electronics Archives - J O Y C O M P L E X

TLDR: This gaming mouse punches significantly above its (light)weight. It's comfortable, responsive, and competitively priced.

I have reviewed several AUKEY products over the years. They provided each one free of charge and never asked me to change a word about what I've said. My reviews have been mostly positive. In general, AUKEY makes inexpensive electronic accessories, that for the price, have an exceptional build quality and exhibit thoughtful design. They use quality plastics with a high-end look and feel. My experience is that their products easily handle regular use.

This week, AUKEY sent me a Scarab gaming mouse to try out. It is no exception to the rule. If you want an affordable gaming mouse that precisely does what you ask and most likely will endure lengthy use without complaint, get the Scarab.

For my day to day activities - CAD design using Rhino, some light Photoshop or Illustrator work, and a whole bunch of typing - I prefer to use the Evoluent VM4R vertical mouse. It's a dependable workhorse of a mouse that has the heft and feel of an old Mercedes. It's hardly sporty, but it gets the job done comfortably and predictably. It's a beast.

When I took the Scarab out of the box, my first impression was, "This thing is light."

The Scarab feels like getting behind the wheel of BMW i3 BEV - light, responsive, and like it or not, pretty noticeable. If you like accurate tracking and prefer lightweight mice (the Scarab is just 75 grams), you'd be well served by this device. I'm not giving up my Evoluent for most of my tasks. Still, I see the appeal of something as light as AUKEY's Scarab - especially as a way to minimize fatigue during the rapid and near-constant movement experienced in gaming sessions.

For a non-vertical mouse, I found it ergonomic and comfortable. AUKEY put thought into the design, demonstrated by how it easily conforms to multiple grip styles. I'm used to a heftier mouse -- my Evoluent is nearly 200 grams. I've been using the Scarab for only a short time and found adjusting to its weight difficult. But, it is easily more accurate and responsive than my Evoluent.

I encountered zero tracking issues when using the mouse playing a game or during my more mundane day to day activities. I can't say the same of the Evoluent; I often have to go hunting for my cursor after when it jumps to another screen. It's just something I've gotten used to.

I was not the only person who tested the Scarab. Since everyone is stuck at home, I had some extra testers available, including my six-year-old son.

AUKEY Scarab Gaming Mouse - scroll wheel

His eyes lit up, and he looked gleeful when I plugged the mouse into the old MacBook Air he's been using for online studies, and it lit up like a Christmas tree. Suffice to say his review was easily five-stars. But he did like the mouses' functionality too, especially the graduated feel of the scroll wheel. It made moving up and down the screen much more manageable for his little fingers and, since his school is now online, that's a tangible benefit.

I also have a doctor in the house doing telemedicine. So lots of box-ticking and moving around a cluttered EPIC screen. She found the tracking too accurate and had to go into Windows settings to fine-tune how the curser moved around on the screen. She's still reporting some overly twitchy behavior, but that's to be expected until she gets it dialed in.

The ability to set macros on the mouse intrigued her, but she has yet to test that functionality. On a side note, she swears by the KM-G6 that AUKEY donated to me for review. It continues to perform flawlessly after hundreds of hours of use.

AUKEY Scarab Gaming Mouse and Gaming KM-G6 Keyboard

That is where the Scarab will live for the next several months. Check back in for an updated long-term review.

In the meantime, in so far as I can say, after having used the Scarab for only a few short days, it seems like a good mouse at a reasonable price. I suspect it will be reliable. If you want to brighten up a six-year-old's day, with a mouse, AUKEY's Scarab would be a good one to purchase, especially since kids will be in front of screens more often because of COVID-19.

Purchase on Amazon: That's an affiliate link. If you click on it and buy something Amazon will give me money - not house in the country money, ut maybe extra cup of coffee money.

AUKEY GM-F3 RGB - Specifications

Model: GM-F3

Number of Buttons: 6

Switch for Left & Right Buttons: HUANO 65±15gf

Lifespan of Left & Right Buttons: 20 million clicks

Interface: USB 2.0

Input: DC 5V 80mA

Sensor: SPCP6651B optical sensor

Software Adjustable DPI: 200-400-600-800-1000-1200-1600-2000-2400-3200-4800-7200 DPI

Max Resolution: 7200 DPI

Max Speed: 66 IPS

Max Acceleration: 22.5G

Polling Rates: 125 / 250 / 500 / 1000Hz

System Requirements: Windows XP / Vista / 7 / 8 / 10, Mac OS

Casing Material: ABS

Cable Material: Braided nylon

Cable Length: 1.5m / 4.9’

Dimensions: 120 x 73 x 40mm / 4.72” x 2.87” x 1.57″

Weight (cable excluded): 75g / 2.65oz

Published by Jeremy Burnich in Product Reviews

Tags: AUKEY, electronics, Product Reviews

Check out the DRA1 by AUKEY. It's cheap, well made, and will do what you need a dashcam to do.

I’ve wanted a dash cam ever since I saw all those videos of that meteorite flash over Russia back in 2013. I’ve looked into them periodically. At first they were kind of expensive and a pain to set up. But since then they’ve gotten a lot cheaper and easier to use. A professionally installed dash cam looks the best - and I don’t know why car makers don’t just offer a built in option - but you cannot beat the price of some of the dash cams on the market now. Especially if you don’t care about dangling wires or using sticky tape.

Enter the AUKEY DRA1 which they sent me to review. It’s a 140° 1080p front facing dash cam that costs a whopping $40. I can’t complain about it since they sent me one to evaluate for free - that they let me keep by the way - but even if I paid $40, I wouldn’t regret the purchase because it’s good for what it is.

The first thing you should know about this dash cam is that it doesn’t have any internal storage so you will need to purchase an SD card. I found an open box amazon warehouse Samsung 128 gb card for $15 so it’s not too big of an added expense, but it is something to be aware of if you look at this camera.

At this price point there are also going to be some compromises made. The unit has to be plugged in to work. It has no internal battery. (AUKEY makes plenty of inexpensive power banks that you can use as an external charger though). It also uses a mini USB to cigarette charger to power the device. However, AUKEY makes excellent flush fit dual port cigarette adapters (one of which I previously reviewed) so I don’t know why they just didn’t ditch the cable they sent and just put in one of those and a USB cable.

But what do you want for $40 - or, in my case, for free? Well, what you do want is a straightforward dash cam that is easy to setup and use. And this is easy to set up and use. I found the instructions to be straightforward and had the DRA1 attached to my windshield using the enclosed suction cup mount (they also have a sticky tape mount) and was recording boring trips to the supermarket with no issues at all.

You can toggle the sound, the motion sensitivity (before you ask, it does not have built-in GPS) and the resolution and that’s about it. Here’s the instruction manual so you can see what it is fully capable of doing.

What’s the video look like? Again, pretty darn good for a $40 camera. Here’s a very long and very boring video that I filmed with the dash cam of an expedition I took to the Carnegie Art Museum in downtown Pittsburgh.

And here’s a shorter video showing what the night capabilities of the camera are like.

The camera itself is pretty nondescript but well constructed. It’s very light and weighs next to nothing. The lightness makes it feel sort of chintzy, but while it might not feel like a bonus in a quality consumer electronic device, let’s face it, if you got in an accident would you really want to chance having a heavy black rectangle pop off the mount, smash into the windscreen, and bounce around the interior? Probably not. So the low mass of the camera is more a feature than a bug and you don’t hold the thing anyway so who cares how it “feels in your hand.”

So in closing, if you’re looking for an inexpensive dash cam for you car so you can capture that one in a million meteor light show, or the more mundane and much more likely person cutting you off or equipment falling of a truck and damaging your vehicle, then this is the dash cam for you. It’s cheap, functional, and reliable.

AUKEY makes really decent consumer electronics at really competitive price points. If you need a dash cam and don’t want to spend a lot you’d be crazy not to buy this one.

POST SCRIPT

I was chatting was my father about this dash cam and he went out and bought one. Unlike me he had some issues getting it mounted to the windshield.

He thinks AUKEY needs a better instruction booklet and you tube videos to show you how the camera mount works and how to set up the camera. He had bolts popping off and had a bit of a hard time figuring out how to mount the camera so it was facing out.

Maybe AUKEY should use pictograms like IKEA or Apple.

Published by Jeremy Burnich in Product Reviews

Tags: AUKEY, dash cam, electronics

Product Review: AUKEY Scarab Gaming Mouse

AUKEY GM-F3 RGB - Specifications

Review of an Inexpensive AUKEY Dash Cam

Check out the DRA1 by AUKEY. It's cheap, well made, and will do what you need a dashcam to do.

POST SCRIPT