Gadgetory

for generations pc gamers has been bolted to the desk unable to venture to the comfort of the couch without picking up a controller or even worse using the dreaded console I'm joking of course the gamers who enjoy using the lateness of the keyboard and mouse have been longing for an elegant solution to recline you on the couch and playing games on their TV we've seen some attempted solutions before but most come at the expense of a full-sized mechanical keyboard or included tiny and weird wireless mouse with no extra buttons that you can barely hold on to pair that with a miniscule mouse pad and you may as well have just stayed at your desk on top of this to my knowledge there's never really been a comfortable solution that could provide a stable surface to play on I've tried using a chopping board as a mouse pad but it's not really comfortable and you can't fit your keyboard on there too you can't just use the couch either it's too low and the mouse isn't track well enough to play proper games finally I don't consider leaning forward and playing on the coffee table a real solution either what are we left with until now not much but allow me to introduce the lap dog lap dog is a new gaming control center from Corsair and aims to deliver living room gaming with zero compromise when I first saw the box i was little surprised but also pleased to how big it was if this was truly going to deliver a great living room gaming that it certainly needed to be bigger than solutions i'd seen before let's take a tour around the device first there are two main pieces to the lap dog the control platform and the padded lap cushion the life cushion can be quickly and easily attached and removed thanks to six magnetic points to grab the control center quite firmly the cushion itself is made from memory foam and honestly it feels very comfortable in your legs lastly there's a little spot to store the allen key though I think it would have been smart if this was magnetic to to stop it falling out onto the control center this is where all the action goes down on the right we begin with a sizable 11 inch by 11 inch mouse pad plate this is the textured aluminium surface that screws into the body of the control center I mouse tracked very well on this surface as it expect and it also provides good grip for a mouse pad of your own to sit on top unfortunately I didn't have any mouse pads that were small enough to use on the mouse pad plate but it was really no issue to play on the plate itself on the left side lapdogs the keyboard tray this is sized perfectly to fit courses k 65 in case 70 series of keyboards and there's an adaptor plate on the right-hand side just suit the different lengths to these keyboards with the adapter plate removed my case 7 is slotted in absolutely perfectly running across the top of the keyboard tray is removable cover for the cable compartment this is where your feed your cabling from your keyboard through to the USB hub with right hand corner of the device this USB hub is the heart of the laptop powered by a DC input this USB 3 hub provides users with four powered USB 3 ports two of these ports are internal and a design to connect your keyboard and mouse the keyboard uses the aforementioned cable route through the top of the lap dog and there's a small port at the top left the mouse pad for your mouse cable if you're using a wireless mouse you could also plug your receiver in at this point 2 on the right-hand side you'll find two external USB 3 ports which could be used for a USB headset and things like your smartphone or USB thumb drives the closest one to the user is also a fast charging port so this is where you'll be best off connecting your phone tablet or Bluetooth speaker for a quick charge lastly in terms of ports who find the DC import and host PC ports at the back right of the laptops body plugging into these ports is the supplied and can join us be in DC cable this cable is plenty of length is 16 feet or just under 5 meters and at the other end you attach the little DC power pack and plug the USB end into any USB 3 port on your PC interestingly the DC power pack I received was rated for only 1 amp this makes me question how fast charging the fast charging port which is capable of delivering 1.5 amps if you possibly be with this supplied power pack especially if you're running a mouse keyboard and other devices through the hub to setting up the lap dog was pretty simple although you wouldn't want to be sharing a keyboard between your desktop and the device is it's not super fast to install and remove as mentioned there's a supplied allen key that it can be clumsily stored in lap dog and this is used to unscrew the two screws on the cable cover single screw on the keyboard adapter and four screws on the mouse pad once these are all removed you can slot the keyboard in first and stuff the cables in the top section course has supplied a couple of zip ties too so you can tie your cables down to little cable tie anchors on the floor of the cable compartment next I simply plug to a mouse in screwed the pieces back in and I was ready to go for actual gaming couch the luck dog was really cool it was super comfortable in my lap first of all I played for several hours in starcraft 2 a game that's super frustrating to play if you're in an uncomfortable mouse position it was also quite good for black ops 3 i'm not going to say i was as good as i was at my desk in multiplayer but it's pretty much fine for single-player and certainly any sort of casual style gaming my only economic complaint would be about the front edge of black dog due to its shape it's actually quite a sharp edge and if i had the lap dog position in a way where my wrist will leaning against it then it definitely dug in a bit i think a curved edge or some sort of padding here would have been amazing my only other criticism of the device is lack of a three-and-a-half millimeter pass through if you use analog headphones then you're kind of stuck unless your cable is somehow long enough to reach the computer from the couch I feel like this would have been an easy and inexpensive inclusion and it was a shame to see it was missing USB or wireless headphones of course work very well with this setup all around the lap dogs really awesome implementation of catch keyboard and mouse gaming I think users will have to keep in mind that they'll really need a second keyboard a mouse to keep permanently in the lap dog who ever unless they really don't mind swapping them out each time but since there are six screws and potentially cable ties involved I can't really see this happening the lap dog would definitely be my go-to for couch gaming from now on and I really look forward to running into you guys on the steam service from my couch I don't have official pricing information as of yet but it looks like you'll be able to pick up the lap dog as a standalone 490 US dollars or 115 australian dollars or 200 US dollars with a corset gaming keyboard and likely around 250 australian dollars for that setup not exactly cheap but when we're gaming peripherals ever inexpensive let me know what you think of the lap dog in the comments i'm your host first name at last name as always and i'll see you guys next time it's not safe love lockdown