Trying to find that perfect christmas present for your gamer boyfriend or girlfriend and not quite sure what to get them? We look at the top gaming gadgets to get in 2015 and beyond.
Aula LED USB Backlit Gaming Keyboard
Holding honors for probably the longest named gaming keyboard on the list, Aula’s offering delivers on responsiveness. It’s one of the lightest keyboards and doesn’t each up much space at all, really. The primary feature of the Aula LED Illuminated Keyboard is—the lighting obviously. It’s extremely well-lit on and around the keys and you’re able to change the colors as you wish.
While that’s the best primary feature, the best feature is quality for the price. When it comes to a perfect marriage of wallet friendliness and effectiveness, you honestly can’t do better in the gaming keyboard department.
Anker 2000 DPI Optical Gaming Mouse
The Anker brand gaming mouse is one of those budget mice with a decent enough following. It’s not your Logitech, Razer, or what have you, but it’ll give you quality for the price—which is probably the best feature here, but we’ll look into another top feature.
The Anker 2000 DPI Optical Gaming Mouse features seven customizable buttons for what you need. Now my favorite feature here is that there are five different profiles for the buttons depending on what kind of game you’re playing. These profiles are savable so if you have one layout for World of Warcraft and another for Minecraft or…Dungeon Keeper 2—yeah we went all the way back—you’ve got profiles for that.
That said, the layout of the buttons come off as better suited for FPS than MMORPGs, but it actually works decently for those games.
Akar Adamote USB Wireless Adapter
This received very little buzz and has just as small a following. The Adamote allows users to use their Wii U Classic Controller, Wiimote, PS3 and PS4 controllers on the PC to play games—or in the Wiimote’s case as a mouse. It has built-in IR sensors that are good up to 4 meters. It will also allow for different brand controllers to be used at the same time apparently (we had two Wii U Classic Controllers).
It’s a somewhat pricier alternative to the Xbox 360 Controller, but in our experience it works pretty much flawlessly. No hiccups or anything to speak of, really.
HyperX Cloud Gaming Headset
In this top five half, one would expect to see Turtle Beach, Razer, or Logitech to dominate the section when it comes to headsets. Well Sweden-based HyperX put out a high quality headset that is worth picking up.
HyperX has a number of favorable features that you see in other headsets: pro gaming tested, noise canceling, and comfort. These headsets also come with leather and velour cushions that are changeable.
The best thing about HyperX is that it offers good quality at a great price compared to good or great quality and a decent enough price.
Elgato Game Capture HD
While PS4 and Xbox One’s in-console Twitch app makes it possible to stream gameplay on the site without the need for a setup, there’s still need for dependable Elgato—especially for PC gamers.
High performance and highly recommended, the Elgato Game Capture HD card is great for those who prefer to have more presentation and editing control over their HD broadcasts than the Twitch stream apps allow. Not only that, but with Hitbox becoming a popular Twitch alternative, this card will definitely be one of your best friends when it’s time to stream.
Microsoft Xbox 360 Controller For Windows
There will never be a year when the Microsoft Xbox 360 Controller isn’t a good piece of gear to pickup for your PC. We mainly use this for Mount & Blade: Warband and a couple of Steam titles—especially platformers—but it’s always been dependable when a keyboard and mouse just aren’t needed or would feel right for the game being played. While there are definitely cheaper, effective alternatives out there, the quality of the Xbox 360 controller and how well this one works for PC is what boosts it into the top five.
SteelSeries Rival Optical Gaming Mouse
It was easy to simply say “The SteelSeries Rival is the Motorhead of gaming mice” and leave it there, but some explanation is needed here. Six customizable buttons, comes in black only, no profile saving, no different colors variations, no lit buttons, no alien warship designs, no bells, no whistles—none of that. This is a stripped down, pretty basic gaming house that pretty much gives the essentials of what is needed. It has an illuminated logo with colors that can be changed.
It’s not the fanciest or most technologically advanced gaming mouse on the planet, but it gets it’s extremely effective when in action. However, its basic approach can be a bit of a setback when it comes to speed depending on some playing styles.
Logitech G600 MMO Gaming Mouse
Logitech is a brand that puts out great hardware time and time again. The company’s best offering for gamers is looking to be the G600 MMO Gaming Mouse. It has a design that isn’t too unfamiliar for users.
The most distinctive feature for the Logitech G600 is the number pad on the side of the mouse that allows for fast thumb action depending on how you have your keys mapped out.
Logitech G502 Proteus Core Tunable Game Mouse
Logitech’s G502 Proteus Core is a beast of gaming mouse. While it’s all about high performance on the fly for PC gaming, the meat of what you need to know about it is that this monster has 11 buttons on it that can be programmed to fit your needs. This is somewhat different from our #3 entry and #2 mouse, the Razer Naga 2014 MMO Gaming Mouse in that everything isn’t focused on the side of the mouse.
In short, the Logitech G502 Proteus Core is built for speed and quick reflexes.
Turtle Beach Ear Force XP 7
When it comes to gaming headphones very few can hold a candle to the Turtle Beach brand. Three came out with the 7 branding and all had several of the same base attributes, but of the ones tried out, we’re going with the XP 7.
The Turtle Beach Ear Force XP 7 headset is go for console (PS/Xbox family) and PC, allows for voice morphing (which was huge for us here), and the headset basically reads the sound/noise situation around you and will adjust itself accordingly. This ensures that you always hear the action and other players as clearly as possible. As expected, everything—the settings—is customizable as well.
Turtle Beach Ear Force XP 7 is not only our top pick for must have headsets, it’s the piece of gear you should pick up.
