Friday 9 May 2014

Time For a New Keyboard

Friday 9 May 2014 - by Evlyxx 3


This week I killed my keyboard, well that may be an exaggeration, I killed my "2" key, which to anyone who has heard me mash my buttons while on TS or Vent will wonder how the hell my keyboard lasted this long and they will also be surprised that it wasn't as a result of my mashing buttons, but when I was removing buttons to clean it I suspect that I tore the rubber membrane meaning the key doesn't return to the normal resting position but prefers to sit a mm or two above the activation point and actually hurts when pressing the button repeatedly as there is no rebound.

My current keyboard is a Logitech G510, my previous keyboard was a Logitech G15 and that is still giving great service to my son who received it as a hand-me-down when I saw the G510 and the bank of 18 macro keys and though to myself, "hmm, I NEED one of those!". I also have Logitech G5 mouse despite replacing it 4 years ago with a Razer Naga. I say replaced, but again I exaggerate the truth, I had a brief fling with the Naga for about 2 months before I realised the aches in my hand where because of the uncomfortable Naga that is way to small and causes my thumb to play a solo game of Twister when trying to hit all 12 buttons. So you could call me a Logitech fanboi but I prefer to think of it as me preferring man-sized goods made for men, by men that understand that men come in man-sized packages as well as small boy sized. 

In the last few months I have been considering getting a mechanical keyboard and had been doing the usual browsing around. For those of you that don't know why a mechanical keyboard is claimed to be superior to a traditional keyboard watch the video below, it can do a much better job than I could:

Sadly Logitech only offer 1 mechanical keyboard, the Logitech G710, a fine looking keyboard aimed at gamers. However, there are two shortcomings with this keyboard, no screen and 12 missing macro keys. The screen I could live without but having gotten used to 18 dedicated macro keys I know I would regret every one of the £149 spent on it. It could be the best keyboard ever made and I'd hate it.
So, I started to look around idly and discovered that there were many gaming keyboards with mechanical switches but very few had macro keys. It was then that I discovered the Corsair Vengeance K95 keyboard, this beast met all my needs but it did lack the screen of the G15 and the G510. However, I was in love, wait that is creepy., I meant I really liked it and wanted one. Sure I had reservations, I had never heard of Corsair as a peripherals company, only as a memory supplier, I found a few review all sounding positive but I found no negative feedback, in the Internet world, that means they must be good because if they weren't there would be stacks of bad news forum threads. All I had to do was convince myself that spending £145 on it was a good investment and then to be able to convince the wife that I deserved one, maybe if I was good and saved some cash on the weekly shop and stopped buying the occasional goodies to add to the petrol purchase I could claim I'd "earned the right".
This was all when I didn't need a keyboard urgently, sadly my "2" key decided to break and my dreams were shattered. I searched for a bargain buy all over the Internet, I couldn't find many places that sold them let alone one that was selling them cheaply. I considered buying lesser mechanical keyboards, that is to say ones with fewer macro keys but none were priced cheaply enough  to warrant the loss of the macro keys. 

Therefore, I have decided to stick with my trusted brand, Logitech, and go with the latest incarnation of the G510, the G510s. It offers me everything I want out of a keyboard except them mechanical keys but for less than half the price I think I can cope, my wife will still have a nervous breakdown when I get the bill through on the credit card but ultimately I know I have got a quality product that will give me many years of service through all the abuse I'll give it.

For now, my mechanical keyboard dreams are over but next time, I'm hoping that Logitech has the product I really, really want, a mechanical G510, maybe the G510M? Oh and while you're at it drop a USB3 hub in there too so i can use my headset that require USB power to work or maybe I'll replace the headset.

The keyboard and mouse is such an integral part of our gaming but one that we often overlook or take for granted. Do you use a gaming keyboard/mouse combo? If so I'd like to hear what you use.

About the Author

By day I'm an IT Server analyst for a major telecoms compnay in the UK and I've been playing World of Warcraft since November 2005 when a pair of colleagues bullied me into playing! I have evolved into a raider (summer 2006), an auction house wheeler dealer (2007), a guild officer (2007), an altoholic (2008), a raid leader (2008), a Warcraft blogger (2010) and a PVPer (2012)

My main has, and always will be Evlyxx, a priest and I love to heal. I started as Holy in vanilla, dabbled with the shadow side during the middle part of Burning Crusade, before returning to Holy but I have been mostly Discipline since mid-Wrath.

3 comments:

  1. Just as you Ian I have been a huge fanboi of Logitech keyboards and mices.. Tried a Razer mouse once before and didnt like it.. It didnt fit my hand at all. But then I firstly bought a Razer Naga 2012 and yes, I also have problem with reaching all the buttons with my fingers. So I only use the top 6 atm.. But I tried out the different things that followed with the mouse so I could get a wider mouse so my hand fit good. And because Ive never tried an mechanical keyboard before, I bought the Razer Blackwidow 2010. And Im a bit so so about it. Not 100% happy. Havent seen any improvement of gaming with it. The negative sides about it is; the sound.. its awful when I strike those buttons and it sounds like Im hammering an old typewriter.. Awful to the ear and annoys the girlfriend alot. The second bad thing is of some reason I put my hand wrong.. It want to come slightly to the left, so when I want to press A, I many times instead press Caps Lock.. After 7½ months and still can´t find the correct keys.. Im slightly thinking of going back to a silent Logitech gaming keyboard. Like the G110 I owned before. But its all up to the money.. and those arent grand these days with me supporting two people on one salary.

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    Replies
    1. The sound is all dependent on the colour of your switches, the Black Widow comes with Razer switches not the usual Cherry ones so I don't know what type they are the equivalent of but in the video guide I posted above the guy there says it may be because your pressing your keys all the way down when you don't need to.

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    2. The Blackwidow Jimmy has doesn't have Razer switches in it (not sure what they are) - they only got introduced in the very latest incarnation of the keyboard. I have the same keyboard and mostly the same issues with the slightly off-skew positioning meaning Caps Lock gets hit accidentally rather a lot. There is, and always has been, a silent version of the Blackwidow but the noise has never bothered me. It's an awesome piece of kit in my opinion and, if I used it a lot more regularly I'm sure I would be used to the shift of keys. If number of macro keys is a priority then it's not the keyboard for you as it has very few (4-6 iirc) and that's not a lot of 'M' keys for your money. I have the 2014 Naga and it's a very good mouse. The button layout on the side has been changed (I think made bigger and more ergonomic) and it also has mechanical switches in those buttons as well. That, along with the 8200 DPI sensitivity, make it a wonderful thing to use.. I also have massive hands so if it feels ok size-wise in my hands it should in most. The only problem I've ever had is sometimes hitting two buttons together that have spells not on the GCD or sometimes hitting the wrong button but this tends to be when I've not used it for a while and the muscle memory from the thumg has faded.

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About the Author

By day I'm an IT Server analyst for a major telecoms compnay in the UK and I've been playing World of Warcraft since November 2005 when a pair of colleagues bullied me into playing! I have evolved into a raider (summer 2006), an auction house wheeler dealer (2007), a guild officer (2007), an altoholic (2008), a raid leader (2008), a Warcraft blogger (2010) and a PVPer (2012)

My main has, and always will be Evlyxx, a priest and I love to heal. I started as Holy in vanilla, dabbled with the shadow side during the middle part of Burning Crusade, before returning to Holy but I have been mostly Discipline since mid-Wrath.

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