Product Description

Designed for First/Third Person Shooter and Action games, the FANG provides a better gaming experience, advanced layout and built-in technology advantages. It comes loaded with a selection of mod files for over 70 of today's hottest games.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12116 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Ideazon
• Released on: 2006-05-26
• Platform: Windows XP
• Dimensions: 1.10 pounds

Features

• USB
• Butterfly Movement Keys - Enlarged and sloped "butterfly" movement keys that keep fingers comfortable and accurate!
• Labelled Command Keys - Commonly used command keys for FPS/Action games are labeled for faster and better performance in game.
• Dome Shaped Keys - Unique domed action keys give gamers the responsive feel that they demand.
• Control Zones - Players can easily access more critical commands with the one hand control zone.

Manufacturer's Description
Fang was initially developed as a tactical military training device for the U.S. Armed Forces and is now available to 'civilian' gamers who demand only the best in high-performance precision gaming tools.

Fang is a PC gamepad engineered to enhance and enrich game command action for both novice and extreme gamers.

Fang's strategically positioned keys and ergonomic contour combine to maximize performance and comfort for today's hottest FPS games.

Customer Reviews

Excellent piece of kit
This is definitely for anyone that uses the PC for games. It sells itself as a WASD replacement and addresses the harsh reality that WASD can cause serious left hand RSI. The Keys are positioned to reflect hand posture rather than the square grid of a keyboard and the configuration tool leaves nothing to the imagination - in 10 minutes I had a complete setup for lord of the rings online. My only gripe is that they are slow to release official key layouts (None for LOTRO yet) but it is cancelled out by the ease of complete customisation. The extra bonus is that you can configure your keys to avoid hand strain and combined with a professional mouse you can game have a serious weekend of gaming without having to worry about hand strain.

Fang gaming pad
Excellent item for any gamer who spends any time playing PC games and suffers RSI or cramps using conventional keyboards.

The pad is an excellent design with all the keys easy to reach and not spaced too far across the keyboard. The software is intuative and easy to configuer; also it now works with Windows Vista (dowload here: www.ideazon.com/uk/downloads/drivers.asp?productid=zengine&os=vista®ion=uk).

It is not too large and does not have an excessive footprint also the 6foot USB lead is more than adequate.

Good, but just falls short of being great
I bought the Zboard Fang mainly for Battlefield 2142, thinking I might also use it for MMORPGs as well. It's great for FPS games - you have all the buttons you need in easy reach and it's more comfortable than using WASD, so you don't even need your keyboard at hand. I don't find it as satisfying for MMORPGs though, mainly because I still need to use the keyboard to type chat (whereas in FPSs I use voice more). Also a keyboard obviously has a lot more keys than the Fang (although you can map Ctrl, Alt, Shift etc to some Fang keys to use in combination with other keys), and MMOs tend to need lots - only having 11 numbered keys is a drawback for the popular MMOs that usually have 12 hotkeys to a tray.

The Fang is about 9 inches long and 6 inches wide, so not really intended for those with small hands or short fingers. Personally I would have preferred it if the numbered buttons were closer together and nearer the movement buttons to reduce finger-travel times a smidgen. Also some of the buttons do have a lot of travel (they could have done with being lower to the surface of the board), but the buttons are nicely sprung even if they don't click as such.

The key-mapping software is pretty good. Every button on the Fang can be manually customised to whatever keypress or combination of keypresses you want. The interface does have some graphical glitches when editing, but nothing serious for how infrequently you'll need to use it. It also lets you print out a 1 page sheet showing you what each button on the Fang is set for (helpful when learning a new game or a new Fang set-up for an existing game, until you get used to it).

I was impressed that they released a Tabula Rasa keymap while I was still in the closed beta test for it - so it looks like the Fang will be well supported. Even if they dropped support tomorrow it wouldn't matter because customising the Fang for a game is fast and easy - most MMOs and FPS games use similar keymaps anyway, so you can always customise a keymap from a similar game if one of yours isn't supported (yet). Selecting a keymap between/before games is even faster and easier (20secs, tops) - you just have to remember to do it, or you might end up playing Battlefield 2142 with your World of Warcraft keymap ;) I'm only really using the Fang for BF2142 atm, so I just leave it set to that.

So it's pretty good on the whole. Highly recommended if you sometimes get cramps in your WASD hand (as I occasionally did) or want a slight reactionary edge in FPS games (who doesn't?!), but otherwise you can probably live without it.