With a name that reads like a Brit complaining about his gaming hardware (just read it out loud in an accent if you don’t believe me), and a logo that seems to whisper malevolently “we know,” the Bloody SP80 Bleeding Edge Gaming Mouse gets lots of bonus points for marketing itself to the youthful gamers out there who are most interested in showing off the flashing lights and hard edges of their computer setup.
Sadly, for the gamer who’s looking for more under the hood, Bloody responds with an overwhelming “meh.”
I will say right off the bat that the SP80 feels good to play with. The textures on the mouse are varied, which sounds like it would be annoying, but it seems pretty well thought-out. The top of the mouse has a nice soft-touch feel to it, while the left and right wall panels are more textured, allowing for a nice grip. The bottom of the mouse is laid out with four metal feet (as opposed to rubber or plastic ones you’ll see on less gaming-focused mice) that make movements feel smooth. The roller functionality is smooth. It’s all smooth.
Beyond that, I’m afraid, there’s not much to recommend about the Blood SP80. The macro functions and thumb click buttons are perfectly adequate. Bloody themselves promise 1:1 response times, but it felt absolutely no different from most gaming-centric mice I’ve used in the past. This would be all there was to say about that, if it weren’t for my left mouse button suddenly double-clicking automatically. This is particularly amusing considering the fact that Bloody’s marketing material for this mouse in particularly proudly proclaims that it has “anti double click” technology. At this rate, the 10 million click performance I’ve also been promised has been effectively cut in half.
Even with this bug in the hardware, it’s not like I have a ton to complain about when it comes to the Blood SP80. But I don’t have anything that gets me excited, either. After playing several games with this mouse, its proclamations of tech-marketing words like “Light Strike Optical Switches” feel like just more terminology for the same old stuff.
I think when you look into Bloody’s other mice (there are literally dozens of them, and outside of their shells they seem fairly identical), you start to understand the hook: a sense of quantity over quality. There are so many different Bloody mice to choose from, and they’re black and red and have skulls and say “Headshot!” and stuff like that.
Call me a cynic, but the Bloody SP80 Bleeding Edge Gaming Mouse feels like another example of form over function.
[Note: Bloody provided the SP80 Bleeding Edge used in this review]
Available on Amazon for $59.99.
