No nonsense kit for the gamer.
Keyboards. You can’t use a PC without them and taking a stroll into any PC shop or browsing any online retailer will present you with a plethora of options. You’ve got keyboards with dials and knobs for media stuff, extra scroll wheels, sockets for headphones and mics, USB hubs, twenty different shortcut buttons and then the usual keyboard keys too. You can get ones with little screens, programmable keys, lighting that changes colour and even waterproof keys for those coffee-disaster moments.My best mate has been on the hunt for a new keyboard for a while now, at least for three or four months. He uses the same keyboard as me for gaming and everyday use, in fact I bought him his for his birthday and he returned the favour a few months later for my birthday, he was that impressed. And I have to say that my Logitech Elite has served me perfectly. Sure, it’s got half a dozen shortcut buttons for crap like e-mail and MSN which I never touch, but the media control buttons are very handy as are the function key folder shortcuts.
Click for larger imageBut the real reason I’m still using that keyboard, (so much so that some keys have actually been worn smooth!), is because it has just the right balance of key action and functions. And that’s something that a lot of these damn ‘gaming’ keyboards seem to fall down on. The key action is, put simply, crap. It’s as if the designers have decided they’ve spent too much time cramming in lighting and a special ‘rocket launcher’ button that when it came to the key action they just filled the thing with a damp sponge and left it at that. Has it not got through to these guys that when you hit a key you want a positive action. The words ‘soft and spongy’ are only good if used in the same sentence as the words ‘Kiera’ and ‘Knightley’... and I’m damn sure she isn’t in the box for most of these keyboards.
It seems that everyone and their dog wants to get in on the ‘keyboard for gamerz’ act nowadays. But to my mind, for reliability and practicality, the RAPTOR-GAMING K1 is still the best pure gaming keyboard I’ve come across. But that could be set to change as SteelSeries are now doing a keyboard, the Steelkeys 6G, and you know what? It could be the best, no nonsense keyboard yet.
Read on to find out why.
