I guess this is output as well as input, but this week I got a Razer Blackshark v2 Pro wireless headset and my first impressions are excellent.
I’d been feeling increasingly bothered by the ~200ms audio latency of almost all wireless headphones, both for videogames and also for Zoom calls. This is the only headset I’ve found that actually advertises low-latency in their marketing materials (they claim sub-1ms). After receiving it I did a side-by-side comparison with a wired headset (going up/down in the main menu of a game and listening for the ping noise), and indeed I cannot perceive any latency at all. The audio quality and comfort also seem more than fine.
I’ll definitely use it for videogames from now on. But also, I’m hoping I can make use of it for work meetings, to have an incrementally smoother flow of conversation. The only difficulty there is that I prefer to have work meetings on my phone on a tripod (in order to leave my actual computer screen free at the same time, and because phone cameras are much better than PC ones).
So the tricky thing there is that in order to achieve the low latency, the Blackshark uses a proprietary USB stick, not bluetooth. So my USB-C-fevered brain is hatching a wacky plan of getting a USB-C iPad Mini and plugging in the stick via the same kind of USB-C hub I use for my laptop. 8 inches is probably a better screen size for calls anyway.
I still don’t understand this. Like, these phone cameras should be cheap commodity parts, right? Why can’t someone stick them in a webcam housing, especially now that they’re in a hot market?
CES even announced a bunch of monitors with built-in “high quality” webcams touting 1080p video. Seriously? Is the problem that they don’t think enough computers will be able to process a higher bit-rate video like a 5w phone could?
up to a point I think the driver surface/overhead is relatively poor and most of the phone webcam supply is tightly integrated into android/iOS SoCs and low level APIs where image processing is concerned but it’s still fundamentally silly. I needed to upgrade my ancient 720p webcam from 2010 for professional reasons recently and I wound up using it as an excuse to get a whole new full on camera, which also entailed reading reviews of which DSLRs and whatnot have webcam modes that actually work in terms of battery and application support and resolution when hooked up over USB and mounted on a stand you can easily take them off of. anyway I wouldn’t recommend a single soul buy an X-T3 just for this but I’ve heard most of the others are worse
The best explanation I’ve got is gestures vaguely at supply chain
But yeah, I had bought the highest-reviewed Logitech webcam in 2020 for almost $100 and it’s astonishing how crap it is. It can’t deal, at all, with the moderately low-light condition of my office, everything looks like a grainy mess especially my face. Meanwhile my 4-year-old phone front camera has no problem making the scene look good.
I got a T300 for $100 from some guy on OfferUp. I’ve only been kinda-scammed once on OfferUp, when a young adidas-besandaled man sold me an AppleTV 4k in a dark McDonalds parking lot and it shockingly turned out to be a AppleTV 4, scandalous. Anyways, I got the wheel home and then realized it either doesn’t, or just didn’t, come with a table-clamp (you can buy one from the Thrustmaster website for like $15). So I sat around for a while, staring into the middle distance, thinking of ways to not have to either drill holes in my desk to hard mount it with bolts or buy some kind of huge ‘play’ ‘seat’. Ransacked my sparse Ikea parts bin, matching bolts, sure, acceptable mounting solution: no dice. “What if I just set it on the desk?” worked better than expected but not good enough.
And then, I spotted it. The handmade pants-stretcher I purchased years ago to enlarge my small collection of unsanforized dungarees as age and comfort swelled my frame into the near-130lb range. My suspicions were confirmed when, after disassembling, the bolt threads matched up almost perfectly and I was able to fashion a makeshift clamp.
After fine tuning various settings, I am enjoying the additional power, smoothness, but most of all the noticeably quicker rotation - really changes the drift/powerslide game there, compared to the comparatively slugish cog-drive wheels.
One of the more benign manifestations of the Honor of Kings controller family tradition
my favourite feature of these, aside from the CG promo videos for the models with multiple joysticks showing 3 or more being simultaneously wiggled as if by a claw grip ghost spider, is that the older ones that purported to work on iOS interface with the touchscreen using CarPlay
Funny the Deck is matching the capacitive thumbstick tech this genre of controller pioneered, purportedly for gyro toggle.
Novel/divisive though gyro aiming with a controller is, I kind of think tilt-the-universe-to-steer migrating from bad mobile racing games to a full handheld PC sounds tremendous (disastrous). Viewing angles better be great on that screen if they’re trying to sell real-life Monkey Ball Marble Maze controls for playing CounterStrike.
Maybe it will make for the ultimate Tilt n Tumble emulation device you all have been pining after.
that the number of controllers with back paddles is so small yet the label convention situation is already at this point is a true testament to the power of imagination
