In our writeup of Corsair’s Lapdog living room gaming lapboard, we spotted a curious, unused 16-pin port on the internal USB hub. It wasn’t mentioned in any materials Corsair sent out, and it had the feeling of either a vestigial something-or-other that didn’t get removed in the final push to get the Lapdog to market or a tease for something coming in the future.
It turns out, it was the former. A Corsair rep I spoke with at Computex told me that in the lengthy design process, at one point the team was strongly considering making the Lapdog wireless, or at least including a wireless option.
In the end, they decided to keep the whole thing wired because they didn’t want to sacrifice any performance, vis-a-vis lag. Further, there was probably never going to be a way to offer any reasonable battery life with RGB peripherals like the Corsair K70 keyboard and Corsair Sabre RGB mouse loaded up. You can hardly argue with the result; once you get yourself situated, the gaming experience with the Lapdog is superb.
Another tidbit that I missed when I evaluated the Lapdog concerns the power adapter. You actually don’t need it if you’re not using the powered USB ports on the side of the Lapdog. That is, if you’re using just the keyboard and mouse (even with full-on RGB blazing away), the USB cable connecting the Lapdog to your PC is all you need. This will surely benefit those many users who would otherwise have to find an outlet for the power adapter.
The Lapdog isn’t perfect, but at least the design decisions Corsair made were all made in service to the most important feature of any enthusiast product: performance. (And sorry, southpaws, you're still on the outside looking in. There are no plans for a left-handed version of the Lapdog any time soon.)
Seth Colaner is the News Director for Tom's Hardware. Follow him on Twitter @SethColaner. Follow us on Facebook, Google+, RSS, Twitter and YouTube.
