As someone who has been watching Linus Sebastian for the past 15 years or so, from his humble beginnings to his titanic influence in the tech industry today, one thing has always been clear to me: he (and now his massive media enterprise) were never very good in reviewing keyboards and mice (one needs nothing more than his infamous mechanical keyboards switch testing video opinions to see where I’m coming from ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ --just kidding: I understand it's just pref-er-ence :). But that’s Ok, since the reason why I watch his content is mostly for entertainment purposes (which I don’t think anyone one can deny the high entertainment value of his videos) and not so much for how in-depth his reviews are (they are rarely in-depth in my opinion).
Most of the presenters in his channels are VERY GOOD entertainers (I can’t get enough of James and Riley for example), but outside of videos produced by Anthony (who is someone who clearly knows what his is talking about, 100% of the time), I’ll go elsewhere on YouTube when I really need advice before buying some expensive tech toy: usually Gamers Nexus and Hardware Unboxed for anything PC parts, Jarrod'sTech for laptops, Hardware Canucks and Optimum Tech for PC builds and gaming peripherals, MechMerlin for mechanical keyboards, Hausgaming and DiamondLobby Reviews specifically for gaming mice, among other creators who are less entertaining than LTT, but far more in-depth in the way they review products.
And this brings me to both LTT videos on Glorious Model O 2… Although, before that, let me get the obvious stuff out of the way here: I am a small content creator myself, and I know that the first thing people will point out is the fact that I was one of the few people who had access to a pre-production sample of the O 2, and apparently the only one who cared enough to make a video on it at the time.
But I think my video can speak for itself on my views and opinions on this product and how I approach my reviews, so I am not going to repeat all that here (if you know my YouTube content, you know everything you need to know about my product reviewing ethics). But for context sake, the TL;DR of that video is that I understood the changes Glorious did to the Model O, and I also understood who this mouse was for (hint: not for people who consider themselves competitive pro gamers). And for that target market, I believe the O 2 is a great product, possibly one of the very few that still offers certain traits, mostly aesthetics, that such market segment craves (you’d be surprised how many people still care about RGB!) without skimping on performance, build quality and design.
And before any one throws a “Glorious shill” stone at me, from their beautiful glass house, while I have reviewed and written about many Glorious products in the past, I believe I was always pretty transparent when doing it, and I never pulled back criticism when I believed criticism was due.
So, when I saw LTT’s ShortCircuit video (hosted by their cinematographer David Gauthier) about the O 2, I took it for what it was worth: a quickly produced unboxing video where no care was taken to review the product properly --they obviously didn’t even care to update the firmware out of the box, which while being an unfortunate trait of tech products in 2023, is one we all understand the reasons for at this point.
And then on the latest LTT video covering RandomFrankP’s recent collab with Pulsar, I was left scratching my head at the end of that video… So many weird decisions, statements and conclusions:
Why comparing a relatively new Pulsar X2 mini, packing the latest trends in weight reduction (as well as sensors and switches), to 2 or 3 years old models from Logitech (original G Pro, instead of the G Pro X Superlight) and Razer (Ultimate, instead of V2 Pro)?
Why use a fancy robot to calculate mice “accuracy” and “precision”, but then use an obviously flawed inclined plank test to rank the smoothness of the mice’s skates? --If you’ll use “extreme tech” to measure one thing, why not also use it to measure everything else??
Not a single word on how the click latency was tested? Even though it was arguably the most important negative aspect of O 2?? If you show how fancy your "accuracy" and "precision" testing gear is, why not also show your click-latency testing method???
The "accuracy" of the Model O 2 was "by far the worst in our field", while the graph shows that at least the accuracy was the second best? And then the results flip with it having normal "precision" deviation, but then a completely whacked "accuracy" with the glass mousepad?? --That alone makes me question the testing methodology used here.
"(...) accuracy only really matters if you're switching between mice", but then saying the Model O 2 sucks on the glass pad, because "the accuracy was still terrible"?
Could not connect the original Model O to Glorious Core using Core version 1.0.24, when the latest version has been 1.0.33 for a while now (since March 7th, 2023)? Did they at least try the pairing utility Glorious offers for connectivity issues before risking "computer herpes" out there?? --No mention of that in the video...
Now, while his “precision” and “accuracy” results were supposedly very damning for Glorious, I think it takes more than a 2-inch move (by a robot arm nonetheless) to assert that --which, to be fair, Linus did touch on this himself when he said his testing methodology should only "in theory" give meaningful results. For starters, as any researcher worth its salt will tell you, whenever you get such an outlier result on any type of research, after running it multiple times, you should re-check your testing execution, then your methodology, and then your sample, before you get to anything resembling a solid conclusion. And while I don't think a mouse benchmarking methodology should have the same level of seriousness than a pharmaceutical laboratory’s when testing life-saving drugs, if you’re touting the precision of your new “labs” venture (and how it is going to revolutionize tech products benchmarking going forward), then maybe it should.
At any rate, I will not spend more pixels here listing all the things that could have gone wrong with LTT’s mice benchmarking on that video (both technical and methodology wise), since I, and anyone else outside of LTT’s team, do not have the facts on how those tests were actually performed. When I criticized Rtings latency test of the GMMK Pro, I did point out a similar issue with their article at the time, that did not give all the relevant technical details on how they perform their keyboard latency tests (such as explaining if they always use the same computer with the same cables and the same software versions in all their tests for example), but over there they at least give the basics on how they perform their multiple tests.
What I will say here though, is that I’ll take the arguably more subjective results from people who test gaming mice for a living before LTT's… So, even the relatively negative conclusion that Frank himself got on his video review of the Model O 2, or the slightly more positive one from another gaming mice reviewer that I have grown quite fond of recently, Chris Parker from DiamondLobby Reviews, carry far more weight in my eyes, simply because it comes from people who have more standing on this topic: one has been specifically testing gaming peripherals for the best part of the almost 15 years of his YouTube career, and the other is a real competitive gamer that only reviews gaming mice.
Even I, with my tiny YouTube channel, made the effort of bringing in an actual competitive gamer to give his take on the Model O 2 on my video review, since despite my more than 3 decades of using, fixing, tuning and modding PCs and PC peripherals, I have not been a competitive gamer for almost a decade now. So, I thought my review could not be complete without the opinion of one.
As I watched both Frank P and Chris reviews, while they had no shortage of criticism to many design choices made on this mouse, you can clearly see they had no issues with accuracy, precision or latency when testing the O 2. And, at least to me, the clearly subjective opinion of these guys, who test mice in real gaming use cases, is worth far more than some baffling robotic testing methods someone can concoct with their near limitless resources, but without any actual in-depth experience with specifically testing gaming mice performance (experience which I’m sure Linus Media Group could afford to bring in before producing this type of content, if they cared).
I obviously understand the clout Linus has in the tech industry at this point. The size of his channels clearly makes him untouchable, regardless of how right or wrong he can be on any of his (or his team’s) opinions. So, if he comes out swinging a bad review of any tech product, the damage to that product’s reputation in the market is all but a given...
But regardless, for those of us who are a bit more skeptical, and prefer to hear more than one opinion before we spend our hard earned cash on tech products, I think it would be safe to wait for other respected gaming mice reviewers out there to have a chance to test the Model O 2 (Optimum Tech, Hardware Canucks and Hausgaming just to name a few) and give their opinions on it, before we can actually conclude anything worthwhile for the long term, as far as this particular Glorious product is concerned.
