Main Review – Part 1
Build quality
Build quality is great on this keyboard, the outer casing is made with a thick plastic that shows almost no signs of bending or flexing when force is applied to both sides.
The key caps are also very solid feeling made out of a thick plastic I feel like I won’t have any issues with the key caps breaking any time soon.
The key switches also feel very well made, being genuine Cherry switches this is to be expected but still it’s good to know that you should never have to worry about the switches failing for a long time since they are rated at 50 million clicks.
I was rather underwhelmed by the cord though, it’s not braided and the USB port isn’t gold-plated. While these aren’t exactly necessities I feel like at $89 they should be included. One pro for the cord is that it includes a ferrite bead to help against interference.
The cable is a nice length though coming in at 1.8 Meters you shouldn’t have any issues routing the cable out-of-the-way and behind your desk. The keyboard doesn’t have and channels for the cable so you’ll be stuck with the cable coming out of the middle but this is a minor issue and shouldn’t be an issue for most people.
Overall I am very pleased with the build quality, the cord could be better but it still feels really solid and shouldn’t be a failure point provided you don;t do anything crazy with your keyboard. I rate the build quality a 4/5
Included features
This keyboard includes the usual features you’d expect from any keyboard like media controls bound to the function keys.
The lighting on this keyboard is pretty cool if you like red but sadly there is no RGB lighting so if you want or need anything other than a red keyboard to complete your setup you’re fresh out of luck. That being said this keyboard does feature per key lighting meaning you can set any number of specific keys to be lit while having the rest off. Along with that there are also numerous other lighting options.
(Due to video upload limitations I recommend checking out the linked video for a better look at the lighting effects included with this keyboard *Not affiliated with FunkyKit).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EprdRPPvtwM
Along with lighting this keyboard features N Key Rollover which works perfect, I was able to press almost all the keys on the keyboard without any being missed so the NK RO works perfect!
The keyboard also has 6 programmable macro keys which are all programmable from the keyboard. I tested the macro keys by setting the fire button Black Ops 3 to the = key and setting a macro that was me pressing the = key around 20 times and then seeing how many times my character in BLOPS3 fired a semi auto weapon off of one press, and it worked pretty well my character fired around 10 shots before stopping so some of the key presses weren’t registered but realistically you wouldn’t need a macro for that many single key presses in a row so it really isn’t a big negative.
The macro keys also work perfectly for binding multiple keys to one keypress, I was able to bind 22 keys to a single press so You should never run into needing more keys bound to a single press. There are also 6 different programmable macros which can all be programmed with their own key combos.
My only complaint with the macro keys is that they are all positioned on the number pad which makes them extremely hard to use during game-play when you need to use the WASD and mouse at the same time, using the Macros require you to either stop using the mouse to turn or stop using the WASD keys to move so I wish they had the macro keys bound to either the number keys about the letters or the function keys.
The keyboard also features collapsible kick stands which add a lot to the comfort of this keyboard, when they are extended the board tilts towards you by a pretty decent amount.
Overall I am pleased with the lighting options and other features but I feel like it doesn’t quite do enough to justify the price tag, It certainly does a lot but there are cheaper keyboards out there that do the same things like macro keys and lighting effects. I also wish the macro keys were in a different place on the keyboard to make them easier to use during gaming.but overall I rate the features 4/5
1 comment
Lots of criticism of what it does not have compared to cheaper keyboards, but there wasn’t any information on whether those cheaper boards also had cherry mx switches.
If they don’t, then that isn’t really a fair comparison to pick fault with.