Performance
The Speedlink Parthica is plug and play ready, so setting it up really is quite easy. For those who need the software and drivers, you’ll find them included in the box on a CD-ROM. The keyboard comes with a built-in backlight, although even at full strength it’s not very bright and the keys only have a mild illumination. The keyboard does have a few other areas that light up much brighter, such as those on the wrist rest, below the space bar and at the top centre of the keyboard. There are three colours to choose from, red, blue and purple; each colour can be changed directly from the keyboard.
While there is nothing remarkable about the Parthica, it is still a decent gaming keyboard. Sure it’s not going to have me throwing my mechanical keyboard in the bin, but it does feel quick and responsive enough to be competitive on games like Battlefield, Call of Duty and CS:GO; or any shooter for that matter. MMO gaming does benefit from the on-the-fly recording and shortcut keys, as I can quickly set macros to the hot keys on the left side; they’re perfect for simulation games too.
There’s plenty of other nice gaming features that make the Parthica more appealing, such as the anti-ghosting and up to 6-key rollover, which I find great for games like StarCraft II and League of Legends, especially when things get really frantic. There’s also 128kb of internal memory, so you can save your macros directly to the keyboard. Finally, while I don’t have use for a configurable polling rate or response times, it’s nice that they’re included.
