Hardware Review - Chatpad - Communication Pack
As there seem to be very few reviews around 360 hardware at the moment
I decided it high time for me to give insight into a few items I have had some time
to test and share my experiences with the masses.
The Xbox 360 Chat-pad bundle, packaged in the usual suction formed wrapping,
It’s evil to open, but thankfully that irritation is short lived. Shorter if
you have a good Stanley knife. Inside the package you get two items, an extra
360 wired headset and the chat-pad add on for your controller.
The chat-pad itself is a nice solid unit, fairly easy to attach, 0.5 mm jack
and a couple of plastic pins at the back of the unit, they slot into the
holes that fit the screws on the rear handles of the controller.
The unit feels solid and makes your controller a tad heavier, but not
anywhere near noticeable while gaming. It takes a short while to adjust to
typing on a QWERTY keypad with just your thumbs, however the buttons are big
enough that miss-strikes rarely happen.
The placing of the unit when attached to you controller is well suited, your
thumbs can easily pass to and from the pad and analogues with minimal effort
and typing out text with the unit comes easily.
There are two function buttons on the left and right of the pad, one
orange and one green, hitting these will light up the keys, highlighting the
symbols in green and orange. Hitting the orange function will enable use
of all the orange text or symbols on the pad and likewise for the green function button.
In use the chat-pad feels natural, typing out your bio in the new gamer profile
tab is a breeze and getting in contact with friends quickly is no difficult
affair. Remember when you’re first created an account how long it took to type
everything?
There are a few down sides to the unit, unsurprisingly these are normally
issues which are also common in cheap or low-budget keyboards, the button
will not capture the second press when pressing a button twice in quick
succession, this can cause slight irritation when typing out a long message.
There is no option available to turn off the “pung!” sound acknowledgement
when hitting a key, you can turn off all sounds, but Microsoft, what about
all of us who love the “swoosh” of the blades but loath the “pung!”?
The bundle also comes with a standardized headset, with a small revision
in form of the button management located a quarter of the way along the cable
rather than at the end.
The question is would this be better beaten by a USB keyboard? For speed
possibly, but not for efficiency and visual appeal. The chat-pad is a quick
and unique way to interact with the 360 and others online without the
bleating of others offending your ears.
In short the Xbox 360 chat pad is like a pot of Ronseal, it does exactly what
it says on the tin.. Err package.
Posted by Colonel - February 16th, 2008 -