On Our Desk - 14

Belkin N52te Speedpad

Manufacturer: Belkin
UK price (as reviewed): £33.50 (inc. Delivery)
US price (as reviewed): $69.00 (inc. Delivery)

We see so many of these damn things that it’s ridiculous, though admittedly most of them aren’t as good looking and well-built as the Belkin N52te speedpad.

Like a hundred other awkward and supposedly ergonomic button-pads, the N52te is a pad designed exclusively for gamers that is supposed to be easier to use and result in better in-game performance. Already, we’re skeptical even though there are members of the bit-tech team that swear by these things.

Cynicism aside, the N52te though is definitely one of the more high-end options in the game-raising market and that much is clear the moment you put your hand on it and feel the excellent build quality. The whole thing feels sturdy, solid and reliable. The buttons all press evenly, if a touch clunkily, and even the mouse wheel slips along in definite, deep notches.


Feature-wise, the N52te boasts all the latest mod-cons. It’s got 15 totally programmable keys positioned around your fingers and thumbs, a mousewheel near the index finger, extra button and analogue stick on the thumb and an adjustable wrist support. All of it’s backlit with a blue glow that’ll be familiar to anyone who’s used a Razer Deathadder mouse or Tarantula keyboard – probably as Razer has helped design and support the product through the software.

The software itself is the usual set up for a product like this, letting you tweak the key configurations and create custom macros which you can assign under a number of different keyboard profiles. There are some special tweaks in here too, like the ability to change the polling rate or the option to lockdown profiles so you don’t switch through them by accident. You can even link profiles to certain applications so that they come into effect only when a certain game is running.

Unfortunately, our experience with the N52te wasn’t exactly as impressive as the feature list would have us believe and though the N52te sounds good on paper it isn’t nearly as good in actual use.

The wrist rest for example claims to be adjustable on the box, but in reality isn’t all that tweakable. It basically has two different positions it can be in and moving it between the two means you have to pull the entire rest off the main chassis.


The design suffers from more than a few lapses too, despite the ergonomic look of the product as a whole. All of the buttons on the thumb section tend to fall a bit flat and it baffles us that there’s an analogue stick in the middle where you’d expect the spacebar replacement to be. Instead, the spacebar is actually way below the analogue stick and is not only uncomfortably low but also not very responsive or good. There’s hardly any movement on it and it doesn’t always feel even when pressed, which can be irritating.

The main buttons themselves though are thankfully much, much better than the rest of the N52te. Each one of these is positioned well so that your fingers fall naturally into place – though a lot of that will depend on your grip obviously. Those of us who were used to playing with a mostly flat hand on their keyboards found the N52te comfortable on the whole, while those who clenched their hands up had nothing but contempt for the entire idea.

Crucially though, we didn’t find that the design of the N52te was different enough from a usual keyboard layout (excluding the mostly useless mousewheel and analogue stick) to warrant a purchase for most players, though we guess it is better than playing on an ergonomic keyboard at least. Those things are agony to game on.

Verdict: Very sturdy and stylish, but also expensive and unnecessary, the N52te didn’t really improve our gaming performance or feel like it ever would unfortunately. It’s a handy alternative to an ergonomic keyboard, but that’s about it.