Sandio 3D O2 Gaming Mouse - Testing the Sandio O2 and Final Thoughts

Testing:

Before we begin with some real testing, I'd like to mention that when I first got my hands on this mouse it took me quite a while to finalize the key binding settings for each game. While the pre-set configurations did provide a good outline, they were far from personalized to my particular settings.

My favorite part in reviewing any item is the game testing. For this I figured I’d fire up some of those good ol’ games and play around with them a bit. I thoroughly customized my settings for UT3, CoD4, Supreme Commander, and Dark Star One, as I figured these provided the most diverse and current range of game types available to me.

As I was reading up about this product I noticed that it said I could play a game using only the mouse thanks to the joysticks provide on the mouse. I decided to test this theory, so I customized my key bindings for CoD4 so that I would be able to do that. When I first set my settings I set the middle joystick to be my movement center - eg. Left, right, forward, backward - logical, right? It turns out that when the joystick is pressed in between any 2 directions, it cuts out and does nothing. It apparently cannot combine two keys at once. This was very odd and unexpected because with the 3D cube rotation program the diagonal directions worked perfectly. Anyways, this hampered my ability to move very well, so I used the middle joystick to move left and right appropriately and the left joystick to move forward and backward appropriately. Surprisingly, this turned out pretty well, and I was able to combine two keys of different joysticks to go in a diagonal direction such as backwards and left very well.

After finalizing my key bindings for CoD4, it went great. I was actually able to complete the last three quarters of the game using only the mouse on normal difficulty. There were parts of the campaign I knew I could not complete on higher difficulties because of lack of a controller I was used to *cough* keyboard *cough*. For casual play, however, I could relax quite comfortably while playing my favorite game, but as for competing professionally or online, a great amount of coordination is required to play with only this mouse.

I tried to do the same in UT3 as I did in CoD4, but this attempt failed miserably. Although both games are in the same genre, each provide a different level of gameplay from each other. Dodging in UT3 was near to impossible with the joysticks, and my attempts at creating a one click dodge with a joystick, which would have been really cool, turned out just as horrible. The one thing that redeems this mouse while UT3 is in play is the endless possibilities with key binding. The many guns featured in this game won't switch themselves and the joysticks provide a great slot for them to place themselves to be ready at any time.

Supreme Commander was successful as well. The key binding for the mouse offered just about complete control over the game. The one thing that was upsetting was that shift didn't work when bound. To me the shift key is an essential part of an RTS game because it offers a quick 5 unit build queue. The joystick key binding didn't quite seem to be able to master this key.

I chose Dark Star One  because I wanted a free flight 3D environment to test out the yaw and roll key binding options. These key binding options could technically be used for other purposes, but the way they are set up screamed for 3D use. So I fired her up, went on a couple of missions, fooled around a bit, and it actually worked pretty well, it added a little more option to this particular game that would have been hard to achieve otherwise.

Google Sketchup is next on the list, I downloaded the program and installed it, but when I tried to use the mouse in it, I had an awful time trying to get the plug-in to actually load for the program. It said it was an auto-loading thing, and they gave me no manual files, even the link it gave me for the documentation for the plug-in was bad, when I clicked it, the software came up with an “open file error” message. I even went to their site and downloaded the latest drivers, and still nothing. Nevertheless I went ahead and created a profile with key bindings for Google Sketchup. I bound the pan, move, rotate, push/pull to joysticks and it worked alright, I did have a little trouble remembering where I bound all the separate keys to, but as long as I remembered what they were, it did save some time.

Also during this time, I found the multiple DPI settings came in quite handy, especially when making delicate small movements with the mouse. Normally I like high sensitivity, but with a quick switch to low DPI, I could select a picture right down to the pixel in paint, or snipe with perfect accuracy.

Conclusion:

This definitely was a very sweet mouse, although it can't hold it's own in some games, in others you will find yourself like a god. If you want a good relaxing hour of gameplay, customizable joysticks make using only the mouse a good way to accomplish that goal. In 3D applications the 3D feature is made more accessible. Tracking was good for the most part, and the fast switching multiple DPI levels came in handy from time to time. Wrist support is available for those that like it and also removable for those who don't want it. The software is nice for profile making and editing. If you ask me, 80$ would be a fair price to pay for this product.

Glass is a mousepad material to stay away from, and the enormous size is something customers should take into consideration. Although the constant colorful light display can get quite annoying, for some it may be easy to hide and ignore. The key binding also doesn't combine 2 keys on the same joystick, this doesn't affect the RTS genre, but it does make it much harder to play FPS games fluently. There were also several problems with the auto-loading drivers and plug-in.

Pros:

• Excellent tracking
• 3 customizable joysticks
• Fast switching multiple DPI levels
• Optional wrist support
• Easy software to use
• Only mouse use is relaxing
  

Cons:

• Enormous size
• Continual light display
• Doesn't track on glass
• Sketchup plug-in don't auto-load
• 2 directions on same joystick impossible to combine with key binding

Overall, the Sandio O2 scores pretty well, but due to some software issues we can't give it a "Top Pick".

I'd like to thank Sandio for sending over this mouse to review.  Please feel free to post your comments or questions in the forum at the "Comments" link below.