Results

Mount and Blade Warband

Here I found the Nostromo did pretty well. I moved around with ease and found that the keys depressed very smoothly giving me a simply nice playing experience.

I did have a slight problem with the standard space bar key though, as with my quite small hands, though I could reach it, I couldn’t do so comfortably. However, a quick remap and my jump command was now sitting with the top mounted plastic button.

I wasn’t really sure how the scroll wheel would come in handy as I have one on my mouse which is more intuitive and simpler to use, but I had a go with it anyway. It’s fine and moves smoothly, but in this title at least, the one on my mouse did just fine.

One thing I did wish I had while playing however, was one more row of buttons above the standard set. These could then be used as numerical keys, which in Mount and Blade, by default, control your units. I got around this by setting macros for certain commands and mapped them to the D-Pad for example, but just as an option I’d have liked that extra row.

League of Legends

League of legends again, worked very well and I had no problem utilising the already mapped keyboard shortcuts to use my abilities. I in-fact had a very good game racking up a nice number of kills. This is testament to the short learning curve when using the Nostromo.

However, I did have a slight problem getting the item usage commands going. Again, missing the number keys, I went for a remap of the D-Pad. Weirdly these were the only ones that I couldn’t change while minimising, I had to restart the game. Not the end of the world, but interesting nonetheless.

Lord of the Rings Online

In this game I felt the macros came into their own. As well as having the standard WASD controls I was able to map all the slightly more complicated commands to the free keys and D-Pad. This certainly made it far easier and is something that I absolutely can’t do with my keyboard. However, my current board, the Steelseries 7G is designed as a cut back, driverless piece of kit so that’s not wholy surprising; but it’s still an advantage.

Comfort

Throughout all testing I had absolutely no problems with comfort. No aches or pains at all. The wrist rest is definately improved over the original Nostromo; seriously if they made a bed of that soft rubber I’d buy it.

The only slight problem I had was with my small hands reaching the space bar key. I had to bend my thumb in a way that didn’t feel very natural and I’m not sure I’d ever get used to it.

Also, I did have a slight problem getting the D-Pad to work. My thumb would often slip off the analogue extension stick as there is almost no grip on it at all. A simple rubber topping would fix this though.

Cost

While some websites seem to have a Belkin branded version of this (not the original, but this new black and blue version) for around £30, the official Razer edition looks set to run you around £45.