GIGABYTE GK-FORCE K85 RGB Mechanical Gaming Keyboard

i've had this board for a few weeks now, so it's time to render judgement!we've all read reviews by folks here on amazon that clearly should not have been written - ie any review by someone who complains that blue switch keyboards are "too loud", lol - so let me begin by stating that i am an avid collector of dirt-cheap mechanical keyboards of all kinds. aukey, tomoko, redragon, random mid-tier brands like thermaltake's gaming division's stuff, but i also dabble with the good - i've purchased a corsair k95 from amazon, and bought a ducky secondhand from someone i know irl. so i like to think that my opinion is grounded in the sort of experience that might make this a good review.anyways that paragraph is probably going to be longer than the review itself. let's get on with it:first off, i will start with the bad. why? because honestly it's not that bad, you'll see why in a second.THE KEYCAPS ARE GOD-AWFUL!! too lazy to take a video, but i'm not kidding or exaggerating when i say that some of the stock keycaps literally just sort of fell out while i was typing. my arrow keys were all garbage, as well as a handful of the qwerty keys.ok! thats out of the way! on to the good:the good news is who cares!!!! what sort of nerd keeps stock keycaps anyways! as you can see from my picture, i went and replaced most of my keycaps anyways - the WASD and arrow keycaps are from a redragon kumara, the rest are from some random set i ordered from ebay or something.when you pay less than 40 bucks for a mechanical keyboard, you know you're going to be getting compromises somewhere. so the way i see it - the "bad" here isn't really a "bad", because of all the things i would choose for gigabyte to compromise on, it would have to be the keycaps.the switches are solid, set into the board with no wobble (that is where redragon saves money, the result is crooked keys). the case is well-designed, with an aluminum face that offers low-profile easy access for cleaning, as well as a nice hefty weight for a solid base.as promised, the keys offer a nice and quiet typing experience. the only real noise comes from the stabilizer bars on the space/shift/enter keys, though honestly that might be my fault, i threw the new keycaps on without stopping to check to see if the stabilizers needed to be attached or not.when i first noticed the bad keys, i didnt know if it was the keycaps themselves, or the switches. as you can tell i concluded that it must be the keycaps, because after switching them out, the new keys grip onto the switches tightly.anything else? the media keys are what they are, the only ones i ever use are volume up/down/mute and gigabyte follows the general trend of placing these three at f2/f3/f4, with the fn key used to activate them.a little neat thing i dont see on all keyboards is that gigabyte replaced the right-hand windows key with a windows LOCK key - ie it merely enables or disables the left-hand windows key. super useful for gaming.yup, thats about it. all-in-all, probably my favorite sub-$40 keyboard ive used yet, but also, it's rare to find a red-switched keyboard for that price, most of them tend to be blue switched. but it's more than the switch type itself - it really is just a nice, solid keyboard. honestly not sure why i'm writing this review either, because anyone who reads this review is now a potential competitor of mine, in the race to snap up as many of these as i can before they're gone forever. so uhhhhhhhh disregard all that and go buy a rottay or something

This is for the K83 Red Switch keyboard since there are multiple products reviewed here.This is the best functional "no-frills" mechanical keyboard you'll be able to find. There is no backlight, no RGB, no macro keys, and no software required to be installed. This keyboard is 100% plug and play with no setup required! I picked it up for an absolute bargain price on sale for $39.99 here on Amazon. For me the lack of unwanted features keeps the price point down and you're still getting a solidly produced, high quality keyboard using real Cherry MX Switches. These are not Oetemu, Gateron, or Kailh switches. I am an avid PC Gamer and this keyboard is the bees knees.Even though this is the standard 104-key layout with no macro keys (thank goodness) or dedicated media keys I feel it should be noted the function (FN) key to the right of the space bar allows many shortkey functions which work just fine.Pressing FN+F1-F12 (L to R): Home, volume down, volume up, mute, play/pause, stop, previous track, next track, default music player, default mail app, task manager, and calculator.If you've never typed or gamed on Cherry MX Red Switches before, especially if you're coming from Cherry MX Blues or Browns, you may have an adjustment period like I did. They have a very light actuation force of 45 grams. Because of my experiences, I highly recommend getting these o-rings if you want to quiet it down, and limit your key travel to keep you from bottoming out on the board. They only took me about 20 minutes to install:ThreeBulls 120Pcs Rubber O-Ring Switch Dampeners Keycap white For Cherry MX Key Switch Keyboards Dampershttp://a.co/7GLscP1 (ThreeBulls 120pc Rubber Red O-Rings)Putting o-rings on a Cherry MX Red switch keyboard will make this keyboard just as quiet as most dome switch keyboards.I am so impressed with this Gigabyte K83 keyboard that I am most likely using it to replace my Razer Blackwidow Chroma v2 -- which I think says a lot. I don't need bloated software and unwanted macro keys.