New to the market with a very bold design and some very unique features, the Leetgion Hellion RTS gaming mouse looks to take the gaming peripheral world by storm.
Product on Review: Leetgion Hellion
Manufacturer and Sponsor: Leetgion
Street Price $90 r.r.p
Leetgion are a brand new company, one which no doubt you have never heard of. They were formed in 2010 from a very well respected cooling product company, one which all enthusiasts will be familiar with: Thermalright. Always at the forefront of cooling design, Thermalright hope to transfer their massive experience and expand into the gaming peripheral market with the brand name we now know as Leetgion.
The first product out of the blocks and the one which we will be sampling today is the high end, Hellion RTS gaming mouse. This is a very bold move from Leetgion as we have seen some very questionable products from reputable companies in the past who have branched out into the peripheral market only to find themselves wanting when compared to more established competition in this area. To make matters worse, aiming for top spot by releasing a high end product without first gaining a foothold could prove a step too far but credit should certainly be given for having the minerals in doing so because for this mouse to be a success at this level, it will truly have to be something rather special!
As we will see, this mouse does indeed bring a few new features we haven’t seen in a rodent before so you can be assured that the Hellion is unique if nothing else. Let’s here what Legion had to say about their first offering:
Hellion, inspired by the popular StarCraft II unit is fast, accurate and deadly. This professional gaming mouse packs a world first, true mechanical keyboard keyswitch. Use the in mouse memory to keep your custom settings and profiles on the go, and fully driver independent. Together with unmatched quality design and components, the Hellion is the best weapon for owning your opponents.
Specification & Features
Technical Specifications
– Avago 9500 Laser Mouse Sensor (100 to 5000DPI)
– Four Made in Japan Omron Micro Switches.
– Cherry MX Key Switch Attack Button.
– Six Fully Programmable Hotkeys.
– Four Custom Profiles sets.
– Four distinct LED lighting cues, for indication of the current profile.
– Customizable 16.8 million color LED taillight for each profile.
– On The Fly DPI Switching.
– Size: 123 mm / 4.84” (Length) x 73 mm / 2.87” (Width) x 42 mm / 1.65” (Height) Weight: 105 g / 0.23 lbs
System Requirements
– PC with USB port
– Windows 7 / Windows Vista / Windows XP
– Internet connection (for driver installation)
– At least 80MB of hard disk space
– Avago 9500 Laser Mouse Sensor (100 to 5000DPI)
– Four Made in Japan Omron Micro Switches.
– Cherry MX Key Switch Attack Button.
– Six Fully Programmable Hotkeys.
– Four Custom Profiles sets.
– Four distinct LED lighting cues, for indication of the current profile.
– Customizable 16.8 million color LED taillight for each profile.
– On The Fly DPI Switching.
– Size: 123 mm / 4.84” (Length) x 73 mm / 2.87” (Width) x 42 mm / 1.65” (Height) Weight: 105 g / 0.23 lbs
System Requirements
– PC with USB port
– Windows 7 / Windows Vista / Windows XP
– Internet connection (for driver installation)
– At least 80MB of hard disk space
Features
Attack Key
In RTS games, gamers need to use the ‘A’ key to order units to attack. During the heat of the battle, often requiring to switch between the right mouse button and ‘A’ key, while the right hand continually gives orders for production units. With the Hellion’s dedicated Attack button, Hit and Run tactics are easier than ever.
Race Switch
Hellion=Innovation. Often switching back to the desktop for profile changes? Now there is a more intuitive was of profile switching. We already have five programmable presets that can be switched in game on the fly, all it needs is a turn of the wheel! All presets are programmable using the software configurator and saved directly to the mouse hardware allowing you to take your settings with you wherever you go.
Race Lighting
Personalise each profile, choose your colours. Switching profiles trigger fully customizable LED light cues.
DPI Switch
The Hellion has seven stages of DPI sensitivty to choose from ranging from 100DPI to 5000DPI. After one press of the button the taillight will shimmer to indicate the current DPI setting and then return to your profile lighting.
Micro Switches
The HEllion uses Top end Made in Japan Omron micro switches. Providing extended durability and quality feel without the hassle of upgrading the cheap fragile switches of common mice, nothing distrcting you from the game.
USB Cable
A good mouse is a durable mouse. Top grade USB connectors can extend the life of a gaming mouse. The Hellion not only uses top grade material for it’s connector but the connector is also slimmed down to limi interference with other close connectors.
In RTS games, gamers need to use the ‘A’ key to order units to attack. During the heat of the battle, often requiring to switch between the right mouse button and ‘A’ key, while the right hand continually gives orders for production units. With the Hellion’s dedicated Attack button, Hit and Run tactics are easier than ever.
Race Switch
Hellion=Innovation. Often switching back to the desktop for profile changes? Now there is a more intuitive was of profile switching. We already have five programmable presets that can be switched in game on the fly, all it needs is a turn of the wheel! All presets are programmable using the software configurator and saved directly to the mouse hardware allowing you to take your settings with you wherever you go.
Race Lighting
Personalise each profile, choose your colours. Switching profiles trigger fully customizable LED light cues.
DPI Switch
The Hellion has seven stages of DPI sensitivty to choose from ranging from 100DPI to 5000DPI. After one press of the button the taillight will shimmer to indicate the current DPI setting and then return to your profile lighting.
Micro Switches
The HEllion uses Top end Made in Japan Omron micro switches. Providing extended durability and quality feel without the hassle of upgrading the cheap fragile switches of common mice, nothing distrcting you from the game.
USB Cable
A good mouse is a durable mouse. Top grade USB connectors can extend the life of a gaming mouse. The Hellion not only uses top grade material for it’s connector but the connector is also slimmed down to limi interference with other close connectors.
Packaging & First Look
The exterior packaging of the Hellion is very nice indeed. The plush card sleeve is embellished with Leetgion is silver print to one side, a small cutout window displaying the Attack button to the other and raised Hellion lettering to the top.
Removing the outersleeve was a task in itself however once this was done we were greeted with an origami style box that flipped upen to reveal a 3mm perspex case lid which fully encased the Hellion Mouse. Beneath the mouse were a few spare mouse feet and an instruction manual.
It has to be said this is the best packaging I have ever seen with a mouse. Aside from not being able to ‘try before you buy’, the packaging is very classy and certainly gives off an air of ‘Eliteness’.
Removing the perspex lid we finally got our hands on the mouse. I expected it to be quite heavy but in truth it is quite light weighing just 148g.
The mouse is very angular by design save for the palm rest which may seem harsh ergonomically speaking but in practice, the hard angles are situated where your hand/digits wouldn’t rest. The edging towards the rear of the mouse is rounded nicely and very comfortable in the palm.
The ‘business’ side of the mouse features most prominently, the Attack button. Further towards the front you will see an aluminium plate which adds strength and durability to the mouse.
The right hand side of the mouse features the same aluminium plate and aside from the attack button is symmetrical so left handers may also find this mouse suits them (assuming they have no need for the attack button of course).
The front of the mouse is quite unique in that it has the page forwards and backwards buttons towards the edge of the and recessed in the primary left and right mouse buttons. These buttons surprisingly do not interfere with normal usage and could become very useful macro buttons.
The rear of the mouse has the ‘tail light’ which changes colour depending on the profile used. It also serves as a brief indicator to which DPI setting is used as the light flashes a colour when one of the DPI buttons beneath the tail is pushed (raise/lower).
Let’s take a closer look…
Closer Look
Beneath the mouse we find that Leetgion have used a AVAGO 9500 laser which is positioned slightly off-centre. The main feature of the rodents belly though is the profile wheel. This wheel, which is slick in practice, allows the user to swiftly chose any one of five pre-configured profiles, 3 of which are named after the three main races of Starcraft II, Terran, Zerg and Protoss. These are joined by Default and custom settings.
The mouse wheel is rubber in texture and very precise thanks to the ribbed, tactile feedback. There are no left and right clicks with the mouse but it does have a centre click (mouse button 3).
The attack button is a bit of an oddity. Sure it is a unique addition and one which is quality thanks to the Cherry MX blue key switch found behind the button. However, after using the quality Omron D2F-F switchgear of the mouse buttons, the attack button feels positively loose, wobbly and not very precise at all. Being a Cherry MX Blue switch it takes 2mm to actuation which is signified by a tactile ‘click’ and a further 2mm before bottoming out. While this has the benefit of preventing accident actuations, it feels very odd and surprisingly cheap in use when compared to the very sensitive Omron switchgear of the rest of the mouse.
Some people will love it, some people will hate it but one thing they will not like are the occasions it jams/sticks into position because unless you strike the button in the centre (which is difficult given the thumb positioning), the button will stick occasionally.
A cool feature of the mouse is that it changes colour depending on the profile selected. The side lights and Hellion tag all illuminate the same colour depending on the profile chosen. Sadly, only the tail light is customisable to your own preference of colour (of which there are over 16 million choices).
The Laser etching of the branding is very good with no smudging or blurring and the lighting behind, while unobtrusive is bright enough to be clearly seen in daylight.
Finally it is worth mentioning the USB lead and connector. The main connector is slim enough not to interfere with other USB devices that will be plugged in close by and it has the now obligatory gold plating to enhance durability and response. The cable is braided in dense weave to both for protection and anti-tangle properties.
Overall, the mouse is very well crafted and looks positively stunning if you have a preference for angular styling. There are a few misdemeanour’s which let the mouse down which I will cover later in the review but aesthetically at least, Leetgion might have a winner on their hands with the Hellion.
Let’s take a look at the software of the Hellion…
Software
The software suit is downloaded from Leetgion’s support page as it isn’t included in the package. The file size is however only a little over 11mb so nothing to taxing. Once downloaded and installed, the mouse was instantly detected (Windows 7 64bit).
Button Assignment
The front end of the software is fairly basic yet easy to use. Navigation is via the upper most four tabs. Under the button assignment you can configure any or all of the buttons to perform a wide range of functions from launching programs to activating a macro – the choice is yours.
Adjust Performance
To adjust the performance of the mouse you have the luxury of sliders. These sliders however are not very precise and can only be adjusted to one of the predetermined values – there is no middle ground.
Macro Management
The Macro management centre is very easy to create and assign macro settings. IT has all the essential settings available including delay recording and looping.
Light Management
Here we see the lighting configuration. As previously stated, only the tail light can be adjust with the main mouse lights set to the predetermined profiles.
Let’s move on to the performance testing of the Hellion mouse…
Performance Testing
General Performance
As an everyday mouse, the Hellion feels perfectly at home doing normal navigation tasks. Accuracy in Photoshop was very good and I setup a profile simply for this programme, such was the Hellion’s accurate performance, testament to the AVAGO 9500 sensor. It was nice using the ATTACK button to drop the DPI on the fly for doing some very accurate, work and I can see that it could also be used to great effect for those who like to play sniper class in FPS games.
The DPI has a range of 100-5000 however I found anything over 2400 to be a waste as the mouse was so ultra sensitive that the slightest nudge would send the cursor across the screen. Those who have an Eyefinity or Stereo Suround setup with large screens may however find the ultra sensitive nature of high DPI usefull but 99% of the population will likely keep the performance slider and therefore DPI nearer the low end of the DPI settings.
Gaming Performance
First off I loaded up Starcraft II and it was immediately clear that this game defines what the Hellion is all about. The preconfigured macro settings for Attack, SCV, Warp Gate etc were a joy to use one I remembered which action I had assigned to which button and thus made gameplay very natural and fluid. The styling of the mouse is clearly reminiscent of Terran battle armour along with the fonts used which match those in the game. The Attack button that I criticised earlier was actually not too bad in use. It still felt a little clumsy and none precise but it was nonetheless very usefull. I just wish Leetgion had encased the button in a sleeve to make it less wobbly!
For the FPS test I fired up Modern Warfare 3. The Hellion performed very well in this area and I found the Attack button most useful for melee attacks! The additional buttons recessed into hte main mouse buttons were also useful for calling in perks and throwing grenades, saving keyboard controls for the all important straffing.
Durability
Leetgion make some very loud noises about the durability of the mouse and for the most part I would be inclided to agree as the premium switch gear used throughout is excellent and coupled with the cherry MX keyswitch along with stainless steel inserts make the mouse one tough cookie.
I did however come across an issue that left a sour taste in my mouse. Upon closer inspection, I noted that the paintwork had a slight blemish which certainly wasn’t there when I first unpacked the mouse. This raises the point of the finish of the plastics. While the plastics used certainly appear durable, the paintwork clearly is not the best on the market. For it to mark after only a few hours of relaxed gameplay does not bode well for long term use. I will concede there were no signs of fading so this may be just a manufacturing defect on our particular sample. I do however suspect that the paint used on the Hellion is a little too brittle and this resulted in the surface becoming scratched when I flipped the mouse over to turn the profile wheel. What may appear to be a minor fault could quickly deteriorate into something major if the paint were to flake away at a later date. Thankfully, at present there were no signs of this happening but as with all our reviews, we like to mention the bad along with the good and the Hellion has many positives which thankfully outweigh the few negatives.
Time to wrap this review up as I give my closing thoughts in the conclusion…
Conclusion
Leetgion have clearly poured a lot of thought into creating the Hellion. It has some very desirable and unique features which set it apart from the competition. If you are a fan of Starcraft II you will simply adore this mouse and I can wholeheartedly recommend it as for this game it is nigh on perfect. That isn’t of course to say it performs poorly in other games, it doesn’t, it excels at almost everything you can throw at it. The Hellion is perfectly at home doing everyday tasks and it also betters some dedicated FPS games despite this mouse not being directly designed for the genre.
Aesthetically, it is very attractive piece of kit unless you are a fan of minimalism because this mouse has more features than you can shake a stick at. All round top end switchgear, well placed buttons, macro capability, functional lighting, on the fly profile and DPI switching…On the face of it you might well believe this is the all round perfect mouse and you would be right were it not for a few flaws.
First up it has to be said that while the ATTACK button is unique in that it uses a Cherry MX blue keyswitch, it can be cumbersome to use and not quick enough to activate due to the 2mm actuation point. The button itself did not feel very precise either and felt a little too ‘spongy’. In some circumstances this can be an advantage as it prevents accidental actuations but on others it can feel too slow.
I would have liked to have been able to fully customise the lighting of the whole mouse, not just the tail light. There seems to be little point in just customising the tail light as when the mouse is in use you simply will not see it!
Last but by no means least is the questionable paint quality. For a mouse that is heavily touted as being extremely durable, for the finish to scuff with very little use did not give me a great deal of confidence for future durability. I may be being overly critical on this point as it is a very minor blemish on what is overall, clearly a quality product and for a first attempt into the market, a product which deserves more praise than criticism. However, with Thermalright being the parent company I expected nothing short of supreme quality and a product that was nothing short of exceptional.
So perfect the Hellion isn’t. It has it’s drawbacks but for a totally new product by a new company it offers a fresh design which on many points, is better than the competition. Were it not for the paint finish and restrictive customisation it would be a gold contender. A silver award is a fantastic achievement and with our bonus creative award, you can be assured that Leetgion have nothing to be ashamed of, indeed they are to be applauded for what is a very good product.
Pros
+ Class leading packaging
+ Omron Switchgear
+ Easy to use software
+ On-the-fly DPI/Profile Switching
+ Unique button placement
Cons
– Questionable paint durability
– ATTACK button may not suit everyone
– Lighting is not fully customisable
+ Class leading packaging
+ Omron Switchgear
+ Easy to use software
+ On-the-fly DPI/Profile Switching
+ Unique button placement
Cons
– Questionable paint durability
– ATTACK button may not suit everyone
– Lighting is not fully customisable
Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.
