We spend a lot of time putting together super-powerful rigs that can render beautiful pixels as fast as the eye can see, but it's important to pay attention to your peripherals too.
Best gaming mice
Need a new mouse to match that mechanical keyboard? Check out our guide to the best gaming mouse.
The right gaming keyboard ultimately comes down to the right feel while you’re playing. Membrane switches are familiar but often spongy. Mechanical keyboards offer key switches that are responsive when typing or moving in a game and feel good to push down. That feel is important, because the keyboard is the peripheral you’ll spend the most time with at your PC, and it has to feel right.
The gaming keyboard market has undergone some major changes. Some companies have made their products increasingly sophisticated, while others are going back to their roots. We’ve also seen the rise of proprietary switches from a few companies. With all this in mind, here are our picks for the best gaming keyboards:
Best overall gaming keyboard
- RGB Cherry MX Switches
- Macros
- USB Passthrough
- Wristrest
- Includes a mouse bungee and swappable keycaps
- Could use a better design
- Driver software is crap
- Eats up desk space
It was tough choice between the Corsair K70 LUX and the G.Skill Ripjaws KM780. In the end, the G.Skill Ripjaws KM780 won our vote due to its more robust set of features.
Sporting a design that’s just as eccentric as G.Skill’s memory modules, the KM780 is clad in metal front plate, braided cables, and a metal rail. The metal rail adds a little more convenience when lifting the keyboard. It also doubles as the rail mount for the mouse bungee and the carrying case for the extra keycaps.
The KM780 is available in Cherry MX Red, Blue, and Brown versions. We picked ours to have the Blues. Cherry MX Blue is renowned for its superior tactile feedback and pronounced clicky actuation. While it works great for FPS games and typing, it may not be ideal for spammy games due to its hysteresis. The loud click is also a hit or miss: to some, it’s the symphony of productivity, to others, it’s the bane of concentration.
Cherry’s translucent switch housing nicely diffuses the light across the top keycap. Sadly, the dimly lit surface-mounted LEDs make them hard to see even in a dark room. Employing a caseless chassis, the switches on the Ripjaws KM780 stick out tall, leaving plenty of space at the bottom for light to spill out.
The keycaps on the Ripjaws KM780 are made from ABS plastic, the most widely used plastic for keyboards. A separate set of textured keycaps for the Gaming Zone (Q, W, E, R, C, A, S, D, F, and G keys) is included along with a key puller. These custom caps are slightly angled to improve ergonomics when gaming. The laser etched keyprints are much more conservative than we expected considering G.Skill's affinity for flashy designs.
The Ripjaws KM780 comes full decked out with a plethora of extra features. In addition to a column of dedicated macro keys, it also comes with convenient media controls and a mouse bungee installed. Below the volume wheel is a LED indicator strip to show the volume level. It’s a neat little spin that’s actually surprisingly helpful.
Also included is a detachable wrist rest. Its texturized plastic surface is easy to clean and very comfortable. Be warned though, it does take up a good chunk of your desk estate, but you can find worse things to clutter your desk with.
While the keyboard may come with a solid set of hardware, its software fails to impress. The dated interface, microscopic buttons, and confusing setting groups were all turn-offs. Considering this is the same interface used for all of G.Skill's peripherals, it needs some serious reworking to be considered polished. On the bright side, the settings can be stored directly on to the device, saving the trouble of fiddling with the software whenever you plug it into another PC. Its numerous lighting profiles, such as checkpoint, are pretty neat too.
Saying the list price is budget friendly is a bit of a stretch. The G.Skill Ripjaws KM780 starts at $140 on Amazon, overlapping with lower-tier premium boards. If you can look past its over enthusiastic look and the unintuitive driver software, then what you’ll find is one of the most feature-rich gaming keyboards available on the market.
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Best membrane keyboard
- Premium, ultra-smooth Topre switches
- Well-built
- Extra-grippy, texturized rubber feet
- Doubleshot keycaps
- RGB (finally)
- Expensive...really expensive
The Topre Realforce RGB is the second Topre keyboard we’ve tested. Our previous best, Cooler Master Novatouch TKL, is no longer being produced.
Topre switch has been around for a while now, but it’s new to the backlit scene, let alone RGB. The RGB Topre switches is a fairly significant step forward, bringing some much-needed lights to typists in the dark.
Whether the Topre switch belongs in the membrane family is a hotly debated topic. On one hand, there’s a conical spring under each cap which detects a keystroke when it’s depressed, on the other hand, the conical spring is covered by a rubbery electrostatic layer that’s responsible for most of the tactile feedback. We like to think of Topre as a more refined version of the rubber dome switch.
While the Topre switch comes in different actuation forces, its distinct feel is consistent across the entire lineup. They all feature tactile point at the start of actuation followed by a smooth, uniform linear travel until they’re bottomed out. Due to the rubbery electrostatic layer, the impact when bottoming out isn’t as harsh as Cherry MX switches.
The hardy chassis is sculpted with sharp edges and chiseled corners. A flat, satin black finish adds to the professional look.
A feature we didn’t think we’d need was textured rubber feet. Compared to the traditional flat feet, they do a much better job at keeping the keyboard planted on our desk through our torrential typing. It’s a subtle detail we appreciate, and we wish more companies would follow suit.
One of the best features of the Topre Realforce RGB is its doubleshot keycaps. Unlike traditional laser-etched keycaps that use a single layer of plastic, doubleshot stacks two layers of plastic on top of one another. The bottom layer fills the letter cut out in the top layer, forming the keyprints. Doubleshot keycaps have superior longevity since the keyprints will forever stay clear, the only downside is the associated increase in cost.
Many switch manufacturers today attempt to decrease the latency between keystrokes and actuation by reducing the actuation distance. Unfortunately, a single fixed actuation point may not be flexible enough to cater to everyone’s needs. To tackle this issue, the Topre Realforce RGB comes with varying actuation points. Because of its capacitive nature, the actuation distance needed to register a keystroke can be changed to 1.3mm, 2mm, or 3mm. We recommend the 3mm setting for a classic rubber dome feel.
Some downsides of the Topre Realforce RGB includes the lack of braided cables, macros, and wristrest. The biggest deterrence, however, is its gut-wrenching $250 asking price. At the same time, this is understandable: the Topre switch is a premium switch with very tight QC, and using 108 of them can make the board quite expensive. While the price gap between the Realforce RGB and a similar Cherry MX keyboard may be hard to swallow, it’s the best bet if you want the perfect membrane feel without sacrificing longevity.
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To make it on to our list, the keyboard has to have a balance of three things: performance, build quality, and features that make sense for what it’s designed to do.
When a keyboard arrives at our office, we first dig up some info on the make and switches to get a general idea of its quality. We then hammer our planks with words and gaming for days on end, often at the hands of multiple people to gather feedback from different perspectives. If it warrants, we’ll even tear the board apart and scrutinize its guts under a magnifying glass.
Judging features is much more finicky. What we think is important may not be important to you. But we always have you, the gamer, in mind when we review a product. Do these features really make a difference? Or are they just here as an artsy excuse to jack up the price? That’s what we try to answer.
Lastly, we always try to choose keyboards with more than one switch type available. The Novatouch was a special case because standard desktop membrane keyboards generally have little variation between one another.
Some games we use to test are: Starcraft 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Battlefield 4, and Witcher 3.
Competitors
We put our hands on a whole bunch of gaming keyboards in the process of testing for this article. Some of the others we tested are worth a mention, even if they didn't make a top spot on our list. After all, keyboards are highly personal devices; what works for one person may not work for another.
A previous pick for best overall gaming keyboard, the G610 Orion offers a solid core feature set to satisfy a majority of gamers. It doesn't come with many bells and whistles (and its plain, rugged design would blend right in with an office cubicle), but it's a respectable board with a very appealing price tag.
Razer’s signature keyboard has finally been updated to Version 2 in 2017. The Razer BlackWidow Chroma V2 comes with a new switch flavor and a large wrist rest in exchange for a $30 premium.
A linear switch from Razer is long overdue. Much like the Cherry MX Red, the new linear Razer Yellow sacrifices the tactile bump to achieve higher responsiveness. Performance is as you’d expect: a very close feel to the Cherry MX Red.
The new switch and spacious wristrest does seem like enticing upgrades, but its price falls directly in-between the Ripjaws KM780 and the Corsair K95 RGB. Winning in neither value or features, the Razer BlackWidow Chroma V2 misses the top spot in both high-end and overall categories.
The G810 Orion Spectrum is the big daddy version of the G610 Orion equipped with Logitech’s proprietary Romer-G switches. While its performance is top-notch, it’s a hit or miss for most people since the G810 offers rather shallow key travel.
The Rosewill RK-9000 V2 is a straight up awesome keyboard. Mounted on its durable dual-layer PCB is a set of either Cherry MX Blue or Red switches. The RGB backlight has plenty of effects to choose from. Its braided cable is detachable for easy transportation.
Some of its regrettable downsides include cluttered keyprints and the lack of any dedicated macros. But even so, it’s still a fantastic buy if you want a quality standard keyboard with RGB backlighting.
As the close running second candidate for our best overall gaming keyboard position, the Corsair K70 LUX features dedicated media controls, RGB Cherry MX switches, large wristrest, and a USB passthrough for $131. If it had dedicated macros, it would’ve scored an easy victory against the G.SKILL RIPJAWS 780.
The Kingston HyperX Alloy FPS is a durable board using Cherry’s MX Blue, Brown, or Red switches. Its no-frills, aluminum-covered chassis relies on the single mode red backlight to turn heads.
But at $99, it doesn’t offer any significant advantage over its competition. The USB port installed at the front is strictly for charging and not for data. Kingston claims that the HyperX Alloy FPS is more compact than its competitors, but a quick comparison against some common keyboards shows that the difference is negligible.
If you’ve bought one already, rest assured: it’s a solid performer and won’t drag you down in whatever you want a standard keyboard to do. But if you value having extra features, look through some other options before swinging back to this one.
The Razer Ornata uses Razer’s mecha-membrane switch. Employing a unique construction where a clicky mechanical slider is installed on top of a rubber dome switch, its goal is to mimic the feel of a mechanical switch without actually using a mechanical switch. While the idea is interesting on paper, the switch provides neither the quick actuation of a mechanical switch nor the silence of the rubber dome. And for $99? We say save yourself the trouble and swipe left.
Our previous pick for the best keyboard for typing enthusiasts, the Ducky Shine 5 is designed to be the ultimate desk companion. It features a detachable USB cord, switches to change the location of the FN key, and dual-injected ABS keycaps. But while the Shine 5's build quality is superb, we wish that the front plate were made of actual metal instead of plastic with a brushed-metal texture.
The ROCCAT Ryos MK FX improves on the ROCCAT Ryos MK Pro by featuring a delicious set of RGB lighting using Cherry’s transparent switch housing and surface mount LEDs. But why leave out the USB pass-throughs?
The Tesoro Excalibur V2 is a formidable contender to the Thermaltake Poseidon Z. Squeezing itself into the slither of space between budget and midrange, the Excalibur V2 brings dual-injected keycaps into an unprecedented price range. The industrious typeface and blocky keycaps produce a more modernized look compared to the dated Thermaltake Poseidon Z. Unfortunately, its $90 price tag puts it in the same price bracket as the Logitech G610 Orion which, in our opinion, is a superior option.
The Isku FX has dedicated macros, good membrane switches, and backlighting all for under $90. It would’ve been a promising contender for the best membrane keyboard seat if it weren’t for its rampant ghosting issues.
The Razer DeathStalker uses a larger, more stable switch housing with its traditional membrane switches. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get used to its flat and slippery chiclet keys.
Compact, affordable, and high-quality, the Cooler Master QuickFire Rapid used to be the reigning champion in budget mechanical keyboards. This time around though, we think there’s more value to be had in the Thermaltake Poseidon Z with its number pad and backlighting.
Future testing
There are tons of keyboards we still haven’t reviewed but love to get our hands on. Here’s are a few on the top of our list:
- SteelSeries Apex M800
- Max Keyboard Nighthawk
- Topre Realforce (both TKL and full-sized variants)
- Filco Majestouch 2
- HHKB Pro 2
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