And while I am sure that the “Fang” does exactly what is promised; are you kidding me? This thing looks like some sort of bad-eighties looking contraption from another planet!

You may remember Ideazon from such off-beat gaming keyboards like the Zboard and the MERC gaming keyboard. Now, Ideazon has released the Fang Gamepad, a spin-off from the MERC keyboard, that includes a dedicated gaming area specifically designed for WASD and FPS games, sans keyboard. This portable and standalone unit is great for those of us who have a perfectly fine keyboard to begin with and who don’t want to pay a premium for a bigger “hybrid” keyboard.

Ideazon’s Fang adheres to the whole notion of why we want to use a gamepad in the first place: We’re fed up with wrestling with a standard keyboard and want something fun and easy. Its well-thought-out placement of 41 gaming keys (including 11 weapon-specific keys) ensures a quick and efficient style of playing, all of which are labeled and arranged to surround your hand for easy access.

The symmetrical layout of buttons, especially the inclusion of buttons on both sides of the Fang, makes this gaming pad equally suitable for lefties and righties, something that is uncommon with gaming devices. Keys surround your fingers to keep them in a normal gaming position without requiring much stretching to access its keys. This is especially useful when accessing the numbered keys, whereas you are no longer required to stretch your index finger across the keyboard to access the eighth or ninth weapon in your arsenal. Since WASD is at the center of the game pad with familiar commands surrounding it, the Fang has virtually no learning curve to master, hence you can start fragging thy enemies from the start.

We put the Fang in our cross-hairs to find out if this is what every gamer should have…. Source: ExtremeTech