Saitek P2600 Rumble Pad Game Pad Review

Overall Rating

Comfortable & light.
Smooth buttons.
Non slip handle.

Programming tricky.
Manual not very helpful and very concise.

I bought the Saitek P2600 a couple of years ago, but did not really use until recently, when I got Racedriver Grid for my nice new PC.
I can not remember whether I got a manual or a software/driver installation disk with this game pad, but I certainly couldn't find anything in my huge pile of disks and manuals one accumulates over the years. So I assume I just got the game pad. You will definitely need a manual/installation guidance with this pad, as it is quite tricky to set up. You can download the driver & manuals from the Saitek website, including the programming software for the pad. You will need to download the drivers for Vista.

The pad is a USB type and is fully programmable. It is very comfortable to hold and the buttons are very light and easy to use, even for small hands. The 8-way D pad had little notches on it, which can dig into your left thumb a bit, but only if you press too hard. The 4 quick fire shoulder triggers are a little difficult to define and are very close together. Otherwise it's very comfortable and easy to use. The pad is suppose to have a 'rumble 'effect, but I think this may be limited to only a few games, as it doesn't work for the games I have used it for, including Racedriver Grid.

Now the tricky bit: it took me ages to work out how to program the pad as there are various initial settings, and it is not very well explained in the programming manual. The manual is initially fairly easy to follow until they start using a lot of jargon and 'programming lingo ' . The initial settings are 'analogue ', 'digital 'and 'FPS ', which stand for First Person Shooter. This, I find, is a bit misleading, as it is not for FPS games at all, in fact this is what you need to be able to program the pad, as it replicates the keyboard. You must also ensure that the FPS button is selected (it lights up), otherwise the pad won't work. Once I worked that one out it was fairly easy to program. You just use the default example, change the keystroke/button allocation, and save as your own profile, like 'Racedriver 'or something. The other drawback is that if you want to test it you need to go into Notepad or Word and check to see if all the correct buttons relate to the correct keystroke. If you then need to change something you then need to load and save that profile again, and so on. This can take some time to do. Surely Saitek could have made a little test window within their programming software?

But once you've got everything set up, it go go go. Worth the hassle? Well I haven't got anything to compare it with so I assume most programmable controllers are like this? It's quite cheap and works well. Have a go and be patient.