experiences with orbweaver chroma and naga trinity after switching from lg products

hi all,

so as logitech discontinued the g13 and mine is failing, as well as me trying to avoid clogging my gaming machine with driver suites, i decided to take the full plunge to replace my g13 and prometheus with the orbweaver chroma and naga trinity.

i had used razer mice in the past but switched to lg as the infamous left click button issue limited the lifetime of 2 of my mice to around 6 months.

the reviews i watched beforehand were favorable so i had high hopes of actually making an upgrade instead of only a sidegrade.

be aware this is not a full flegded review but first impressions that might change after getting used to the gear.

razer naga trinity

• summary: great concept and execution with a few major and minor issues. the exchangable sidepads are technically really well executed with the magnetic snap-on.
  
  
• the mouse is too heavy, especially for use with fps games where permanent lifting and replacement occurs. it is in fact so heavy, that with the mmo sidepad it is nearly impossible to lift the mouse without pressing the center thumb button.
  
  
• the pinky finger could use a more curved rest to support lifting. the mouse is shaped in a way that the pinky only has friction supporting lifting the mouse, not the physical shape of the mouse. curving the rest so that the pinky gets physical support would go a long way in alleviating the weight issue.
  
  
• the hindmost 3 thumb buttons on the mmo pad are a waste imo. i doubt any player can click those in a tense gaming situation in a quick and secure way. 9 buttons in 3 rows should be sufficient.
  
  
• the moba sidepad would have done better with 8 instead of 7 buttons on that ring so that 4 of those are cleary located top, bottom, front and back and the other 4 in between. aiming your already clumsy thumb at this asymmetrical distribution of 7 buttons is not really intuitive.
  
  

orbweaver chroma

• summary: great idea as well with sadly more major issues leaving me in serious lack of keys and no comfortable setup for my hands (im 6'6" with normal sized hands)
  
  
• top row of keys is useless to me. cant reach them safely in a tense gaming situation. only usable for low priority functions you dont need in the heat of battle. a gamepad should have buttons that fulfill the following criteria:
  
  
  
  
  
  • prio1: reachable with wrist and other fingers staying in position. only 1 finger moved
    
    
  • prio2: reachable with other fingers staying in position. wrist lifted and 1 finger moved towards key while other fingers remain anchored in their resting position
    
    
  • prio3: (optional and already mostly useless in tense situations) reachable with wrist staying in position but all fingers need to be lifted
    
    
  • never do keys where wrist and all fingers need to be lifted from their resting positions to reach them
    
    
  
  
  
• instead of adding that useless top row of keys an extra key to the right or left in each of the other rows would have been a better option. in the primary (resting) key row another additinional key to the left would have been perfect. i will add a little ms paint mockup of what i am talking about.
  
  
• the top of the thumb stick does not provide enough grip. which is quite crucial when you use the stick for movement like me.
  
  
• the thumb stick should ideally be placed where currently the thumb button above it is or that entire section for the thumb should be made rotateable left/right to adjust to your hand. i did not find any comfortable position for my thumb moving the different parts around. i always need to stretch the thumb to far out sideways.
  
  
• the thumb stick should be exchanged/exchangable for a controller-style analog thumbstick. maybe my issue with the weird feel for this could be alleviated by configurable placement of the thumb stick, but the analog option would be great.
  
  
• the product quality really feels great (lets see how that wrist rubber performs in the long run) and all the moving parts, hardware quality and keys should have put it in the pole position but the weird button layout and thumb stick position limit its use extremely.
  
  

synapse software

• i need to install TWO versions of the software simultaneously??? synapse 2 doesnt support the trinity and synapse 3 doesnt support the orbweaver. i went from lg gaming software with a memory footprint of 10mb in the background to TWO installed software suites with a background memory footprint of 260mb... you have to be kidding me.
  
  
• i am missing a function in synapse 2 to copy only a keymap instead of an entire profile.
  
  

so all in all and in theory those products should easily take the cake over their lg counterparts but the mentioned issues actually put them behind in usability, especially for the orbweaver. the weight and pinky issue for the trinity should be easily solvable.

its a shame that for the orbweaver being such a niche product and existing unchanged for so long the probability for changes is quite low. i do not have the space in my gaming setup to use a full sized keyboard and am used to movement via thumbstick now, so i am a bit frustrated with the lack of options.

in mobas the orbweaver is vastly superior to a regular keyboard as you can use the thumb stick to move your vision and never have to waste mouse movement on that. you even get to move your character while moving vision in different directions simultaneously.

my 2 cents. cheers, bela



my orbweaver v2 mockup. quick and dirty paint-job that needs work, but you get the idea: