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13:July 2004 by Jeremy Mahler
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I am, at heart, a FPS gamer. I reserve console-style games and racing games for the domain of the gamepad the console. The control scheme was always the main reason. I could never pull off a good drift in Need for Speed: Underground using just the keyboard, after all. Enter the Saitek P3000 Wireless Gamepad. Designed for USB use, the specs include RF control (no line-of-sight necessary) and lots of buttons for almost limitless control of whatever game is played.

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Box / Packaging

http://www.hwhell.com/articles/saitek_p3000_wireless_gamepad/

7/19/2004

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The controller came wrapped snugly in a plastic abomination. Yeah, its nice and secure, but seriously these things are a pain in the neck to open. My thumb is still sore from the scissors. Aside from that, though, I was pretty impressed by the overall quality of the system on first removing it from the plastic. Included are the controller, 2 battery packs (they come at least partly charged, I was able to run the controller immediately), a pedestal (more on the function of this part in a bit), a CD, and a booklet of directions. Look / Feel Now, we all know that form is more important than function, right? Thats why look and feel are reviewed before function. Just kidding around. Kinda. This is a pretty cool setup. At first, I was put off by the overall simple look of the gamepad, but after a bit of playing with it I like the understated black, grey and silver look. Whats neat to see though, is putting the gamepad on the charger pedestal. It just hangs nicely on and looks very cool. This also provides a nice, compact place to put the pad when youre done with it, ensuring that (ideally) it wont get lost anytime soon.
Installation / Use I plugged the pedestal, containing one charging battery, into the computers USB port. Windows XP picked the gamepad up immediately, and I had no need for the disk included with the pad. The disk also has a neat little program that allows great customization of the functions of the pad, but it wasnt really necessary so I skipped that part. I went into the Game Controllers part of the Control Panel and tested out the functions of the pad all of them worked perfectly, right out of the box and with no intervention. Since that worked, I popped in my (freshly purchased and installed just for this review) copy of Need For Speed: Underground and customized the gas and brake to my liking. Within a few moments I was owning the first drift circuit and ricing out my RX-7 like no ones business. I realized, at that point, what I had been missing from the world of PC gaming by not having a nice gamepad. Quality / Durability I had some misgivings when I first popped the units together, and they have mostly been squashed. Though lightweight and seemingly not too strong, this gamepad can take a beating and a half. How do I know? Let me tell you a story, friends While playing NFS:U, I was screaming through one of the Underground races, nearing the end of the last lap when I was cut off by a really rude little Honda Civic (it was YELLOW, for cripes sake, YELLOW) and wound up slamming headfirst into an incoming pickup truck. I flipped out, and my controller took a high-speed flight across the room on a flat trajectory into a wall. It bounced a few feet back toward me, when I realized what I had done. I was a bit miffed until I snagged the controller and started hitting buttons it still worked perfectly. I was so relieved, in fact, that I immediately restarted the race and achieved zen-racer-mental-mode and still lost again. What was my point uh Oh, takes a beatin, keeps on tickin. Conclusion / Etc Overall, I liked this gamepad a lot. It had no obvious issues with range or interference, and the accuracy was absolutely excellent. Any pad that could hold up to the abuse I can throw (literally) at it is above average, and this one held up just fine. The only reservation I really have is that the battery meter on the gamepad doesnt seem too accurate. I ran out of battery power in the middle of a race because of that exhibited by stuttering, inaccurate controls. A quick

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change to the battery pack charging in the pedestal fixed that, though. I would heartily recommend this pad to anyone looking to increase the fun they have with their computer system. Thanks, Saitek, for the fun stuff you sent me! Final Score: 8.5
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