You know how cats supposedly won’t touch food of a lesser quality when they’ve experienced dining at its very best? Like on lobster or whatever? Well, FACT CHECK: until someone realised that putting butter on lobster made it taste awesome (like every food + butter), lobster was just as horrendous to eat as it was to look at. Also, cats are stupid and probably can’t differentiate between offal and a finely aged steak, having a palette around 80% more inferior than humans.
Why all the cat facts? Well, I was going to rely on the age-old cliché to express how I felt about the Talon, but I’ll be damned if I help contribute to the already overwhelming stupidity of the internet and people in general.
So, yeah. When I use the Talon, something inside me says ‘eeew…this is for plebs’.
And it is for plebs – but more on that later.
The Look
It kind of reminds me of a bagpipe – not that it’s the only instrument to look good in plaid, but that the bagpipe is where ‘noise’ meets ‘music’. The talon is the line where ‘regular mouse’ meets ‘gaming mouse’. Sitting next to my workplaces crappy Dell mouse that screams ‘you’re going to rot in this office’, it kind of looks as if some corporate idiot did a sweep of the place and decided we needed to be ‘edgier’ or ‘funky’, and upgraded just the mouses in the office to achieve that goal.
Turned on, it’s blue lighting contrasts nicely with the two black sections (the rubbery top half and plastic bottom), and pulsates pleasantly, giving your darkened room the calming ambience of knowing a cop car is just outside.
The Design
Again, the Talon is where a mouse meets a gaming mouse. Your average joe isn’t going to notice much different in comfort between their office deal and the Talon, but they will probably notice how much nicer the grip is once they start dedicating their lives to Dota.
To the credit of the talon, the two side-buttons on the left face of the mouse are pretty phenomenal. A lot of my problems with other TT Esports mouses (mice?) is their overabundance of useless or needlessly placed buttons. This has two. They sit in such a position that they’re just above your thumb or just on it, and you press them for things to happen. No gimmicks – just two more buttons if you really need them. My only contention is that they require a little more force than I’d like for them to activate, but having said that, solid, simple design.
Functionality
Despite the fact I gave you an entire diatribe about cats and thinking that the mouse was for plebs, in-game, I forgot pretty quickly that this wasn’t my super-duper high-end-basically-wins-games-for-me tech. Sure, if I focused on it, I could instantly tell the differences, but that’s not when it matters. If I can’t tell the difference mid-match in Dota or Rome II, then it’s doing a pretty solid job.
I’ve got no real complaints with the mouse wheel, and the ones I do have sound petty. It’s action is solid, yet the scrolling…it kind of does my head in. It’s simultaneously soft and strong – it feels like I’m running bones through jelly. A tiny, tiny thing that many people won’t notice, and will more than likely not have an effect on how you play with or use it at all.
What The Talon Is For
Here’s the thing: from what I’ve been told, the RRP of the Talon is $35 AUD. This is, for all intents and purposes, baby’s first gaming mouse. It’s not going to be used to get the world’s best APM, but for someone like my girlfriend who only really wants to play Black and White 2 with more accuracy and control, the difference is going to be hugely noticeable.
As a gaming mouse, it’s very, very ordinary, but for it’s price and place in the market, I’d say it’s a perfect fit.
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