Why is EVERYONE Buying this Gaming Keyboard?

[Plouffe]

We're back at it, asking questions about questionable products that everyone seems to be buying. Could this be YOUR next keyboard?

 

Buy Redragon S101 Combo Pack
  Amazon: https://geni.us/Ltxa
  Newegg: https://geni.us/8q15Nqt

 

Buy Redragon K552 Kumara
  Amazon: https://geni.us/TtB7X
  Best Buy: https://geni.us/osUA
  Newegg: https://geni.us/qTOX

 

 

[Hexenhammer.]

Nope, only Razer, Razer Hunstman Analog V2

 

[emosun]

I have a box of random office keyboards 

 

When my kb dies i just pull another random one out of the box. I dont think ive ever actually bought a kb that was new ever. Its nice to never ever think about. 

[Ghosted Muzik]

actually looks nicer then my plixio lol, but if i buy a new one id like one thats quiet, dont need fancy just backlight to see since im blind

[Sirgeorge]

Weirdly enough, I had a k552 as my first mechanical keyboard. Back then, it was about $50, before shipping and taxes, but it was a solid pick at the time even despite the price. If I remember correctly they had less competition at the time, which would explain the price then. It also weirdly had Kailh blues and I never knew that it had hot swappable key switches. Maybe they reused the naming convention? I don't know. I flipped it a little while later, alongside with a mouse from them as well. I replaced them with a Logitech G502 mouse and Corsair K95 RGB (the last one, with the 18 macros). I'm still rocking those today.

 

A thing not mentioned is the support for these peripherals. it's one of those, "not important...until it is" kinda deals. Just yesterday I found myself suddenly needing a few replacement keycaps. It wasn't my fault nor Corsair's (outside 3rd party), but I was so happy to know that they'll just send certain parts to you for free, simply asking for an address to send to you and some basic identifying information (in the case of keycaps, up to 5). It was so much nicer then trying to track down some replacement parts on eBay. I almost never think about customer support for my products, frankly I almost never need them, but every time I have I'm so glad it's there and tend to factor that in to every purchase decision going forward. Might pull the trigger on that Stream Deck XL now.

 

Tl;dr: coincidences are funny, customer support should be considered for these kinds of things, etc. etc.

[Methanol Ethanolovicz]

I've been using this fake mechanical Genius K10 keyboard for almost four years at this point. It has a 5-zone RGB lighting, replaceable keycaps (which have only now started to show wear around the edges of the most frequently used ones), quite a decent build quality, and accompanying software that allows you to remap the function keys (although it's kinda crap and never seemed to be working correctly). Back then, it set me back about 25$. I'd say the mechanical feel is quite good too. It feels tactile and certainly a lot better than your average mushy membrane keyboard or other mem-chanical keyboards (my brother, for example, has the Cooler Master blue-like keyboard, which Linus reviewed a couple of years ago, and it feels vastly inferior to the K10).

That said, the Genius keyboards seem to be of questionable quality too. Many reviews for other models complain about the whole keyboard not working, and I've had the same experience myself when I bought a K6 as a Christmas gift for my father and had to return it after only about three months.

Edited February 9, 2022 by Methanol Ethanolovicz

[darknessblade]

I use a ergonomic Keyboard from Xbows, and really enjoy using it. took me less than a week to get used to it to the point my typing speed is about 90% of what it originally was.

 

[gamagama69]

51 minutes ago, emosun said:

I have a box of random office keyboards 

 

When my kb dies i just pull another random one out of the box. I dont think ive ever actually bought a kb that was new ever. Its nice to never ever think about. 

that sounds horrible lol

[IPD]

S101 doesn't sound too much different than my RK900.

 

*Edit*

I take that back.  After watching the review, I'm positive the RK900 is built significantly better than the S101.

[OuterGodHermit]

My friend gave me as a present the Redragon S101 Combo Pack since I moved without peripherals but I hate it. Man, does it feels cheap after getting used to a mechanical keyboard. 

Now, does anyone knows where I can download the software for it Linus showed in the video? I can find it in the manufacturer page, nor in Google. 

[EL02]

I currently have the havit one. Bought it on aliexpress back in 2020. It has survived two full glasses of water being spilled onto it. The keyboard feels pretty good for the $39 i paid, although the "/" key has gotten a bit mushy. It has a braided cable, you can adjust the backlight brightness and it has some backlight presets.

[RejZoR]

Why is everyone dissing membrane keyboards so hard and praising mechanical ones so much? I've been on good membrane ones for years, Logitech UltraX and Cherry Steam XT being the highlights, I just can't hate on them. They can be in low profile type which mechanicals just can't, their keys are NEVER as god damn wobbly as on all mechanical keyboards (I was fingering 250€ keyboards and they felt wonky and cheap because of it), they are super quiet and even though everyone keeps saying how they are mushy and have no tactile feel, that's not experience I had with those keyboards. The key travel was always sufficient and super well defined, the click point where membrane gave up was also physical enough that you sensed when it went past the rebound point and when that happened, keys always bottomed out, you could never somehow hold it in between so it would "click" and not register. Never. I also never had one fail on me via membrane side. Only happened on scissor mechanisms that were rather easily replaceable anyway.

 

I was in the process of replacing keyboard and unfortunately Cherry Stream XT was unobtainable in Slovenian language (I absolutely need 3 things, multimedia keys, large ENTER key and originally engraved Slovenian characters čšž). But fine, I solved multimedia keys with my "AnyKeyboard Multimedia Keys" app project, but I can't change physical things like small ENTER key and letters that they engrave after the fact which means they receive no backlight on RGB backlit keyboards and more importantly, the fact that keys are then filled with useless characters that don't correspond to their actual location on the keys. Since I'm an occasional programmer when something requires it, finding special characters for coding purposes is an absolute nightmare because you have them tossed all over the keys and they aren't actually there because I don't use English US or UK, I use Slovenian for our alphabet which has extra characters not found in English.

 

I'm on UVI Pride mechanical keyboard with blues and while I got used to their insane clickiness, I'm not as amazed as almost everyone seems to be, doing literal PhD's around keycaps and mechanisms. I've tried it because I was forced to as it's just so hard to find good membrane keyboards nowadays. Cherry Stream XT was, but no one is supplying them with native keys for my language and they don't have big ENTER and that just sucks really hard. Otherwise I'd still be on low profile membrane keyboard. I grew to like them that much. Mostly because they are super thin and wrists don't suffer. I really don't like the wrist pads on tall mechanical ones because they are either crap like on my UVI Pride as it's just a piece of foam or they are fancy magnetically detachable that just make keyboards so unnecessarily massive then.

 

The point of the story here is that membrane keyboards can still be very good. They were just entirely overshadowed by the mechanical keyboards craze. Which is imo totally overblown and overrated. I miss my Cherry Stream XT even though I really like UVI Pride... I absolutely don't like all other fancy mechanical ones solely because their price is just outrageous and I don't care what virgin perfect mechanisms they have or whatever. They are all ridiculously overpriced and overrated. Not with shitty wonky mechanical keys they all have. Of one company manages to make mechanical keys that are absolutely stable and don't wobble about, then I'll change my mind. I have yet to see that happen...

[IPD]

@RejZoR

 

Agreed.  TBH, I really had no need to upgrade from my RK900.  I just wanted pudding caps and better RGB options.  It's still a damn fine keyboard and works great to this day.

[Arika]

I haven't watched the video,  but based on the other videos in this series, could it possibly be that "it's cheap"?

[whm1974]

Who is everybody?  A better Title would be: "Why is this Keyboard so Popular?" or "What is so great about this Keyboard?"

 

If everybody threw themselves out the window would you follow?

 

Yes I'll watch the video later.

[Luscious]

And to think I paid $400 not that long ago for a gunmetal Corsair K95 complete with a set of their black and white key caps for a two tone look and the Nexus LCD screen that attaches to the top. Oh yeah, and that $400 didn't include the silicone dampers I had to also buy placing 2 to 3 of them on each key to make actually using the thing a pleasurable experience as opposed to an obnoxious racket.

 

When you can get a keyboard with swappable switches for under 50 bucks that says a lot about what you should be looking for as far as price is concerned.

 

Corsair's products are, let's be honest, horrendously inflated for the prices they carry... and then you figure out they're not even up there with the quality when others can do it better for less LOL. I am already having issues with some of the keys and really hoping I don't have to throw away the entire keyboard if a switch does in fact go out. Their constant software updates have all but bricked the LCD screen with critical widgets I had set up no longer working. Even the "quality" braid they claim to use on their cable is already showing signs of wear and failure despite only minimal handling on my part.

 

I have NEVER purchased Corsair's products because I despise their under-the-table methods and shady workarounds, never mind the lengths they will go to avoid criticism and what they really think of the customer. Just go back to the yellow 780T case debacle for a perfect example. You would think a company would learn their lesson after screwing over so many potential customers, but no. Similarly I will never endorse them unlike so many other paid shills do on YouTube - shame on you all!!!

[stage]

3 hours ago, aleamaro791 said:

My friend gave me as a present the Redragon S101 Combo Pack since I moved without peripherals but I hate it. Man, does it feels cheap after getting used to a mechanical keyboard. 

Now, does anyone knows where I can download the software for it Linus showed in the video? I can find it in the manufacturer page, nor in Google. 

what type of google do you use? it is  the first hit when you type "Redragon"

https://www.redragonzone.com/pages/download

[MultiGamerClub]

My trusty corsair k55 keyboard died a few days ago.. Might buy one of these.

 

Currently using my old sisters Zombee "Gaming" keyboard.. probably some weird cheap off brand too this one.

[GeorgeMKane]

When I worked at a computer store in the last few years, people only bought the cheap Redragon keyboard and mouse... because it was real cheap. Most others went to Razer or Corsair. IIRC we put Redragon mice in our combo builds usually too... that or Corsair.

[ShadoSgt]

I've been trying to find a wireless mechanical that will connect with multiple PC's that still has the 10-key. I saw the 556 but it's wired, would anyone have suggestions to a wireless version? Preferably brown switches. Looked at RK and while they have wireless they only had the compact 96% layout which I would rather prefer the 100%.  

[RageTester]

I bought Razer cynosa lite... yeah it's membrane, but so far so good. I don't understand how people rate it bad because of dim lights in the world  where most RGB should have epilepsy warning label on them.

Just recently was cleaning my newest laptop cooling pad and found out I could in fact unplug the LEDs without physically cutting anything this time.

[Dracarris]

22 hours ago, Arika S said:

I haven't watched the video,  but based on the other videos in this series, could it possibly be that "it's cheap"?

I hope this series of awfully boring peripheral videos is finally coming to an end.

[AndreiArgeanu]

On 2/9/2022 at 9:47 PM, RejZoR said:

Why is everyone dissing membrane keyboards so hard and praising mechanical ones so much? I've been on good membrane ones for years, Logitech UltraX and Cherry Steam XT being the highlights, I just can't hate on them.

The two keyboards you mentioned have scissor switches, similar if not the same to what you'd find in most laptops out there. Most membrane keyboards out there are the classic rubber dome kind and the general consensus that I believe is true is that the average mechanical keyboard is better than the average membrane keyboard, plus mechanical switches are customisable in the sense that you can find switches with various actuation points, actuation forces and tactility and there's a lightning advantage.

 

On 2/9/2022 at 9:47 PM, RejZoR said:

I was in the process of replacing keyboard and unfortunately Cherry Stream XT was unobtainable in Slovenian language (I absolutely need 3 things, multimedia keys, large ENTER key and originally engraved Slovenian characters čšž).

There's the Cherry Stream, it's very similar to the XT, media buttons look different, same silent scissor switch though and available in Slovak with big enter. And it has a wireless version as well. Worth considering if you liked the XT most.

[Edward78]

Can I get it with brpwn or red switches?