Page 2 - A Closer Look - Hardware and Software
I have noticed be quiet! products have always been very conservative in design and lean towards a less aggressive or attention-grabbing appearance. This can be said of their Dark Perk Ergo as well. The completely black exterior blends into any desk surface. The lack of branding is also notable, as is the lack of RGB LED lighting. In fact, the only company marking on the top is very subtly printed on the right mouse button. Otherwise, the be quiet! Dark Perk Ergo is as clean as they come. I might have liked seeing a splash of color to make this stand out, but it is clear be quiet! is playing it safe. The top is solid and does not have any perforations in it, despite this being a light mouse. The surface is coated with a rubber-like feel to make the mouse easy to hold onto. Be quiet! has also done an excellent job in ensuring handling marks do not easily show up on the surface, even when you have greasier fingers than normal. I still would not recommend eating while using your computer but at least the Dark Perk Ergo will hide this fact.
In measurements, the be quiet! Dark Perk Ergo is 120mm in length, 66mm in width, and 40mm in maximum height. This is similar in size to other mice I have tested, such as the Epomaker Carbon X or the Cooler Master MM712. However, the Dark Perk Ergo is larger in all dimensions compared to these previous two mice. From the image above, you can see the tallest part of the mouse is in the middle of the body. Its curve is consistent to fit into the user's hand effortlessly. This is classified as an ultra-light mouse and at 55g, the mouse is closer in weight to the 58g MM712 than the 45g Carbon X. This small number is due to the mostly hollow interior and porous bottom frame, as you will see shortly. The weight is balanced towards the middle of the mouse, and it lines up with the sensor placement. The shape of the Dark Perk Ergo is not ambidextrous and curves slightly more to the left to fit right-handed users. This means the right side of the mouse drops down more quickly while the left side has a pronounced rounded edge to rest your thumb. If you want an ambidextrous version, you should look at the be quiet! Dark Perk Sym instead. Build quality of the Dark Perk Ergo is good with little to no flex in the body.
From this left perspective, you can see nearly all the buttons on the be quiet! Dark Perk Ergo. The primary left and right buttons are separated from each other and the rest of the body. Each of them is sloped towards the middle to ensure the user's fingers rest in the middle of the buttons. Underneath, we have optical Omron D2FP-FN2 switches. According to the manufacturer, these switches are meant to endure 70M operations. The buttons feel good to press with a decent weighting. Its sound is also nice and pronounced, with a notably lower frequency pitched sound to make each click less clicky. The scroll wheel is notched and internally it is a TTC Yellow encoder, which is known for its tactile feel. Down the top, there is a slim slit for a multi-color LED to show charge and power status. It only turns on when the mouse is powered on or charging, but otherwise it stays off. It also changes colors when you cycle the DPI, as you will see later. On the side, we have standard forward and back buttons. These feel nice to press with a good amount of travel and no spongy bottoming out. As for placement, they are located right above my thumb and are easy to access while remaining out of the way of accidental presses.
The other inputs of the be quiet! Dark Perk Ergo are found on the bottom of the mouse alongside the optical sensor. This includes a small button for changing DPI settings on the fly. When you press it, the LED light on the top will change colors and you can cycle between five saved sensitivity settings. These are configured out of the box but can be changed in the software utility, as you will see shortly. Underneath, there is a switch to power on or off your mouse. When it operates in wired mode, you can leave this off. At the front, there is a USB Type-C input for wired operation and charging the Dark Perk Ergo. In the middle, there is a small label to indicate the product and any certification labels. You can also see the two large cutouts at the bottom as part of a weight-cutting measure. Unfortunately, this does mean dust and debris can enter the mouse from the bottom, so be careful to clean your mouse surface to avoid any ingress.
Other aspects on the bottom include two primary areas of PTFE feet to keep the mouse gliding on any surface. An additional Teflon ring around the sensor is also here to prevent the cutout from catching on the surface. The sensor in the middle is the PixArt PAW3950, a high-end sensor for wireless mice. This sensor was also found on the Epomaker Carbon X and the Turtle Beach Burst II Pro. The Dark Perk Ergo offers a sensitivity range of 100 to 32000DPI in 50DPI increments. The sensor promises 750 inches per second tracking and acceleration of up to 50G. 1000Hz polling rate is standard, but you can increase this to 2000, 4000, and 8000Hz, or decrease it down to 500, 250, or 125Hz. Otherwise, there is no sensor or lens rattle with the Dark Perk Ergo.
As with many wireless mice, the be quiet! Dark Perk Ergo can be used with or without cables. As such, we have a bright orange braided USB Type-C to Type-A cable included. I do appreciate this splash of color that makes it easy to identify the cable when it is plugged into the back of your desktop. The braiding is flexible enough with give throughout. Thankfully, the USB Type-C connector is angled in a way that the plug and wire near the plug does not catch your surface and drag about. An extra set of two skates and a ring is included if you need to replace the ones on the bottom of the Dark Perk Ergo.
The last included accessory is the USB dongle for connection over the 2.4GHz frequency. It is small but be quiet! also includes a USB Type-A to Type-C adapter to bring the wireless dongle closer to the mouse. Inside the Dark Perk Ergo, a 400mAh lithium polymer battery keeps the mouse powered. The manufacturer provides estimates of 110hours of continuous use at 1000Hz polling rate.
To configure the be quiet! Dark Perk Ergo users have two options and both use the IO Center utility. On Windows and Macintosh computers, users can download the utility from the manufacturer's website. IO Center is available as a 75MB compressed installer executable. However, if you do not want to do this and have a Chromium-based browser, you can also go to a specific website that offers the same configuration and similar layout as the software utility. Through my testing, I found both to be similar and offer the same functionality, but the dedicated application does allow for some Windows-specific setting changes such as mouse sensitivity or click speed. You also cannot use both at the same time, as the website utility checks if something is running locally first. I really like this way of operating as be quiet! ensures users can make all the changes they need without needing to install something locally. For testing purposes, we proceeded to use the utility.
There are three different pages for modifying the Dark Perk Ergo. The first is marked as Key Binding, where users can change what each key action does, other than the primary left-click button. You can record macros to execute on the buttons as well. The second page is marked DPI, and users can change the five different sensitivity settings. You can also disable or enable levels to reduce the number of distinct levels. As mentioned previously, this range is between 100 to 32000 DPI. However, you cannot change the color for each DPI setting.
The third and final page called Product Settings includes the rest of the mouse configuration changes. This is where you update the firmware of the dongle and the mouse. You can also change the polling rate, enable power saving mode, change sensor sensitivity, lift-off distance, enable angle snapping, ripple control, motion sync, modify click speed, button response time, and change the different soft and deep sleep times. Most of these are self-explanatory, but I will explain some. Ripple control is a form of tracking prediction to make tracking more stable, predictable, and reduce jitter. Motion sync makes tracking smoother by aligning sensor tracking and polling rate, which may improve consistency but also increase latency. Finally, you can save all your settings in profiles. These can be configured to change based on applications launching.
Overall, IO Center is easy to use with intuitive menus. My only suggestion would be for them to make better use of blank space, as some of the words on the menu are a bit difficult to read compared to the size of the window. However, this is a small nitpick and the application works as expected.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look - Hardware and Software
3. Subjective Performance Tests
4. Conclusion
