Introduction & Specification
Aye up, it’s time to delve into desktop rodent territory courtesy of Speedlink.
Speedlink may be well known to many of you, they have been making peripherals since 1998, from my experience it has mainly been for the budget market. However, recently I have been seeing some products aimed at higher market segments, this is always good news because more competition means more research and development combining to create a wider choice at more competitive prices.
Today I have on my desk a deep red metallic mouse in the Speedlink Omnivi Core Gaming Mouse, offering high level features this is aimed at the mid-high Steelseries, Corsair and Zowie mouse levels. Here is a quick rundown of what specifications are on offer.
Specifications including software.
- 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 indicates 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
Interestingly they don’t mention the brand of the optical sensor, there is something else they are not mentioning which does them a disservice, but more on that later, first we shall have a good look up close at the Speedlink Omnivi Core Gaming Mouse.
A Closer Look
The Mouse
Supplied in a medium sized box, way above mouse size but not the biggest I have seen, we have a picture of the Speedlink Omnivi Core Gaming Mouse along with lots of features, 7 Colour Lighting we often expect RGB in this market segment, however there are still many mice at this level that don’t even have changeable lighting. Aluminium parts should make this mouse feel weighty and of high quality, rubber coating is one of my preferred coating styles, Macro software and onboard memory should give us lots of control over the 10 buttons available.
The back of the box gives us text specifications in a bunch of languages, mostly European as Speedlink focuses on the EU region.
A good yank at a couple of velcro tabs, and the front door of the box opens to allow us to see the mouse for itself behind a plastic bubble. Inside the Speedlink Omnivi Core Gaming Mouse details continue with descriptions of the software on the inside of the box door along with some detail on the comfort and accuracy of the mouse. This kind of packaging is always great to have instore to allow customers to get a proper view of the product without breaking the seals.
Laying out the box contents, you don’t get a whole load of extras here just the Omnivi mouse a Quick Install Guide and an Info Guide. The USB connector is gold plated and cable, while quite thin, is braided well with red and black cord.
I hope you like red, the Speedlink Omnivi Core Gaming Mouse, is very red, its a deep metallic red with a matte effect on most of it. The rubber coating feels smooth and not too rubbery, there is no sticky feeling to the surface and it is very pleasant indeed. The concave mouse button style forces your mouse button fingers into a cradle zone which is very comfortable, the metal plate on the bottom protrudes out to the right hand side with a resting area for the remaining fingers on the right hand side. Now this mouse is definitely designed for right handed use, all the extra buttons are on the left, however were you to be left handed and to try this as a mouse it is still strangely very comfortable and with a bit of experience I think at least some of the extra buttons would be manageable. This is very different from the many right hand biased mice out there and I think left handers could give this one a try just for something different. The scroll wheel is notchy – the tyre is a little thin which appears to have been done for lighting effects, I do prefer a fat tyre though. The mouse buttons and DPI button form part of the main body too giving the Omnivi a sleek design.
As mentioned all the extra buttons are on the left hand side of the Omnivi, the four main side buttons are large and easy to feel which button is which with your thumb, while the mouse casing is black plastic here, the buttons have the rubber coating on them which is nice and grippy. Up on top near the front there are two more buttons, these are made of shiny plastic and are slippery, I do wonder why a different material has been used for these. At the bottom of the left hand side the casing protrudes out for a thumb resting area, which does actually work although your thumb rests right on the edge of it. The opaque plastic on the bottom is to allow the lighting to show through.
The right hand sides only extra part is the metal plate sticking out to rest your fingers on, the plate has a texture red coating on top offering a little grip, again the black part of the mouse is made with hard plastic textured a little like keyboard keycaps for a little grip. Looking at the shape of the mouse here you can see that it serves palm usage very well, claw and fingertip usage is still possible however those methods won’t benefit from the ergonomic design as much.
Looking from the back of the mouse the Omnivi logo and pattern are laser cut to allow light to pass through and you can see how the metal base plate is attached below the opaque lighting section. The curvature of the top shell gives the impression of a right handed bias, but its not enough of a bump to make left handed use uncomfortable.
Boop shot shows the scroll wheel with the tyre pattern closely matching the notches on the wheel when moved, it is however as mentioned quite thin, the metal plating forms front clips that hold the black section of the shell in place and we have the braided cable coming out front and centre. The mouse buttons go right to the front of the mouse enabling different grip types to make full use of them.
Plugged in the mouse lights up, the 7 light colours making themselves look like more, I thought this was RGB at first.
Looking from the top you can see a further example of the lighting zones being split, these are configurable in the software to further customise the look of the Speedlink Omnivi Core Gaming Mouse, they can also be turned off should that be your preference.
The Software
The software for the Speedlink Omnivi Core Gaming Mouse is available to download from their site here. Once installed we are met with a black and red themed interface which is well laid out and quite pleasing to the eye, the first page gives us control over all the button assignments. As with many software solutions all the buttons on the mouse can be assigned to just about anything you like, including some preset media/application call functions. This is a high level of customisation and is to be expected in this price range.
Next upon the performance tab, we have the settings for the mouse sensor, as I mentioned in the intro Speedlink are doing themselves a disservice with the description, because the software will let you set the DPI level as low as 100 (not 800 as mentioned in the specification and on the box). The DPI is able to be set in increments of 100, some users may prefer smaller increments to finetune their mice and such capabilities are available at this price, however I feel that 100 increments is fine, this thing does to all the way up to 12000 just like the similarly priced Cougar Revenger. Polling rate is available in four modes 125, 250, 500 and 1000Hz.
The lighting configuration page comes up next, it includes an animated representation of the current mode on the image of the mouse, I find that to be quite useful and a nice touch. With only 7 colours to choose from there isn’t as much colour configuration as some mice, but it does look very good and the individual zones on the mouse are configurable.
The final page on the application is for Macros, the Omnivi has onboard memory so anything set or programmed in the software should remain configured on the mouse when it is connected to other systems. The usual macro recording and import export features are available here.
Now we have seen what everything looks like it’s time to see how the Speedlink Omnivi Core Gaming Mouse performs.
Performance & Testing
I have been using the Speedlink Omnivi Core Gaming Mouse as my main rig mouse for a couple of weeks, in this time I have tweaked the DPI settings to suit my tastes in games and applications with some interesting observations. The build quality of the mouse is pretty solid, there were no creaks or groans from the Omnivi during use. The buttons seem responsive and comfort is very high due to the contoured shape and mouse button concave cradles for the main buttons.
Application usage
So playing around with the default 1000 – 2000 DPI settings in Windows, I had a decent mousing experience, my preferred DPI is however I ended up tweaking the 1000 DPI to 1800 to get a good feel for moving around on the screen, anything above 2000 DPI seems too much to me, but that applied to pretty much any mouse.
Gaming
Getting into some nice shooty FPS games and I was setting the DPI to my usual 600, there was a little bit of an issue there as 600 did not give me the same experience as other mice at the same DPI level, in CS:GO the mouse was behaving more like it was set to 300 or 400 DPI which is too slow for my gaming style, moving 600 to 700 DPI fixed this and I was back at my comfortable level, the sensor being used in this mouse tracks differently to many other mice in it’s range, so if you encounter this be aware that your normal DPI settings may need to be tweaked. I found the tracking to be quite good but not the best, it would be interesting to find out what sensor is included and if any other combination of settings could improve tracking. Comfort was again not a problem this mouse is very well designed ergonomically.
Conclusion
So with competition at volcanic eruption magma levels at it’s price point, the Speedlink Omnivi Core Gaming Mouse has a lot to deal with, mice are a very personal choice, so offering different designs and capabilities enables gamers to find a mouse that suits them perfectly, there will always be someone to tell you which the best mouse is, but unfortunately for them, peripherals are much more of a personal choice and the only real solution is to gather as much information as you can and try some out.
Performance
The unknown sensor in this mouse offers a wide DPI range from 100 to 12000, setting the DPI in increments of 100 in the software you can have six levels saved onto the mouse, which I think is plenty for all but the most fussy of users. Tracking was ok but I have used better from competing products, the platform on the Omnivi could use a tweak and more information made available to potential buyers. The mouse buttons were responsive and didn’t miss a beat, no word on whether the main buttons are of a specific brand either.
Design
Speedlink have done a smashing job designing the Omnivi, the ergonomic shell is one of the most comfortable I have used, as a palm grip style gamer my fingers were held in place allowing me to glide around the pad without any difficulty. The rubbery material is quite smooth and offers a non sticky surface which feels very pleasant to use, it is a very good coating. The metal base plate offers some good weight to the mouse but also makes it bottom heavy when lifting, so some users may not enjoy that. The Speedlink Omnivi Core Gaming Mouse does deserve a design award for the ergonomics.
Value
At the time of writing the Speedlink Omnivi Core Gaming Mouse was available as low as £55, many major outlets have it at over £60 – this pits it against the likes of the Fnatic Clutch G1, Steelseries Rival 300 or even the Zowie series of mice so it could be a tough sell, the biggest attraction of the Omnivi is definitely its ergonomics which are more specialised than much of the competition which relies on tried and tested smooth designs.
Final Thoughts
I really enjoyed my time with the Speedlink Omnivi Core Gaming Mouse, it certainly does perform quite well, the comfort level afforded by the ergonomic design has to be tried. The build quality is excellent, I would just ask that Speedlink take a look at what is going on with the sensor maybe even offering up a Pixart of Avago option which would put the mouse at the top of its game. So as its quite a good mouse the Omnivi grabs a silver award to go with the design award.
