Page 2 - A Closer Look - Hardware and Software
If you go to GAMDIAS website and check the mice section, you will notice there are five mice named after Zeus. Today’s review unit is called Zeus P1 RGB Optical, and it features the highest price among all its siblings. As we know, Zeus is the god of all gods in Greek mythology, so this one can be considered as the most expensive god of all gods, haha. The color of the mouse is black. In my personal opinion, black is the best color if you want to emphasize your shining RGB lighting effects. Yes, this time we have RGB, and we have two RGB strips. From the above picture, we can only see the top level of the lighting effects, which is surrounding the top side of the mouse. The second level of its RGB lighting is around the edge of the bottom of the mouse, and a little slope is there to help the lower level RGB to be more observable. In this photo, you can only see a little bit of the lower level RGB at the back of the mouse. Later, we will see what the two level RGB looks like when plugged in. The GAMDIAS company logo is located at the lower center of the mouse. Right now, the logo is not illuminated. It will shine when the mouse is plugged in.
The GAMDIAS Zeus P1 measures in at 127.26 mm in length, 72.45 mm in width, and 40.85 mm in height. The size is big enough to be considered as a large palm grip mouse. In fact, the ergonomic design of the GAMDIAX Zeus P1 provides pretty good support to the palm resting on the back of the mouse. The above photo shows the mouse is not symmetric, that is, on the right side there is a little bulge for the palm to rest on. The bulge of the mouse does not seem to be very big. This may cast doubt on the palm supporting performance. I will discuss the actual user experience of the GAMDIAS Zeus P1 later, and see if the mouse can provide enough support to user's hand or not. The mouse looks very elegant in my opinion though. Due to the non-symmetrical design, this product obviously targets right handed users. Left handed users may need to find another mouse to buy, haha.
As a wired mouse, the channel that allows the mouse and the computer to talk to each other is the USB cable. The GAMDIAS Zeus P1 is equipped with a braided cable. The cable is lightweight and soft, therefore I do not feel any extra dragging force caused by the wire. The mouse comes with a 1.8m cable, but if you want to keep out of trouble when you pull the mouse out of your backpack, a Velcro strap is present to keep you organized. The USB connector of the GAMDIAS Zeus P1 is another highlight of the whole deal. There are two nice features about the USB connector. First, the handle section of the USB connector has the resemblance of a spearhead. Second, the USB connector is gold plated. The spearhead design is suitable for a gaming mouse, since gaming is quite like fighting a war. The gold plated connector does not help you practically, but it looks really good. The god of all gods deserves something gold, after all.
The GAMDIAS Zeus P1 features high quality switches rated for twenty million clicks each. Three of the most important buttons of the mouse -- the left click button, right click button, and scroll wheel -- are also well designed on the GAMDIAS Zeus P1 in terms of texture and layout. The left and right buttons have the same gritty texture as the rest of body. This feature actually makes sense, since it maintains the consistency of the mouse in terms of color and texture. In the middle of the two buttons is the half-translucent rubber scroll wheel surrounded with a black rubber ring, and a pair of small buttons with arrows underneath the scroll wheel. The buttons with arrows are used to change its sensitivity. Each time the DPI is changed, the backlight of the GAMDIAS company logo will also change in color. Behind the two buttons with arrows, there is a small button, which is by default for DPI cycling, but you can program it to whatever you want it to do, thanks to the Hera software program.
The double level LED strips are RGB that can be emit 16.8 million different colors. I would like to say by having 16.8 million choices of colors, you will be able to have a different LED setting for 46,207 years if you change the setting once a day. My point is, it is more than enough to allow you to have your favorite color settings, haha. The double level RGB is definitely one of the major highlights of this mouse. With the help of Hera, the lighting effects can be set as "Breathing", "Neon", "Circular Wave", "Responsive Fade in", or "Parallel Wave" mode. Of course, you can also define different colors for each mode, which makes it really fancy in terms of customization ability. By default, those two buttons on the left side of the mouse are for forward and backward navigation, which should not come as a surprise to you. The size of the navigation buttons is pretty big. This feature allows the user to easily locate those buttons. Underneath the navigation buttons, the gripping areas are featured with a rubber texture. Without using the real rubber for grips, it is safe to say that the whole mouse is made out of plastic, which is great for weight reduction.
Flipping over the mouse, you will see another nice feature to it: Three pieces of large Teflon feet. The Teflon feet can significantly minimize the friction between contacting surfaces, which makes the handling of the mouse smooth. The area of each Teflon foot is large enough to provide good support and gliding performance. There is a so called "Advanced Gaming Optical Sensor" located in the middle-ish of the mouse. At first, I had no idea of what the "Advanced Gaming Optical Sensor" really was. Based on what I can see, it looks like a modified version of the PixArt PMW3336, which is specified for 10,800 DPI sensitivity. Exactly how they cracked it to 12,000 DPI is not something I know about, but it looks like it is for marketing than anything. People may not use the mouse at maximum sensitivity, but at lower and more common DPI settings, say 1000 DPI, the precision performance of a higher sensitivity sensor may be better than that of a lower sensitivity economy sensor. Combined with the maximum 1000 Hz polling rate, the GAMDIAS Zeus P1 does its job as a gaming mouse.
The GAMDIAS Zeus P1 is mostly plug-and-play. If you want to customize the settings, such as the eight buttons’ configuration, DPI level, polling rate, and color setting of RGB lighting, the configuration software Hera is required. You can download it from the GAMDIAS’s website easily, so there is no need for any physical discs. Hera has lots of functions, but it looks very intuitive in my opinion. The theme color is dark gray, and the whole GUI is translucent. The main menu is located at the top left of the interface. Only when you move your mouse on top of those items on the menu will they be highlighted. Hera is pretty straightforward to use, as it is not rocket science. Basically, you do not need to spend a lot of time on figuring out how it works. If you do not want to mess up the settings, you can always save them into different profiles. There are five profiles you can use. The data in the profile is stored on the hard drive of your computer Once a profile is activated, everything will be stored in the built-in memory of the mouse. It is worth noting that, if you do not use Hera, by default the DPI is set at 1600 minimum from the factory.
Surprisingly, you can set the maximum DPI all the way from 400 to 12800, which is 800 higher than the factory specifications. Please note that the step size is 200 DPI, thus it is pretty handy to find your own preference, but smaller step sizes would have been better. The mouse can memorize up to six different settings of DPI per profile. Without using Hera, users can switch among the six settings of DPI on-the-fly by pressing the DPI changing buttons on the mouse. Other important features such as cursor speed, vertical scroll speed, and double click speed can all be tuned in Hera. Generally speaking, Hera is reasonably powerful. You can basically customize everything on your mouse.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look - Hardware and Software
3. Subjective Performance Tests
4. Conclusion
