Performance
Performance on mechanical keyboards is often quite similar, regardless of which brand you choose. What matters, is what kind of small refinements and extras each brand includes to make their keyboard stand out from the next. The Cherry MX Blue switches in this keyboard as great, as they would be in any Cherry MX Blue keyboard, what does make a difference in my opinion is how they’re mounted. The keys are set just a little above the chassis, meaning they don’t bottom out too hard, making rapid successive keystrokes a lot easier and that’s good for those of you who love to mash away at your keyboards; great for StarCraft II for example. The 600K is really robust too, so even when you do start mashing at your keyboard, it stays firmly in place and the aluminium body means it doesn’t rattle around your desk when using it.
The LED lighting on the gaming keys is a nice touch too and while I prefer full key backlighting, it’s certainly better than no lighting when gaming in a dark room, as you can always find those important WASD keys at a glance.
The report rate isn’t something I rely on personally, but for those who do, having four hot-keys at the top of the keyboard to adjust it on the fly is a welcome bonus. The same goes for the N-key rollover, as you don’t need to mess around in software to adjust any of the major features.
The wrist rest in another welcome feature, helping you find a comfortable wrist position when working and the FPS wrist rest/grip is great for gaming, giving you just a little more elevation that makes long gaming sessions that little bit more comfortable.
Dedicated multimedia keys are great, especially if you like to listen to music while gaming as it means you don’t have to tab-out to change tracks or volume settings. The only issue I have is that the key types are not in keeping with the rest of the keyboard. You’ve got some harder tactile click switches and some membrane switches for the multimedia keys and having these uniform to one switch would be nice, having them be mechanical like the rest of the keyboard would be even better.
