Most of us, europeans, tend to think that Chinese produce only knockoffs of well known brands. What if I told you that they do have their own brands, that sell their own, original products? Feel free to check out this review if you're curious!
 |
| Stylish 1STPLAYER Fire Dancing Gaming Mouse box |
Specs and pricing
You can get this mouse on US Amazon store, although it will ship from China, for free. As I'm writing this review, it's on sale for 20 USD.
Let's look at the specs that 1STPLAYER is claiming, as they look quite good for 20 USD:
- Mouse is symmetrcial, so no worries for lefties;
- DPI up to 4000;
- It has Avago 3050 sensor nad Huano microswitches (only main buttons);
- Braided cable, 180cm (6ft) long;
- 20G acceleration;
- Teflon feet;
- Polling rate - 1000Hz;
- Weights 119g (4.2 ounces);
- Wymiary 10,7 x 6,6 x 3.6 cm (4.7 x 2.6 x 1.4 inches);
- You can get it in white or black;
The most interesting fact about those specs is that there's an Avago 3050 sensor, 4000 DPI and 1000Hz polling rate. I'll spoil a little - Avago 3050 has only 2000 hardware DPI, which means that anything above that is interpolated.
Package
The mouse is packed in a stylish, silver cardboard box. On the face of it you can find the name of the mouse and just barely visible 1STPLAYER spider logo. There is some technical data in chinese and english on the back of the box.
 |
| Simple package |
The mouse is not particularly secured in the box, but it's sized in a way that it won't bounce around in it. Under a small piece of cardboard you can find the braided cable, secured with a velcro strap. There's a small pamphlet containing a few technical details, information that it will work without dedicated drivers and that you can get the dedicated software on 1STPLAYER website.
Build quality and looks
Fire Dancing looks like a solid piece of hardware. There's no gaps to be found anywhere, it doesn't crunch or creak and the plastic material used looks durable. Sadly, 1STPLAYER decided to use very smooth, reflective and rigid plastic on the top surface. As a result, mouse reflects light so much, that you can see my camera's reflection in some of my photos :) Side panels of the mouse are also made with a rigid plastic, but those are matt. On the top of the mouse you can find two main buttons with microswitches, backlit (from the sides) scroll with a button, a switch for DPI/lightning settings and backlit 1STPLAYER logo.
 |
| Fire Dancing out of the box |
As I have already mentioned, the profile of this mouse is symmetrical. Interestingly, you can find an identical, long side button on both sides of it. Cable braiding is very rigid and black/white. It is, by far, the least solid looking part of this mouse, but that stiffness saved the cable from folding too much in the box.
 |
| The underside |
On the underside you will find the manufacturer's logo, model name, serial number and a few additional information in chinese that I can't read. There's also a quality sticker and four large teflon feet. The feet seems stiff, hard and quite smooth.
 |
| The lightning |
After you connect the mouse to USB port in your PC, the mouse will install instantly and will light up in red. If you won't move it for a bit the light will fade out and come back slowly. Color corresponds with DPI settings, but you won't found any color-coding key in the pamphlet or underside of the mouse. By default, it has four different DPI settings, which are color-coded from the lowest to the highest DPI, in order: Red, Blue, Green, Purple. All those colors are very vivid and shows the 1STPLAYER logo perfectly.
Software
I found and downloaded the dedicated software from the manufacturer's website and it installed just fine. Unfortunately it doesn't detect the mouse, showing a simple Windows error prompt. Any attempts at opening the software, accessing it's settings fails. 1STPLAYER employee told me that the driver lacks some files and he will send me a working version via e-mail. Sadly, he had some issues with sending that 3mb file and I didn't get the driver to work. At the time of writing this review I couldn't use the dedicated software for this mouse. If I ever manage to make it work, I'll post an update here.
Tests
I decided to run some standard mouse tests, to verify some of the mouse specs claimed by 1STPLAYER and to assess the actual capabilities of this hardware. Windows mouse acceleration was disabled during those tests.
I've started with checking the data sending rate from the mouse to a PC. I remind you that manufacturer claims 1000Hz, so we should get a 1ms delay.
 |
| Mouse Rate Checker test |
As you can see on the image from Mouse Rate Checker above, Fire Dancing only achieves scores around 500Hz. Scores around 450 and 550Hz are errors due to this method's imperfection. So we've got a 2ms delay. It's a quite good score for a mouse at this price point, but 1STPLAYER claimed the 1000Hz polling rate. I'll be honest on that - my knowledge about this topic is rather basic, but I belive that the manufacturer doesn't tell us the whole truth in this case - sensor is actually sending data at 1000Hz rate, but it sends it to a microcontroller built in the mouse, and then it sends it to a PC with a 500Hz rate. I know that A4Tech had something like that going on with some of their products. If you have any kind of additional insight into this matter - please, share it with me in the comments section :)
Next thing to test out was interpolation - Avago 3050 sensor has hardware sensitivity capped at 2000 DPI, so that means there has to be some kind of interpolation to get up to 4000 DPI with this mouse.
 |
| Vmouse Benchmark interpolation test results |
As 1STPLAYER isn't stating the DPI for each setting, I used the colors that corresponds with each of them. Testing with Vmouse Benchmark shows, that the two highest settings are clearly using interpolation - you can see this as those gaps in 1px wide lines I slowly drew. With higher DPI settings, Fire Dancing just looses pixels.
Następnie przeszedłem do pomiaru DPI, także z użyciem Vmouse Benchmark. Pomiar jest mocno orientacyjny, ze względu na to, że wymaga bardzo precyzyjnego ruchu myszką na odległość ćwierć cala. Umieściłem suwmiarkę w najszerszym miejscu myszki, wyzerowałem, po czym ustawiłem ćwierć cala i przesuwałem myszkę między ramionami suwmiarki.
 |
| DPI measurements - DPI is bolded |
As you can see, the mouse gets up to 5000 DPI. If I performed the test well enough, then Fire Dancing ha some heavy interpolation going on.
Another property we can check is looking for acceleration. The easiest way to test it is to lanuch a FPS game. I chose Far Cry 3, and disabled the in-game mouse acceleration. To run the test: point the gun as low as you can, shoot once to mark the spot. Then move the mouse slowly in straight vertical line to make a full 360* turn. When you get back to the starting point (bullet mark), move the mouse back to the exactly same point on your mousepad, but this time do it fast.
 |
| Acceleration test in Far Cry 3 |
As you can see, Fire Dancing has some light acceleration, as we didn't move back to the same spot, but the manufacturer stated that in data sheet. Results are quite solid for low DPI settings. The higher the DPI goes, results get worse.
Last, easy to run, but hard to interpret, test is jittering test. Basicaly, jittering is an effect that makes your cursor to not move in straight line, even if your mouse goes perfectly in straight line. It looks like a jumpy cursor, going all over the place. The easiest way to test this, is to show your graphic editing software l33t skillz in MS Paint ;) I did this test on all DPI settings.
With higher DPI you can see some jagging in the lines - zigzags, when you try to draw a smooth line. The effect is small, but you can see it with Fire Dancing.
Performance and experiences
As I started to use and game with Fire Dancing, I had some issues with adjusting. I've been using mice with a very particular profile for a few years now, so it took me a while to get used to this one. In this adjustment period I found out that my concerns confirmed - smooth, reflective material used on the top and the one on the sides isn't helping with control at all, and you can see all kinds of finger marks on it after just few minutes of using it.
The surface hasn't scratched yet, but I got this mouse just couple of days ago. I fear that scratched, smooth reflective surface won't look very appealing. On top of that, the hard plastic made my palms hurt during the first few hours I was gaming with Fire Dancing. Two days later it stopped to give me that discomfort, but I didn't had that kind of issues with mice coated with softer plastic or rubber.
I really like the main buttons. For this prie point, they are very pleasant to use, travel distnace is very low, and I like the sensitivity - I didn't have any issues with random clicking or not getting response from those buttons.
Scroll looks solid too - it's smooth but you can feel the scroll distance clearly. The button built in it is comfortable to use, profiled nicely. I did have some random scrolling, but as I get adjusted to the mouse it stopped.
Side buttons are another story entirely. There are two of them one on the left and other on the right side. The size and shape of those buttons are on the plus size for sure - they're wide and really long so you shouldn't have any issues with reaching them. Even I don't have trouble reaching them with my short fingers ;) The issue I had though is that they have really low key travel distance and low actuation force, so it's easy to just push them randomly. On top of that, when you browse the Interwebz, you usually can use two side buttons as Back & Forward keys. The one in the front is usually a Forward button, and the one close to the back is Back. In Fire Dancing the left button is Forward and the right one - Back. It makes it hard to use it at first, as it's counter-intuitive.
Teflon feet in Fire Dancing seems to have a lot of friction on my QcK mat, but that's because of the mat itself and large feet size on the 1STPLAYER mouse. They are decent on wooden table.
Summary
1STPLAYER Fire Dancing Gaming Mouse is a piece of hardware, that falls into low-mid end category, and should be rated as such.
Pros:
+ Durability of used materials and the final product;
+ Vivid lightining colors;
+ It has side buttons on both sides for righ and lefthanded gamers;
+ Quite good parameters-to-price ratio;
+ Solid main buttons and scroll;
+ It's a new and not that well known brand in europe, which might be an advantage for someone who likes uniqe hardware;
Cons:
- Side buttons are too easy to push randomly;
- Can't run the dedicated sotware, no access to additional options (such as lightning and DPI settings);
- Smooth, hard and reflective surface on the top;
Due to some understatements in specs of the mouse (polling rate, DPI), not working software and not-so-comfortable sie buttons, I can give this mouse score of 3+/5. If I can make the software to work and it has all the options gamers are used to have, I could easily see this as 4/5, but for now, I can't rate it higher.
You also should pay attention to the pricing of this mouse. Especially if you don't earn your money in USD/GBP/EUR. I wouldn't pay more than 20 bucks for this mouse, including shipping (which is currently free - big kudos to 1STPLAYER for that!). If the mouse goes for 30 USD, you should look at other offers.
Mouse used in this review was bought during sale AND with a discount code from 1STPLAYER.
No comments:
Post a Comment