By Nelson Schneider - 03/24/13 at 02:34 PM CT
Back before I decided that a good motion controller was the solution for the ailment of PC game interfaces designed around archaic keyboard and mouse controls, I experimented in taking the advice given by the “Glorious” PC Gaming Master Race: Instead of trying to screw around with a controller, what I needed was to find a good mouse.
But I just couldn’t take the Master Race’s advice to its natural conclusion. I was itching to play a new Indie game I had purchased, “Legend of Grimrock,” but was unable to find a happy solution. My Gyration Airmouse and wireless keyboard failed to provide a positive gaming experience, as the Airmouse didn’t provide the required precision whilst wielded in the air, and the keyboard was too big (despite being a mini-keyboard) and kept falling off my lap. I had yet to discover the joys of Xpadder, and the game in question didn’t support an Xbox 360 controller natively. The solution to my dilemma, I figured, was to find a gaming-specific mouse that came paired with a Nintendo-Nunchuck-style half-controller, thus allowing me to work the game’s cursor using a real mouse on a lapdesk, while drastically shrinking and simplifying the keyboard functions into a handheld ‘chuck.
Looking around the Internet, I saw two companies that provided the solution I was looking for: SplitFish and Tuact. Unfortunately, both companies offered their products at obscene prices, with their flagship models each pushing $100. Fortunately for me, someone was selling a ‘used, like new’ Aimon Elite for $60. I bought it.
Setting up the Aimon Elite was exactly the type of experience I traditionally expected of PC gaming peripherals. It didn’t come with any kind of driver and was engineered in such a way that Windows’ default drivers didn’t work correctly with it. Thus the first step in setting up the Aimon Elite was to download the drivers from Tuact’s Engrish-language website. On top of drivers, the Aimon line of gaming peripherals requires an extra piece of setup software that must be downloaded separately, along with PDF manuals for both the drivers and the setup software. The pile of icons on my desktop by the time I was ready to get started was disturbing.
Installing the Aimon drivers was a pain, as the installer needs the Aimon USB dongle to be unplugged to start, but midway through the process asks for the dongle to be plugged in while holding the ‘bind’ button, which is both a vague description (the bind button is not labeled as such) and a feat of dexterity to pull off (the bind button is tiny, recessed, and difficult to hold down while plugging in a USB device). After installing the driver, the Aimon Elite still won’t do anything besides act as a basic mouse without running the setup software. This program also requires the Aimon Elite to be in ‘bind’ mode as it saves keymapping layouts and other configurables like mouse sensitivity directly to the hardware. While it is neat that it’s possible to save configurations to the hardware, it’s much more impractical than simply saving the configuration as a text file somewhere on the computer’s hard drive. Why? Well, for one thing, switching the dongle to ‘bind’ mode in order to change the configuration disables the Aimon hardware. If the Aimon Elite is your PC’s only mouse, good luck changing its configuration! Also having to unplug and replug the dongle during configuration is nothing but an annoyance. What if the dongle is plugged into a rear USB port? Have fun dragging the PC case around in order to reach it (and also have fun holding the bind button while fumbling blindly behind the PC case).
After getting the user-unfriendly device installed and configured, I finally got to test it out in-game. I was not impressed. First, the Aimon Elite’s mouse, despite having a massively high 1750 dpi sensitivity, seems unresponsive and imprecise at times, while at other times it makes the mouse cursor jitter. I frequently encountered situations where click-holding became impossible, or where single-clicking resulted in a double click, possibly due to the Aimon Elite accidentally activating its useless ‘turbo’ mode. Second, the Aimon Elite’s ‘chuck is an ergonomic disaster, making it very uncomfortable to press the d-buttons. In addition to its blocky form-factor, the Aimon Elite ‘chuck has a noticeable input lag between when a button is actually pressed and when the response appears on-screen. I have not noticed a similar lag when using a wireless keyboard or when using an Xbox 360 controller setup with the same keymapping configuration I was using on the Aimon, so it’s definitely a hardware problem.
It seems that the Aimon Elite’s hardware is nothing but problematic. In addition to the responsiveness and lag issues, which are no doubt caused by the fact that ANYTHING can cause wireless interference with the Aimon dongle, oftentimes rendering the thing completely unresponsive until the interfering device is turned off, the thing has build quality issues as well. After the Aimon Elite utterly failed me as a game controller, I relegated the mouse portion to serve as a wireless mouse for doing work on my laptop (since wired mice are an annoyance when actually working on your lap, and I passionately hate built-in trackpads). It served adequately, as the precision issues that affected my gaming didn’t really affect my ability to click data fields and hyperlinks. Of course, one day my cat decided to help me work, as cats are prone to do, by sitting on my lap… with the laptop. As his big, furry butt landed on me, I heard a plasticky rattle. I looked down to discover that the mere touch of a cat ass caused the Aimon dongle’s plastic case to fall off, leaving a bare USB circuit board sticking out of my laptop. I was able to reassemble the casing, and there appeared to be no damage to the Aimon Elite’s performance, but that is some incredible build quality right there! Finally, the Aimon Elite eats AA batteries like candy. I was lucky to get two weeks out of a battery. Since replacing the Aimon Elite with a Microsoft wireless touch mouse, I have been shocked at how poor the Aimon’s battery life was in comparison, as I’ve been using the same batteries in my touch mouse for 5 months with no indication that I’ll need to replace them anytime soon.
In sum, the Aimon Elite is a cheaply-built Chinese piece of junk that definitely isn’t worth the outrageous retail price, and isn’t even worth the significantly discounted prices it can often be found for on Amazon Marketplace. The build quality is poor, the wireless is ridiculously prone to interference, the battery life is abysmal, the supporting software is cumbersome and awkward to use, and the thing doesn’t even provide a good experience when playing games. Avoid this disaster of a controller like the plague.
Comments
Chris Kavan - wrote on 03/27/13 at 11:45 AM CT
Yikes - I think of the poor suckers er... people who bought this full price and can only picture a large Chinese man laughing manically while rolling in pile of money Scrooge McDuck-style.
