Logitech G13 Advanced Gameboard

Only for the gadget obsessed.

What do you get for the gamer who has everything? We'd guess one of these Gameboards, with its array of ergonomic keys, thumb-stick and handy LCD screen, might do the trick.

The G13's pretty much a glorified keyboard when you get down to it, with 22 configurable keys, four memory presets, two thumb keys and a neat little joystick (there's a gallery here). The LCD screen is much the same as that on previous Logitech keyboards, and can be set up to show game stats (though, that's what most games do already), RSS feeds or CPU and drive status. It's kinda neat watching your the cores on a multi-core system power up and down, but whether it's actually useful or not is a matter for debate.

But the meat and potatoes of the G13 is in the gaming, and the only way to test that is to game. It's a hard life, but we do our best.

We loaded up the killhouse training level of Call of Duty 4, and got to it. The rubber handrest is very comfortable, and the G13 grips the desktop very solidly. It also configures itself for most games you can throw at it, and opening up the G13 utility showed us it had done just that. Our first few run-throughs were problematic, as we learnt the new keymapping, but once we got that down the time to complete dropped by a couple of seconds.

It was a good result in terms of movement, but we also found that it was seriously throwing our aim off; when set up to the left (we're right-handed) of the keyboard, it means your two hands are further apart than normal by about six inches. Consequently, our mousing was compensating to the left! Shifting the keyboard aside fixed this issue.

The G13 works, but whether it works enough is hard to quantify. For one thing, it throws out pretty much any hint systems a game may have, as they're all written for a conventional keyboard, not the G13's keys G1 through G22. It takes up more space, too, and needing to move your keyboard aside for optimum performance is a hassle. When you consider the necessity of text chat in many games, it's a further complication.

Ultimately, despite the improvement in movement, we still prefer the classic WASD set up on a good keyboard over the experience the G13 offers. It may well be perfect for some gamers, but it's not quite perfect enough for us.