Page 2 - A Closer Look - Hardware and Software
Products from be quiet! have always been exceptionally clean in design, and this is true for the Dark Perk Sym. The completely black exterior blends into any computer setup. 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 Sym is minimal in design or appearance. I think be quiet! could have taken a bigger leap to differentiate their products from others, but for a first attempt, I can understand the conservative approach. 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 to ensure handling marks do not easily show up on the surface. I still would not recommend eating while using your computer, but at least the Dark Perk Sym will hide this fact.
In measurements, the be quiet! Dark Perk Sym is 123mm in length, 66mm in width, and 39mm 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. It 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. From the image above, you can see the tallest part of the mouse is in the middle of the body. This is an ambidextrous mouse, and should feel similar for both left- and right-handed users. This means both sides of the mouse drop in a similar curvature, and the bulbous part of the Dark Perk Sym is aligned with the middle of the mouse. If you prefer a right-handed version, you should look at the Dark Perk Ergo instead. The build quality of this mouse is excellent 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 Sym. 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 can last seventy million clicks. The buttons are nice to press with decent weighting. Its sound is pronounced without being too clicky with a notably lower frequency pitched sound. The scroll wheel is notched, and internally there 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 first powered on or charging, but otherwise it stays off. It also indicates when you cycle through the DPI levels, as you will see later. Although the shape of the body is ambidextrous, the secondary button placement still leans towards right-handed users, as they are only on the left side. Here 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 Sym 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 through 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 Sym. In the middle, there is a small label to indicate the product and any certification labels. You can also see the 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 ingress of foreign materials.
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 Sym 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 on this mouse.
As with many wireless mice, the be quiet! Dark Perk Sym can be used with or without cables. We have a bright orange braided USB Type-C to Type-A cable included. I do appreciate this splash of color on the cable to make it easy to identify from others when it is plugged into your system. The braiding is flexible enough with give throughout. Impressively, 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. I have not seen this from other manufacturers and can appreciate the forethought here. An extra set of bottom skates is included if you need to replace the ones on the bottom of the Dark Perk Sym.
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 Sym, a 400mAh lithium polymer battery keeps the mouse powered. The manufacturer provides estimates of 110 hours of continuous use at 1000Hz polling rate.
To configure the be quiet! Dark Perk Sym, users have two options and both use the IO Center utility. On Windows and Mac 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 site that offers the same configuration and similar layout as the software utility. Through my testing, I found both offer the same functionality in a similar layout, but the dedicated application enables some operating system-specific changes, including mouse sensitivity and click speed. You cannot use both the website and the utility at the same time, as both check if the counterpart is already connected to the mouse. 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 review purposes, we tested both options but only took screenshots of the application.
The front page shows the mouse with three primary pages to modify the Dark Perk mice. The first is called 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 is Product Settings, and it 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 small to read, especially compared to the size of the window. However, this is a minor 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
