Sharkoon Draconia Black - a reunion

To be honest, I don't allways pay as much effort to my dektop-setup as I clearly should for all the time I'm sitting there. But lately, while getting a little bit more into with quick reaction games, being "fast on the mouse" turned out to be a little problematic for me. I discoverd, that if I'm doing quick operations with my mouse, my hand doesn't stay right where it should be and in extreme situations, I even start hitting sidebuttons by accident. So it seems logical, that I thought about why this never happende earlier to me. Well... back then when I did a lot of gaming, I just used another mouse. So I had a closer look how my hand rests on it and turned out, the shape of my current mouse doesn't fit my hand at all. 

At this time, I remembered the Sharkoon Draconia, I used to play with for quiet some time until it fell victim to a counterstrike game that got out of hand one day. I could remember that I never had a problem with that mouse and liked it a lot. So I searched it on that big onlineshop that used to sell books ones and now offers everything including the stuff you didn't know existing, and: dadaaaaaa, by luck it was just right now on sale... Well, I mean that was a sign so I HAD TO buy it ;) 

So let's make this post another short "unboxing" and let's have a look at how this mouse fits with my hand. 

Back in the days I had the Draconia in the green version but as I get older as well, and because I have a almost balck setup, I decidet for the black version this time. 

 

The Box is as unspectacular as the insides, I guess I doesn't really have a lot to say here byside that I like the fact that it comes with a pair of replacementfeed. 

 

The cable is nicely coverd in darkblue fabric as in my opinion every modern mouse should be. 

In sum, the Draconia has 11 free programable buttons from which three are on the right side up and down the place where your thumb goes, the typical left- and rightclick buttons on top as well as a scrollwheel that covers three of the 11 buttons as it can be tilted left, right and straight down when clicking. Right under the scrollwheel is a button with an up and down direction that in default configuration is ment to change your dpi, and on the right upper end, the last button sits close to your ringfinger. Underneath, a hatch grants access to six peaces of metal for custom weight balancing.  

In my first test, the left- and rightclick buttons are easy and smoothly to press and give a nice feedback, according to me being a person that also preferes blue switches on my keyboard...   

So, let's compare it to my old mouse, the Zelotes T90. As you can see, it isn't as high as the Draconia and has the highest point way more central. The Draconia got it shifted a little more rear to the hand. And that was the point that let my palm slip over the mouse and why I then accidentally hit buttons I didn't wanted to. On the Draconia, my palm lifts a little more and that give me a compleatly other grip. 

 

Same counts for the weight. The Zelotes T90 got it quiet central, what left it under my fingers, not my palm. 

And last, not least, the Draconia has quiet more comfortable hutches for the fingers on the left and right. But as everything I said about the mice so far, I guess that depends on everybodys handsize and shape as well as personal preference.  

 

The Black comes with an easy to use managing software. You can download it from the official Sharkoon website. You are able to customize every button as well as some special behavior, the dpi up until 8200 and the color and behavior of the logo LED. 

 

After using the device for about a week now, I tried the every day work with it as well as games like Overwatch, Watchdogs or Dota Underloards. The biggest difference I was able to determine is, that it doesn't quiet feel like I have something in my hand. It's more like I'm laying my hand down on the table an move it around. Beeing not as present is a hug plus for the draconia black. After several hours of constant using this mouse, I also didn't felt any pain or exhausting, what allways is a difficult topic for me. I ofthen have problems with a pain in my wrist from long time mouse usage.  

So over all I don't want to really recommand this mouse, but not because I don't like it, in fact I really love it, but because I think hat mouse fits for you really depends on personal preferences as well as the shape of your hand and how you use it. However if you think the Draconia Black could be a thing, then I really recommand giving it a try. But the most important lesson here is: investing in a mouse that fits your hand, can make a big difference on your experience. A much bigger than u might think!  

TOP 5 - my five best or worse....

Because long and detailed posts are a hell time-consuming and I often have to shorten things up or can't put the quality in I want because it would take even longer to publish something as it already does, I had the idea of this regular short posts of my five..... best or worse techrelated things of the month. The categories can change but are allways tech-related as this blog is.

 

So let's start with my first five for this month: 

 

My five current moste played or watched games. Let's go! 

5. Far Cry

On the fifth place we have the Far Cry Series. Although this one is still on my "have to play" - list, I watched it a lot on streams recently. It's a fun experience to see how gameplay and graphics changed over the years this series has gone through.

4.  Drone Racing League Simulator 

Well, I'm normally not that much into simulators, but I saw videos on Drone Racing lately and now... well guess who wants to learn how to fly these cool quadcopters... And what would be a better start than the official simulator...Even if it sometimes is a little complicated. I'm still not able to fly a perfect straight line.... :( 

3. Destiny 2

In late 2019 and early 2020 I played this game so much... With every new season new content comes in and even if I'll never be a pro player who understands all the stats, I do have a lot of fun assembling my personal loadout. It is the thing between managing a lot of loot and running through strikes mostly by intuition that makes Destiny 2 so much fun for me. 

2. Overwatch

If I'm up to some tryhard competitive, I hook my friends up to a few rounds of Overwatch. As a support-main it's allways easy to find a game and while I never climed the ladder of the ranked system, casual or experimental games are a lot fun. Also, I love watching the OWL. Go Atlanta Reign! 

1. Watchdogs 2

On the first place of my current most played or watched games we find Watchdogs 2. I'm far from a 100% playthrough but the gameflow, the setting and graphics and how the whole thing is made up got me from the start. It's a mixture of my wish after more future technology and the dream of having the unrealistic skills Dedsec members have. :D Over all, I'm allready hyped for Watchdogs Legion, comming to the uplay store soon! 

Well, and that's it for the first "TOP 5" on this blog. Let's see what we'll have next. Maybe my top five of productive software or my top five of security breaches in IT-history?! If you have an idea, put it down to the comments, maybe I seize it on!

 

 

My new everyday companion - the OnePlus Nord

 *this article is written only from personal intention, and not a paied add!*

 

Lately, my Motorola Moto G7 Plus started lagging not only on battery lifetime but also by constantly crashing apps and freezing the touchscreen. After some tests and fixing attempts, I got to the conclousion that it had to be the RAM. And for a 250€ smartphone, as the G7 Plus is, this was the death sentence. 

So I was in search for a new phone that, on the one hand, could fit my absolutely not basic demands, and on the other hand doesn't rip off my bankaccount, because I'm acctually still a little short on money and have a lot other important stuff to pay for. 

And actually, OnePlus was never really present to me. Until a collegue who uses a OnePlus for slightly some time, told me about the OnePlus Nord that, by this time, was about a mounth befor it's release. And maybe it was affected by the color but I liked that phone by it's design all from the beginning. So I waited until the first reviews came up in my youtube inbox and what I could learn from them made me really confident about using the OnePlus Nord as my new everyday companion. 

The demands I have for a smartphone in the middle price range are basically:

• Smooth navigation without loadingtimes or laggs that would restrict me in my usingspeed
• Expendable storage or minimum of 256 GB internal storage
• state of the art screen to body ratio 
• fastcharging 
• min. 12 hours of batterylife by average using
  
• front- and backcamera with a minimum of 15 MP camera and a camerasoftware rich on options
  

According to this, "gamingperformance" or maximum qualitiy camera wasn't my targeted points of decision.

For moste of the mentioned  points, the OnePlus Nord seemed to meet my needs very well. Allthrough I was a little worried about the not expandable storage ( I use to carry arround a lot of data local on my phone, germany is still a desert of reception some times), I decided to give it a try and preordered the bigger version with 256 GB storage and 12 GB RAM on amazon. Of cours, the blue version. ;) 

Well, althrough amazon first promised to deliver the phone two days after the release, as a lot of people, I had to wait nearly to a mount to receive my order. It is abolutely unsatisfactory to see your current mobile die in daly use while not knowing when the new one you're absolutley hyped about, will arrive. But let's don't but you guys on the rack even more as amazon did with me and have a look what come within the package! 

Within the simple black and blue box the following gear is packed up in multiple layers:

• OnePlus Nord Mobilephone
• transparent protection cover
• some information paper 
• OnePlus Sticker 
• simcard pin
• charging cable in OnePlus typical read/white
• Powercharging adapter

The phone itself is wraped in a protective sheed and also has a sticky one on the screen too that isn't as high in quality as the once I comonly use but I really do appreciate that OnePlus shippes the Nord with a protection foil. As in my case, the protective screenglas I ordered arrived a few days after a phone, and with the preinstalled foil I didn't had to worry getting scratches in the time before the glas arrived. The next thing I really liked and kept in use is the protection cover. It hase two main features I really love about this design: first is, that the edges are slightly lifted, so if you lay down the phone on the screen side, smal pices of dirt won't damage the screen, and the secon one is the flexible plug that is attatched to the bottom of the cover and can be pushed in the charging slot so it won't collect all the dust from your pockets or, as in my case, the stable environment.

 

The chargingcable in my opinion could be a little longer but is made of good quality and gives me a trustworthy feeling as well as the adapter, that is just a bit chunky.  

After having a look on all the attatchments, let's finally have a look on the phone itself. 

With a 6,44 inch fluid amoled display, coming with 2400x1080 pixel resolution, the OnePlus Nord provides a sharp more or less rimless display. The colors in my sense are good balanced by default. 

 

In the upper left corner we can't find one but two frontfacing cameras, one 32 MP camera and an aditional 8 MP ultra wide angle camera. Depending on how you feel about the notch, the horizontal "doublenotch" can be a more or less likely thing. For me, it took only a few minutes to feel familiar with it, because it's integrated by the software very well. 

On the back we have for cameras in a vertical line, placed on the left side of the surface. The primary camera here comes with 48 MP, the ultra wide angle again supports 8 MP, and the depth and macro lens come with 5 MP, respectively 2 MP.

 

On the left side, you'll find the button for volume-adjustment, on the right side the power/lock button as well as the slider for choosing the notification mode between "ringing", "vibration" and "silent". To be honest, when I saw this feature, I was remembered back to to time of my iPhone 5S and how sad I was when I switched to android and wasn't able to finde a phone with that physical notification-switch. It's only a personal preference, but I really enjoy having that feature back. What sometimes is a problem with the buttons for me is the fact that the right handed power and the left handed volume-down button are slightly moved against each other but not enough so that if I try to lock my phone onehanded, I sometimes accidentally trigger a screenshot by pressing the volume button when trying to hold the phone against the presure on the lock button. But that might be something that vanishes when getting more used to the phone.  

The bottom side is fully used with the dual-simslot left hand, the microphone next to it, a speaker on th right end and the usb-c chargingslot in the middle. The Nord comes without a headphone-jack, what isn't a big deal for me because I switched to bluetooth devices already almost every where. But for some "oldschoolish" people this could be a thing to notice. 

Inside the phone, as I mentioned I got the bigger version according to the stats, a Snapdragon 765G works aside 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. That makes the device, beeing more than 10 times as small as my PC, near to as same as powerfull in RAM, as the desktop I'm currently using only has 4 GB more than the Nord... in my eyes, that is impressive and shows how far we came with smartphone technology. 

On the phone runs Android 10 Oxygen OS what so far get's a update about ones a week. 

The battery comes with 4115 mAh and supports OnePlus "Warp Charge", fastcharging with the appropriate charger on 5V/6A basis. So far, I don't have to charge the phone over the day, no matter if I'm to busy to use my phone or if I'm getting time killed with some casual games between trainings. 

As now we finished our look at the fundamentals, let's get a little closer. 

The Nord comes with a few, more than I'd like, but not too much apps preinstalled. Some are from google, some from OnePlus itself. What I did liked about it, was the organization of these preinstalled apps. They were already packed up in a folder, as I allways do it to organize them. 

Putting the Nord to a peformance-test, it scores a solid 3164 in 3D Marks Slingshot Extreme and places therefore between the Xiaomi Mi Note 10 Pro and the Google Pixel 4 with Scores of 2394 respectively 4872, according to benchmarks.ul.com.

 

During the benchmark, it doesn't really gets noticeable hot, even with the cover on, as you can see in  the graphs. Same counts for charing, as charing is also managed by an intellegence to preserve the battery. 

 

All in all, after the first few days, the OnePlus Nord feels absolutely worth its money and in my opinion treats a lot of value in the midprize-range. It may lack on a few details, but with the Nord, OnePlus launched a phone I would without doubt recommend.