Fanatec Headshot Controller/Mouse review: Fanatec Headshot Controller/Mouse

Game mice tend to be pretty funky. These expensive peripherals usually have lots of lights, lots of buttons, and lots of nifty features, such as on-the-fly sensitivity switching and custom program settings. Fanatec has taken the convention of funky game-mouse design to an extreme end with the Headshot. At slightly less than $100, the Headshot is one of the pricier game mice on the market. Its many handy features will appeal to hard-core shooter fans, but the Headshot's limited, pad-reliant design seriously hurts the mouse. With similar high-performance game mice such as the excellent Logitech G5 Laser Mouse available for about $30 less (with no bothersome pad), it's hard to justify dropping a Benjamin on the Headshot.

Though it looks like Salvador Dali's take on mouse design, the Headshot actually feels pretty comfortable. The 4.9-ounce mouse's curves fit with the contours of the hand, and the rubberized sides make for a secure grip. If the Headshot feels too small and narrow, you can widen it by turning two large screws on the bottom and sliding out the left side of the mouse. With the grip extended all the way, even my large hands rest comfortably on it. Finally, a series of LEDs within the mouse give it a nifty glowing effect.

Besides the standard right/left mouse buttons and mouse wheel, the Headshot features four additional buttons. A pair above the mouse wheel provide additional functions for most programs. Though they're on the top edge of the mouse rather than the side, the buttons act just like the thumb buttons on most other game mice. While it's odd to see a game mouse without at least one button under the thumb, it's easy to get used to clicking these new buttons. An additional pair of buttons just under the wheel controls the mouse's resolution, shifting from 400dpi to up to 4,000dpi resolution with just a few taps. The Headshot's sensor has a top resolution of 2,000dpi, so the highest setting is an artificial sensitivity boost. Bumping up and down mouse resolution on the fly is a handy feature for first-person shooters, where a player might need to rapidly switch between high sensitivity for fast maneuvers and low sensitivity for slower, precision aiming.

Besides its broad mouse body and short little pigtail of a cord, the Headshot's most noticeable feature is its giant mouse pad. The huge plastic square is almost the size of a keyboard, and it eats up an absurd amount of desk space. On the other hand, it doubles as a three-port, powered USB hub (two ports with the mouse plugged in), and a handy plastic arch keeps the mouse cable tucked up and away while leaving enough slack to work comfortably. And if that isn't enough, the plastic arch glows, just like the mouse itself.

The Headshot can be customized to fit how you work, from macros to lights. Fanatec's drivers automatically add an additional tab to the Mouse Properties menu in the Control Panel so that you can access the mouse's advanced features. The most basic options include mouse sensitivity, resolution, and lighting, but they aren't the only things you can tweak. The Headshot also supports programmable macros for individual programs, so you can tell the mouse exactly how to act in any game or application you want. Unfortunately, the mouse includes little to no documentation, only a warning to users that programming these advanced macros can somehow change system settings and damage your computer. We're not quite sure how this could happen without actively trying, but it's better to be safe than sorry. Either way, you're going to want to understand some basic macro programming before tinkering with these advanced settings.

On the purely superficial side, the Headshot's lights can be easily tweaked. The mouse and either side of the pad's arch have separately controlled groups of red, green, and blue LEDs. Each cluster has its own color, brightness, and flashing speed controls, so you can have almost any light scheme you wanted. If you want a flashing funky light show on both the mouse and the pad, that's fine. If you want a blue-backlit mouse flanked by red and green arch lights, that's no problem either. It's purely a matter of taste, but this sort of customization is a nice touch.

Unfortunately, the mouse's dependence on the flashy mouse pad is also the one thing that holds the Headshot back from being a truly great mouse. Rather than the straight, five-to-seven-foot cord most wired mice have, the Headshot's cable is a scant two feet long, and half of that length is coiled up like an old telephone cord. This short cable is only long enough to plug into the pad's USB hub. The pad is a great gaming surface, and the cord-lifting plastic arch is a clever way to keep cables from getting caught on the desk, but the short cord essentially forces you to use the very large, desk space-eating pad. You can plug in the mouse to any desk-bound USB hub or to the side of your notebook computer (if its USB port is close enough to your mousing hand), but its coiled, short cable makes it awkward when you use it with anything but the pad it comes with.

Fanatec claims that the Headshot includes a "joystick emulator" for flight sims, racing games, and other less-than-typical mouse uses. The driver included a module that added the mouse as a game controller to the test system, but we couldn't actually get it to work. Because of the nearly nonexistent documentation either in the box or on Fanatec's Web site, getting extra features such as the "joystick emulator" to function is a mysterious and awkward chore. Fortunately, this isn't nearly as bad as it sounds. Most games that use joysticks or racing wheels today support mouse control anyway, so odds are you'll still be able to fly and drive with the Headshot. Besides, game mouse or not, if you're serious about flight sims or racing games, you should invest in a joystick or a racing wheel. In this case, device emulation simply isn't as good as the original thing.