Gave another shot at a mechanical keyboard

After that bad experience with my first mechanical keyboard purchase, I decided to buy another one from a local store. Luckily for me, there are many computer shops within a 5km radius. PC Case Gear, Scorptec, PLE, CentreCom, MSY and CPL to name a few. Furthermore, I wanted to buy a keyboard from a reputed brand name this time round. (I'm not saying Turtle Beach is not a reputed brand, just that it is not widely known.)

I kept a keen eye for deals for a couple of days on ozbargain, but none showed up. So I decided to visit the online store of those computer shops and searched for a decently priced keyboard.

The Logitech G610 and the Corsair STRAFE (non-RGB) were around $130. They were good products but I wanted to get the best bang for the buck. That's when I came across the Corsair K70 Lux (non-RGB) for $135 on CentreCom. This is better than both of those keyboards for just $5 more. Better than the G610 because it has dedicated media keys and better than the STRAFE because it has an aluminum construction compared to plastic. There were cheaper mechanical keyboard from reputed brands such as Ducky but they had some kind of a compromise - some had no backlighting, some had switches other than Cherry MX, some weren't in stock with no ETA and some didn't come with Cherry MX Brown switches. I was all set on the MX Browns, because I actually type more than I play games so I needed tactile feedback, at the same time I didn't want to noise MX Blue switches. Browns were the middle grounds, and middle grounds are better in life.

The only concern I had about the Corsair keyboards was their software suite and the keyboard requiring two USB ports.

But after some research, I came to know that you could do just fine without the software (you mainly lose the macro functionality and fancy lighting patterns) and you don't need to plug in both USB cables if you plug it into a USB 3.0 port. Honestly, I do have many unused USB ports on the back of my PC, so that 2nd point was not really a big issue; just something that I didn't like.

The update on the Turtle Beach Impact 700 keyboard purchase

In the previous post I mentioned that I placed the order for my first mechanical keyboard. It arrived a day earlier than the seller predicted. The postman was kind enough to deliver it to me just before I left for work. But I had to rush to work, so I decided to play with it when I returned home from work.

I unboxed the keyboard with my son sitting along side. It was way more fun for him than myself. I am not that amused by unmoving packages; I just want to to get it working asap. But I took some photos just to post here.

The keyboard has two USB ports. I think you can do with just one, because the second one is just for USB passthrough. But I connected both because I have ample USB ports on my PC.

To test the keyboard, I opened up notepad and started typing some words. I noticed that the spaces weren't registering between them. I hit the space bar several times and I wasn't dreaming: the spaces really weren't registering. I disconnected the keyboard and reconnected it to see if it was just a random Windows error. But the space bar still wasn't working. I connected the keyboard to two different ports on the back as well as the front. Same story. Then I tried it on the MacBook Air, and no change. The space bar was not working!!!

Yikes!

The keyboard doesn't have a companion software. That was one reason why I was happy to buy this keyboard in the first place. An additional software layer means more input lag. So this wasn't caused by me forgetting to install a companion software.

I went through the manual to see if I was doing something wrong. Honestly, what more should one do to get a keyboard working with a PC? Anyways, the manual did not mention anything special we had to do, nor any troubleshooting guides, so it wasn't a setup issue.

Conclusion: the keyboard was a DOA!!!

I have not had a DOA in a long time. The last one was a MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G which had one of its fans not working, but it wasn't totally DOA.

I wanted to see if the space bar was the only key that was not working. It was not. Several keys were not registering the key strokes. Namely, the Delete, down cursor, Num Lock, Num7, Num4 and Num1 weren't working. If I had to guess, all these keys were connected through the same electrical wiring to the controller.

I uploaded a video to YouTube showing the fault.

I went online to see if there were similar claims, but it seems I was the only (un)lucky one.

It was time to RMA the keyboard. I first messaged the store through eBay. I was told that they would most probably have to refund due to stock being exhausted. I asked how to proceed with it, but I did not received a reply back. It was late night anyways. I was lucky to have received the initial response in the first place.

Finally...placed an order for a mechanical keyboard

I had not bought anything "fun" for myself in almost a year and I finally had to do something about it. Today I received a $20 off coupon code from eBay and I thought this was my chance. I looked around for deals on Ozbargain because a great number of deals pop-up when there are discounts on offer from major retailers.

There were few for SSD and hard drive deals, but I was not in the market for either. Well, I am in the market for the 4TB hard drive, but I still haven't had time to go over the idea of strengthening my backup policy I discussed here. There were two deals for mechanical keyboards: one from JB Hi-Fi and one from eBay. The JB Hi-Fi offers weren't really cheap because you could find the products they have on sale for cheaper if you knew where to look. But the one on eBay (well, it wasn't directly from eBay but you could buy it from their eBay store as well) looked solid. A backlit mechanical gaming keyboard with Cherry MX Brown switches for AUD 100. While it still sounded expensive, it was not as expensive as the AUD 150+ normal price for mechanical keyboards from well-known brands like Corsair and Razer. Hence I decided to take a look at reviews if this was my chance to own a mechanical keyboard for the first time in my life.

The keyboard on offer was a Turtle Beach Impact 700, which was unheard of. (Note: If you visit that link, you would know that there is a huge discount on offer on Turtle Beach's US store as well) If you are into gaming, you would know about the brand "Turtle Beach" mostly from their headset lineup. But I didn't know that they made keyboards until today.

[Article] I need a mechanical keyboard

I have a Logitech G15 gaming keyboard. That is pretty bad-ass those days, but these days Mechanical Keyboards are the new trend. The G15 uses the cheap rubber switches as most of the keyboards out there. That makes it pretty silent, but not so easy to type on or push keys when gaming.

Mechanical keyboards have mechanical switches for each key. That makes them very loud, but the key travel distance until the key is registered is short and that causes less fatigue when typing and whacking the keys while gaming. There are special switch designs that makes them "feel better" when typing. But most of the times, typist keyboards are not great for gaming and vice versa. Some switch designs makes them require less force to push. But that is not always a good thing, because you cannot rest your hands on the keyboards without pressing the keys. You might need that.

Now, the mechanical keyboards have some shortfalls compared to my G15. The most pronounced thing is that none of the gaming mechanical keyboards don't come with an LCD. In fact, only a select Logitech gaming keyboards come with an LCD. Logitech only has one mechanical keyboard, called the G710+ but that doesn't have an LCD. Most people might think that the LCD is a gimmick. But I use it for monitoring certain things while gaming and stress testing. That is pretty useful because I don't have a secondary monitor. (Maybe I should get a secondary monitor!)

The other shortfall is the noise. Some people, especially typists like the click noise when hitting the keys but when you are gaming, you cannot really hear that noise because you would be wearing a headset anyways. But everyone else in the household will hear it and you will get scolded. I don't have a special computer room in my apartment, so I will have to face the wrath of my wife. But there are some mechanical keyboards that are noticeably quieter than the other mechanical keyboards. The difference is the type of the switches used. Well, the switches used these days in mechanical keyboards are almost always the ones called Cherry MX made by Cherry Corp, but there are different switch types. Cherry MX Black, Brown, Blue, Clear, Red and Green. The Black and Red keys are the gaming friendly type. Blue is the typist friendly type. Brown is in between, but also the quietest. Clear is hardly used in keyboards. Green, I have no idea about. Looks like the Browns are the best option for me. Ironically, most of the high-end gaming keyboards like the Razer's BlackWidow Ultimate or Corsair's K95 all use Cherry MX Blue switches. I don't know why they have gone with those.

So which one should I get? Logitech has great customer support here in Japan and the G710+ is considerably quieter than the rest. But their software is flimsy at times. But since I have a Logitech mouse, I will have to use their software anyways. I would rather use one software than two. But on the other hand, the Logitech keyboard has a Japanese layout. I would prefer to have the more standard US layout. However, Razor also sells the US version here at a slightly higher price so they get points for that. Their BlackWidow Stealth edition also uses Cherry MX Brown switches and is considerably quieter. I would love to try Corsair's Vengeance K95 keyboard, but that is very expensive. I want a keyboard that has macro keys on the left edge like my G15 does. So that lowers my options. I will specifically have to go with a gaming keyboard. There are other brands too, like Thermaltake and Coolermaster that make good mechanical gaming keyboards. If you want typist keyboard, there are even better brands, but unheard of in the gaming arena such as Das, Ducky and Vortex.

I need to look more into what7s available here and choose a nice mechanical keyboard, maybe by my birthday. That's a long way to go though! :(