Choosing between wired and wireless is always daunting, isn’t it? Everything comes with it’s own pros and cons and to make an informed decision, one has to be aware of it all. Well as it turns out there are some neat laid down rules or guidelines to follow through to make the right decision.
Accessories come in two variants, wired and wireless. Again, not every accessory can be wireless right now (like a full sized monitor). Let’s stick to those which are available, as rightly said, “I am limited by the technology of my time”
Primarily, we are going to discus keyboard and mouse, with a bonus at the end. First, let’s jot down the points on which we would be doing the analysis,
- Latency
- Aesthetic
- Portability
Now, let’s discuss these in details one-by-one.
1. Latency
Latency is applicable for those who game unless the peripherals purchased take super long time to register clicks in which case typing can be difficult too. Don’t worry cases like that happen very rarely and are mostly faulty devices anyway.
If one is going with wireless accessories, it always has to accounted for the time it takes to register clicks. For FPS game, few micro seconds delay will certainly result in you paying a penalty. It is always recommended for gamers to use wired peripherals, although, these days there are wireless gaming keyboards and mice too which deliver excellent click registration time but that comes at a higher price point. If you got the bucks to spare, then you won’t have the issue but if you are little tight on budget, going with standard gaming gears would probably be the right choice here.
2. Aesthetic
The reason why many choose to go with wireless accessories is solely for aesthetic reasons, and rightly so. Aesthetic is indeed an important part of any desk setup for that matter. A desk is probably where you sit 12-14 hrs a day or maybe just 1-2 hrs, it really doesn’t matter but making your desk feel like yours is an important part. A desk setup ideally represents you and what you stand for. I can personally tell a lot about a person by their desk setup.
If you are someone who likes a floating desk layout or a minimalist design, you could go with being wireless but obviously that does not mean going wired won’t restrict you to achieve that, you just got to put in more effort into dealing with the cables. Well obviously, it will be much easier to do the cable management since there would be no cables involved in wireless.
Bonus point, sometimes having cables can restrict you too. How many times it had happened to you that you were thinking of operating your pc from your bed but couldn’t because you can’t take your keyboard and/or mouse to you bed. You get this freedom when you go wireless.
3. Portability
Now, this is an interesting aspect and personally one which requires most research. When it comes to portability, we generally think only about laptops over desktops, because who even carries their gears, right? No, if you think that way then you couldn’t be further away from reality.
Let’s say you are someone who has a separate work laptop and one personal laptop/desktop. Now, when you are working from home, you hook up your work laptop to your personal keyboard and mouse but once you need to go to office to work, you just carry your work laptop and leave your gears at home. Now, I don’t know about you but once my hands gets adjusted on one type of keyboard, I find it awfully challenging to type efficiently on another keyboard so, I prefer to carry my own keyboard with me.
Now, let’s look at what to consider when thinking about portability. Obviously, wired peripherals are portable too. I mean it is just a pull away from machine, right? Again no. If you are someone who cares about cable management then you would probably have all your wires neatly tucked away hidden from your sight. Now, in this case, opening up the gear might not be the option. Here, generally it is advised to go for a wireless gear but again, not always. There are keyboards and mice which are wired but have detachable cables. The keyboard I personally use, uses a detachable usb-A to usb-C connector. So, I have my cables managed properly at my home setup but if I need to carry my keyboard somewhere, I just take my keyboard with me and use literally any usb-A to usb-C cable to connect my keyboard to my laptop. This is an elegant solution if you are really into wired gears. I should warn you, finding such wired gear is difficult, and you will not have much option to choose from.
Bonus
In one aspect, I strongly believe going wired could be better is for internet connection. For the longest time in my life, I preferred wi-fi for my machine but now, honestly, I prefer going with a wired connection. I know this is a very unpopular opinion, but it sometimes really help in overcoming the ping issue in-game. There are caveats too. Let’s say you need to carry your laptop a lot and when you are at your home you connect to the ethernet cable but everytime you decide to take your laptop with you, you need to disconnect the cable. That can be a hassle. Well as it turns out there is a solution to it as well. If your laptop has a thunderbolt port with charging capabilities, then you can purchase a dock and connect all your gears, ethernet cable and also the power cable to the dock and just a single cable from the dock connects to the laptop’s thunderbolt port. In this way, when you are on the move, you just need to disconnect only one cable. Problem solved!
Choose the right gear is difficult but one can always make an informed decision knowing exactly what to look for when going with something new. This piece of writing tries to help you in making that informed decision. Hope this read was helpful enough if you are looking to purchase a new gear for your setup.