As a company that is high on quality technology and products for the home, Velocilinx wanted to make a foray into the world of gaming peripherals. The fruits of their labor have brought us the Brennus Collection. Enter the Brennus Optical Gaming Mouse and Wired Mechanical Gaming Keyboard bringing their vision for gaming peripherals to the market. This is our review.
Brennus Optical Gaming Mouse Specifications
- Price: $52.99 USD
- Wireless or Wired: Wired
- Interface Type: USB
- Color: Black and Silver
- Hand Orientation: Right-Handed
- Mouse Tracking Method: Optical
- Material: Polypropylene/Aluminum
- DPI: 1,000 to 10,000
- Frame Rate: up to 3600 FPS
- Buttons: 5 Programmable
- Dimensions 125mm (L) x 81mm (W) x 39mm (H)
- Cable: 1.5M Braided Fiber Cable
Brennus Wired Mechanical Gaming Keyboard
- Price: $109.99 USD
- Wireless or Wired: Wired
- Keyboard Design: Gaming
- Material: Aluminum
- Numeric Keypad: Yes
- Color Black with Silver Aluminum Face
- Number of Function Keys: 12
- Palm Rest: No
- Switches: Outemu Blue mechanical spring keys – Rated for 50,000,000 presses
- Polling Rate: 1000 Hz
- Anti-Ghosting Technology: Yes
- RGB Lighting: up to 16.8 million colors with 14 built-in LED lighting effects
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Exploring the Brennus Optical Gaming Mouse
With this being their first entry into the gaming peripheral market, they are hitting the ground running with some high durability products. The Brennus collection of gear is based around a Gallic King who once sacked Rome in 390 B.C. It is with this in mind that they have made their Warrior line of products out of high-quality aluminum materials. While the keyboard is on the compact side, the optical gaming mouse is larger, a bit more so than I typically use.
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In what I would say is a non-traditional design for a mouse, you will see how it has a solid aluminum baseplate with cutouts throughout it. While this provides a little bit of a thumb rest, it doesn’t provide much else for that part of the mouse. Depending on your hand size, the placement of the two thumb buttons might not work in your favor either. For my hand the first button is fine, but the second is just far enough that I hit the first every time on accident. The width of the mouse is good, and the placement of the DPI switch just below the scroll-wheel is adequate for you to make a quick change on the fly. The top cover of the mouse is one solid piece encasing its internal components, all except for the exposed RGB lighting in the back.
It is shaped almost like the Logitech G502, but it is longer with a flatter body. This forces you into a potentially different grip style than you are used to. I tend to use a claw grip when using my device, and this one forces me into a fingertip grip. It has slowed down my gameplay style so that my reaction time is a bit less; that doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be good for someone with a bigger hand though. It may be perfect for that type of gamer.
One thing that was not very beneficial was the ability, or lack thereof, to pick up your mouse to readjust it like some other mice. If you pick the mouse up for even a second to adjust it on your mouse pad, it will make your camera move erratically. This also has a little bit to do with the cable for the mouse. It is a thick cable, and it isn’t very flexible. Sometimes it can get caught on the desktop or even on the cord for your headset, or any other peripheral that gets in its way.
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There are also programs that you can download for each device from the company’s homepage. You can change your DPI settings, including the presets. Each setting is marked on your mouse by a different corresponding color, and this is how you know which setting you’re on. As you can see in the picture above, I changed teal from 5,000 DPI to 6,000 DPI. This software also allows you to change the lighting style of your RGB light, how your mouse scrolls on the screen, and finally the polling rate.
Brennus Wired Mechanical Gaming Keyboard
Another first for the company’s Brennus line is the wired mechanical gaming keyboard. It has a standard frame, as far as compact full-size boards are concerned, with a finished aluminum faceplate. Function-wise, its keys are closer together due to the size of the keyboard, which made it difficult for me to type at first. I think this will be true for most gamers who are used to larger layout where the keys are spread out a little bit further. There are function keys, similar to other keyboards, but instead of needing a separate row of keys this one has them spread out across the number row. Macro keys, such as G1 through G5, which you see on other gaming keyboards, occupy keys 6 through 0.
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Some keys change your mode and lighting layout with presets for FPS, racing, and even Call of Duty settings. When you enter these modes, keys specifically used to play these types of games light up, while everything else gets shut off. It’s functional and a nice touch, though you may have to make small changes game to game.
Speaking of the lighting effects, RGB plays a big role in how this keyboard looks, and the drivers to change these effects are downloadable from the Velocilinx website. There are fourteen different RGB lighting effects to choose from, however, with all of these choices I landed on the Twinkling Stars setting. This makes all of the keys flash at different times, and it looks like stars in the night sky.
Employing Outemu blue spring keys, these keys are definitely clicky and make a good amount of noise. They’ve said that these were used to provide the best quality and gaming ability as an eSport standard, though Outemu’s are also an effective way to keep costs down. Pressing the key, even slightly, activates the key and provides you with instant typing or action in the game. No matter how quickly or how many keys I pressed, I could never overwhelm the keyboard. This is also due to the anti-ghosting technology built into this keyboard. Having heavily used it in situations where each button click counts, I can tell you that this function of the keyboard works exactly as described.
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Conclusion
For a new venture into the gaming peripheral market, there are some positives, but also some areas for improvement with this new Brennus set from Velocilinx. While the gaming keyboard functions very well, the mouse has bigger problems with the lift-off distance and more. The oversized light in the back of the mouse could be smaller, and this would allow for the place where the heel of your palm rests to potentially be a bit more angled for a better grip and feel. For the first foray into gaming peripherals though, the keyboard is the better of the two.
Pros
- Affordable compared to other peripherals
- Keyboard works well with all game types
- Software works well with the RGB lighting provided
Cons
- Mouse doesn’t form to the hand well
- RGB light in the mouse is a bit oversized and a smaller one could help shape the mouse better
- Keyboard offers no wrist rest for comfort
The product described in this review was provided by the manufacturer for evaluation purposes.
