Woot presented me with quite the conundrum last week, a Belkin n52te SpeedPad for 30 bucks. It seemed like a good idea even given me already owning a n52, but it never hurts to give the somewhat new a try.

I must admit, this thing is pretty sleek. The major external differences between the n52 and the n52te is the keys. The older model had more keyboard-like keys, large and made a definite clicking noise as you pressed them. The new te has smaller, thin, more chiclet-style keys that still make noise, but for me who is used to having his fingers resting higher, it makes a slight difference in how I hold it. The d-pad includes a removable circle pad which is kinda cool as my thumb can grip on that to move rather than using the pad itself, might save a little wear. The other major change is the handrest, it has a softer, more matte finish compared to the older unit’s plastic shell handrest. I imagine I will destroy it given time though, we’ll see how it holds up.

Software-wise, they made some significant changes between the two. The loadout manager and editor are now part of the same piece of software, loadable from the system tray. The default profile cannot be renamed, so it’s easier to create a new profile and save it before starting. It doesn’t appear any of the older profiles can be used directly in the new editor, I imagine there might be a conversion or such out there for it, dunno yet. Most of my profiles are simple FPS profiles, Borderlands, TF2, L4D2, Elite Force, and Duke Nukem 3D, so inputting them back in doesn’t take too long. I did notice you cannot give the keys you assign in the editor names like in the old one, so that’s kind of a let down, but not a showstopper.

Finally I took it for a spin a little in Borderlands. The one major thing I am noticing is that diagonal movement is not registering correctly. For example, on my old n52 and the regular keyboard, if I press W+A or W+D I will move forward, and strafing right or left at the same time. The same applies to S+A and S+D for moving backwards and strafing right or left. On my old n52, the D-Pad is mapped to WASD and no configuration done for the diagonals, and I had no problem with this. In the n52te, with the same configuration, when I go to perform a diagonal movement, my character just stops. I’m not sure if it needs to be configured, or if it is not registering two directions at once, I’m not sure yet. That so far is kind of the showstopper, as I do a lot of movement in games like Borderlands and if I was to play WoW, even using the mouse to rotate my character and view, still would be a problem if my movement suddenly stopped. Edit: Thanks to this thread I found that apparently in the n52te, the software seems to try to make sense of those keymaps and since I defined the directional pads with WASD keys and not the axis, it would not register the diagonals without macros defining the use of those keys. Surprisingly enough however, simply disabling the maps in the editor for the diagonals, resolves the problem, I am able to freely move about now in Borderlands. My guess is that on the old n52, the software simply ignored those keys unless explicitly defined.

All in all, looks like a pretty sleek controller, and hopefully it works out. I intend to continue using my n52, likely either at work or elsewhere. 5 years and still running well.