Sharkoon DarkGlider Mouse and Mousepad

Introduction

Sharkoon has been selling cases and accessories for a while in Asia, but they’re now looking to sell their products in the west. Today we’ll be taking a look at a couple of their top end products, the DarkGlider mouse and mousepad.

Packaging and A Closer Look

First up we’ll have a look at the DarkGlider mouse. The packaging employs no subtle tricks—here is a mouse, it is for gaming, it has a 6000 dpi laser sensor. When you open the front flap, you see the mouse itself behind a protective plastic cover, as well as a quick rundown of the features. The back gives us a slightly longer feature list, in ten languages, along with a couple of minuscule screenshots of the driver software in action.

Stripping away the packaging, we’re left with the mouse itself, as well as a driver/manual CD, a carry bag, and a tin containing a set of weights and replacement feet. The feet are packed in an odd arrangement, but there are two sets of five feet present here, one ceramic like the ones on the mouse itself, and one set of Teflon feet, for those who prefer that feel. The weights are pretty self-explanatory; if you feel the mouse is too light, use the weights to add heft to it.

The mouse itself has a fairly wide body, with the widest point being about where my thumb and pinky finger naturally fall when holding onto the mouse in claw-grip. I couldn’t really find a comfortable way to palm-grip this mouse, but the claw-grip works surprisingly well. The main left and right buttons flank a tiltable scroll wheel, a pair of DPI select buttons, and a button far down on the mouse whose purpose was unclear. The window near the front left houses a LCD display which shows the current DPI setting of the mouse—handy if you forgot what setting you were on. Near the rear of the mouse, a translucent Sharkoon logo sits, obviously meant to be lit up. More on this later.

The bottom of the mouse is fairly standard, with the laser sensor more or less dead center and the ceramic feet circling the edges. That little latch at the bottom-rear holds onto the weight tray, which was surprisingly difficult to remove. The weights themselves are very light, and I couldn’t tell any practical difference in feel between the mouse sans weights and the mouse fully loaded with the heaviest ones provided.

Looking at the mouse side-on, the profile and button placement make it immediately obvious that this mouse was meant for claw grip, and only claw grip. The sides are coated in matte rubber that provides just enough grip to keep your fingers from sliding all over the place…at first. Any amount of sweat will quickly render these surfaces slick, however. The back and forward buttons, while easy enough to find by feel, are stiff enough that pressing them could jostle your aim.

Next up, let’s have a look at the DarkGlider pad. The packaging is little more than a decorated envelope, with a cut-out providing a little tactile preview of the pad’s surface. Oddly enough, that little bit is actually a separate swatch of fabric glued to the inside front of the envelope, the pad itself is enclosed between a pair of plastic sheets inside.

The pad itself, which measures roughly 14"x10", is a plain affair, with a microfiber cloth front, close-stitched edging, and a grippy rubber back. The surface is extremely smooth, pairing well with the ceramic feet of the mouse. The edging, which looks to be woven of a slightly coarser fabric than the surface, is flush with the pad’s surface. The rubber backing works about as well as you’d expect it to, keeping the pad solidly in place.

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