It’s Tuesday on the week of Christmas, and you’re about 60 percent done with gifts. That 40 percent is looking daunting, especially with your 18-year-old gamer nephew Greg still on the list. Well, don’t sweat it. I’ve got 5 excellent options for gifts for ‘ol Greg this year. Kontrol Freek’s thumb grips One of my favorite gaming items of 2015 has got to be Kontrol Freek’s thumb...
What's the catch? Acer just added what seems like an awesome entry to its monitor lineup, the Predator Z35, a 35-inch UltraWide display with a curved panel, G-Sync support, and up to a 200Hz refresh rate (via overclocking). We always take these things with a grain of salt, but for what it's worth, Acer rates the contrast ratio at 3,000:1 (native) and brightness at 300 cd/m2. The panel...
A switch hitting rodent If you’re a right-handed gamer, the thumb buttons belong on the left side, and if you’re a left-handed gamer, the opposite is true. Gaming peripheral maker Roccat has found a way to cater to both types with the same mouse without plopping buttons on both sides (though that’s an option, as we’ll get into in a moment). The mouse is called Kiro and the key to its...
A mouse for lefties and righties It seems that the blueprint for a gaming mouse these days is that it has to sport more buttons than you can count on one hand, have a funky design, leave out left-handed gamers, and cost a king’s ransom. None of those are true of Corsair’s new Katar gaming mouse. Corsair is pitching the Katar as a “simple and deadly choice for gamers” involved in...
True desktop replacement There are desktop replacement laptops, and then there’s Eurocom’s Sky X9, a laptop with true desktop parts inside, including a socketed Intel Core i7-6700K processor and Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 GPU. Building high-end machines that blur the lines between desktops and laptops is something Eurocom’s been doing for several decades now. “In 1989 we created the first...
A new gaming mouse from Asus ROG Looking for a new mouse for your gaming rig? The Republic of Gamers arm of Asus has introduced a new mouse "ergonomically designed" for long gaming sessions. Called the GX860 Buzzard, this peripheral includes high-quality Omron switches, LED illumination (red, orange, or green), and a two-way DPI switch. "ROG GX860 is a high-performance gaming mouse...
When I started buying game soundtracks — wait, let me get my cane. Back in my day, we had to import game soundtracks from Japan, if they were even sold at all, and they often cost $40 a piece. And we had to walk uphill both ways in the snow. My first two game soundtracks were for Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill. Nowadays, things are way, way easier, even without resorting to BitTorrent...
Not your ordinary mouse (or is it?) Cougar is calling its new 550M mouse a “flagship gaming” rodent, which is an odd descriptor considering that Cougar also offers at least two seemingly higher end options, the 600M and 700M. The hype doesn’t stop there. According to Couger, the 550M “is the result of years of continuous work with a single objective: creating the most perfect gaming...
Small form factor PC gets new 6-core and 8-core CPU options There was a day when the size of your desktop was a pretty good indicator of the performance inside, or at least potential performance. That's all gone out the window lately with the emergence of high performance small form factor (SFF) PCs, some of which are specifically intended for living room gaming. Enter Falcon Northwest...
Get yours starting at $955 We first spied CyberPower PC’s funktastically designed Trinity gaming PC at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year. Back then, Trinity was in the prototype stage, and all too often we’ve seen such things turn to vaporware. Not this time. CyberPower today announced that its Trinity PC is available to configure and order, with prices...