigured; it remains lit even if you turn all other lights off. The top lighting also remains on, cycling through random colours, unless lighting is disabled.

The final tab is the macro editor, which is quite full-featured. You can record macros with your own delays, or you can choose to have minimal delays (5ms) or delays of a custom time period. Key presses and delays can also be deleted or tweaked manually after recording, allowing extremely precise macros.

Overall, it’s a comprehensive software package, although the LED lighting control was decidedly lacking — why is it not possible to independently control the scroll backlight, the top backlight and the underglow backlight? Why is it not possible to disable all lights? It certainly seems to be technically possible, given software of other gaming mice.

Testing

In order to test the Omnivi Core, we played a marathon series of video games — hurrah for the Christmas holidays! Although our tenure included Battlefield 1 and Sid Meier’s Civilization VI, the bulk of our time was spent in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Overwatch.

The Omnivi’s metal bottom and slimmer body made it feel lighter and more manoeuvrable than the similar Speedlink Decus Respec, although not quite as slick as the smaller Fnatic Clutch or Mionix Castor. As we found with the Decus Respec, the wider bottom of the mouse makes it hard to lift while playing, making this better suited for palm grips and higher DPI counts.

The optical sensor proved accurate at low DPI settings (as is often recommended for shooters like Overwatch and particularly CS:GO), and it has plenty of headroom if you prefer to play twitchier titles.

While numerous, the buttons were not always well placed or easy to differentiate. Distinguishing between the four side buttons was at times challenging, particularly for the two central buttons. In addition, the tiny buttons on the side of the left mouse button were extraordinarily hard to reach, and we wonder why they were even included. The left and right mouse buttons were fine though, with nice tactile feedback, and the scroll wheel felt precise too.

Wrapping up

The Omnivi is another solid mouse from Speedlink, boasting a more powerful software suite, more buttons and slicker movement than the Decus Respec without losing the comfortable palm grip that defined that mouse. I think that makes the Omnivi Core worth the extra £10 in my book, although as we’ll see below this is a very competitive price point. It also has a few problems, including some poorly positioned buttons and mysterious limitations to its LED lighting. Overall, it’s a recommendation, but a cautious one — this is a second tier choice, not a must-have.

See the Speedlink Omnivi Core on Amazon

Pricing and alternatives

Let’s take a look at how the Omnivi Core compares to some well-known alternatives from Razer, Logitech and Corsair:

	Amazon UK	Amazon DE	Amazon US
Speedlink Omnivi Core	£65	€68	N/A
Razer Deathadder Chroma	£58	€73	$50
Logitech G502 Proteus Spectrum	£50	€70	$60
Corsair Sabre RGB	£43	€50	$40
Logitech G700S Wireless	£41	€78	$41

If you need a lot of buttons, like a metal appearance and a palm grip, then the Omnivi Core is a reasonable choice. Otherwise, the alternatives listed above are more likely to appeal to you — give them a look too.