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very specific keyboard needs


Yanta

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I am looking to buy 3 keyboards. My existing ones are Logitech G105 and they 5-6 years old. They are exceptional keyboards. I'm looking to see if Corsair has anything as exceptional.

 

Specifically I'm looking for keyboards that are silent. Literally, no keyboard sound. The G105's are membrane and given I'm at a keyboard 14 hours a day noisy keyboards will drive me insane. Indeed, my son has a Logitech Orion G910 keyboard that is supposed to silent. I can hear him typing from my downstairs kitchen.

 

The G105 has PER KEY back light. For those who don't know what that is there are basically 3 lighting techniques. A backlit color that is under the keys that bleeds out from all sides and looks disgusting. Then we have RBG, which is equally gross. I'm not a touch typist and flashing colors, or even multi color on a keyboard is exceptionally distracting.

 

And then we have per key backlight where each individual key is back lit with a single soft color. Either blue or white (blu being my preference).

 

So, I'm looking for per key backlit keyboards that are genuinely silent, are full keyboards (not missing the numeric keypad). And it needs to be black (no pink, purple or polka dot colors), and of solid construction.

 

If I have to install software the use the keyboard, or to disable unwanted features I'm not interested in it.This is a keyboard for typing, I don't want to add software so it can cook dinner or do my shopping. I just want to use it to type.

 

Programmable keys are a bonus, media keys are a "meh". Price is not a consideration. For the right keyboard I will pay a reasonable price.

 

I'm in Australia where technology is insanely expensive. So the keyboard needs to be sold locally.

 

I've had a look at several retailers but have yet to discover a keyboard suiting my needs.

 

Is any one here using or know of a keyboard that meets my needs?

Edited by Yanta
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I would look into our Strafe MK.2 MX Silent. It uses Cherry MX Silent switches which are 30% quieter. While you are not looking for RGB, it does give you the option to choose the color for all or some of the keys to a color that suits your liking. Although our iCUE software is required for customization, the Strafe MK.2 does have hardware playback which you can save up to 3 profiles to the keyboard and use it without the software running.

 

If you do go forward with the purchase, I would recommend installing the software, set the lighting and any remaps you want, then save it to the device memory. After that you can choose to remove the software.

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I would look into our Strafe MK.2 MX Silent. It uses Cherry MX Silent switches which are 30% quieter. While you are not looking for RGB, it does give you the option to choose the color for all or some of the keys to a color that suits your liking. Although our iCUE software is required for customization, the Strafe MK.2 does have hardware playback which you can save up to 3 profiles to the keyboard and use it without the software running.

 

If you do go forward with the purchase, I would recommend installing the software, set the lighting and any remaps you want, then save it to the device memory. After that you can choose to remove the software.

 

It seems after talking to a couple of retailers I'm getting my terminology mixed up. Apparently they call it "illumination" not per-key back lighting.

 

Anyway, thanks for the suggestion. Looking at this keyboard there is lighting bleeding through all sides of the keys. Is it possible to turn that off? I only want the illumination to show through the actual key only.

 

Not fond of iCue. It's a massive package (about 1GB), that (having read the forums), seems to have more bugs than NZXT's CAM software. And it hammers the system. I did some tests as I have Corsair commander Pros, coolers and PSUs. I could never get it to work, and it looks terrible, but worst of all it constantly uses 6-8% CPU... (and again after reading forums), it seems as if Corsair consider this CPU load to be acceptable. All I wanted was fan speeds and temps, so 1GB of software that didn't work properly, hammers my system and looks unpleasant was a no go. I went back to CorsairLink 4.6.19 (The one that also shows HDD temps). 56Mb, 0.5% CPU and it just does what it's supposed to do and nothing more.

 

iCue doesn't uninstall properly, but that's OK, if I can save the settings to the keyboard, I can just restore my system to an earlier image without iCue.

 

Curiously, one retailer laughed at me when I asked if it was silent. He said there is no such thing as silent mechanical switches. He says the best you might find are some that are "almost quiet"?

Edited by Yanta
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It's a very smooth tap, but no high pitch clickiness like the MX browns or blue.

The membrane keyboards are usually slightly more silent but less pleasant to type on, in my opinion.

The annoying thing is not being able to test the thing ^^ you'd know in two seconds if you like the keyboard. You could still get it like on Amazon and send it back if it doesn't fit the needs.

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