After about a week of slightly over the top marketing, Logitech finally announced what they were pitching as the new evolution for gaming. It wasn’t a router crossed with a Dyson, like I’d hoped, but it’s priced in about the same territory. Meet the $399.95 keyboard.
Called the G915, the keyboard features the same Lightspeed wireless tech featured in Logitech’s (also quite expensive) very good G Pro Wireless and G502 chunker.
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2019/07/logitech-g502-lightspeed-wireless-gaming-mice-review-big-daddy-is-here/” thumb=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/07/DSC2930-410×231.jpg” title=”The Big Daddy Of Wireless Mice Is Here” excerpt=”There’s a couple of trends among gaming mice in the last couple of years: lighter and, if possible, wireless. But while gamers are generally clamouring for more both of those things, there’s always been an outlier in the market: the gargantuan, almost monolithic G502.”]
Logitech has released keyboards before, and lately those keyboards have had their own switches. The switches are still the most important part of any mechanical keyboard — because it’s what you’ll interact with the most — and the G915 comes in three options, with clicky, tactile and linear offerings, designed to mimic the options you’d normally expect from keyboards with Cherry switches or Cherry equivalents. All three versions have an actuation distance of 1.5mm, with 3.2mm travel time for the tactile and linear offerings, and 4mm for the clicky blue version.
The G915’s other feature supposedly making it worthwhile of commanding a $400 price tag is a thickness of 22mm, with the top built using an aluminium alloy. I like the idea of a really thin keyboard, and one that’s wireless is nice, but the argument for a wireless keyboard isn’t as strong as a wireless mouse. Mice are in constant motion, and thereby the cord is a genuine distraction, whereas keyboards … shouldn’t be moving that often.
It does look a lot nicer on a desk, mind you.
What’s really biting here for me is that the G915 doesn’t have optical switches — perhaps the most exciting advancement in keyboards of the last few years — or adjustable actuation points like the new Steelseries offerings I saw at Computex. Even that one is expected to be expensive, hovering around $300, and as good as Logitech’s wireless technology is, holy hell $400 is a lot of money.
I mean … I can think of so many things you can buy for that. Think of the SSDs you could add to a PC for that. A new GPU. A couple of wireless Logitech mice, even.
But let’s flip the question on its head. You’re going to buy a keyboard for $400. What would you want it to do? What’s the minimum it’d need to do to make that $400 worth it?
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