Because of the particulars of my setup at home, or more specifically my reliance upon a KVM switch to control three different machines from a single mouse/keyboard pair, I have been limited in my selection of keyboard. You see, my KVM supports only PS/2 style mice and keyboards, and virtually all of the neat keyboards from the last decade have been USB only. Yes, I do realize there are KVM switches out there which support USB, but I've yet to find one that actually works properly. If you happen to know of one, please email me about it—especially if it supports DVI video. At any rate, when the enter key on my old keyboard started sticking constantly, and when I saw an ad for a Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard for roughly two thirds of its typical price, I decided it was time to test the waters.
The thing that struck me at first was, oddly enough, the keyboard's feel. The big LCD that attracted my wife's attention, which is what virtually every review I read first mentioned, wasn't nearly as much an attention grabber for me as the great tactile response. When you type as fast as I do—I've been clocked reliably and repeatably at 160 WPM—the feel of a keyboard is a pretty big deal. I've used a lot of different keyboards over the years, and the G15 is up there at the top two in terms of its response.
The key travel is relatively short, so typing is fast and efficient, yet there is a distinct, clean breaking point when a character is actually typed. And although there is an audible clicking sound to distinguish one stroke from the next, it's a pleasant, soft clicking sound, not at all like the harsh, loud clacking of my old keyboard. The overall feel manages to be firm and soft without being mushy. I realize that my descriptive talents are probably wanting, so suffice it to say that I love the feel; it's fabulous.
Beyond how it felt, the G15 was also pretty neat in terms of its functionality. The major features include the large, easily readable LCD display, eighteen additional macro keys (with three modes and a simple, quick-record process), soothing blue backlighting, multimedia controls, and even a game switch. And that's to say nothing of the neat little applications or the integration features provided by the keyboard profiler utility. No matter how you slice it, the G15 packs a lot under the hood.
For all these reasons , I was impressed with the unit right out of the box. It was easy to set up, easy to configure, and easy to start using. In fact, my only gripe with the initial out of box experience was that the "manual" is a pathetic, two-sided paper insert that explains little. Armed with a bullet-point list of the features, I was able to dope everything out within a couple of minutes, merely by experimenting, but fewer pictures and more descriptive text would be welcome.
The real test of a keyboard isn't how impressive it is right out of the box, of course, the real test is how it pleases or annoys in daily use. And I have to say that on this count the G15 gets better and better the more I use it. So far I've been discovering little things I like each day; things like what information is displayed in various games, how to use the countdown/stopwatch timers, the multi-core-capable CPU/RAM usage display, the simplicity of the quick-macro recording feature, and so forth. Rather than provide an exhaustive breakdown of everything I've found, I'll summarize the highlights by the modes in which I find myself using it.
First and foremost on that list of modes is gaming. I didn't buy the keyboard only for gaming, but the fact that it had the extra keys and a keyboard profiler utility screamed "BUY ME!" to the gamer in me. To cut right to the chase, the G15 does everything a regular keyboard does for gaming and then some. Obviously, the feel of the keys is just as great in World of Warcraft (WoW) as it is in Microsoft Word, but not so obvious is the degree to which the keyboard provides helpful information and other assistance.
As to the information, the way the display integrates with games is wonderful. I remember from the original reviews, when the unit was released, that it would show the amount of ammunition remaining and maybe the scoreboard when playing games like Quake III Arena. And I remember thinking to myself at the time: how useless is that?! After all, who is going to take his eyes off the monitor to look down at a little LCD screen for that kind of stuff?
But that was before I played WoW. The first time I fired up WoW and loaded up my druid, I knew I was on to something. Beneath the LCD is a mode selector button, which cycles between the various applications available, and four sub-mode buttons, which serve up different "pages" for each application. When playing WoW in specific, one sub-mode button shows a page of character stats, another shows one's position in the queue to connect or get into the battlegrounds, another provides notifications of whispers and such, and so forth. That might not seem terribly useful until the first time you Alt+Tab out of the game and find you can easily keep an eye on where you sit in the queue for the battleground of your choice!
Better still, at least some of the information is context sensitive. When I loaded up a warlock I've been playing around with, I found that the character stats page shows the number of soul shards in his inventory. What a great feature! Prior to getting the G15 I found it pretty irritating to have to keep opening up all his bags and manually counting the shards; now that I have the keyboard, that information is always readily at hand. And because the values include average damage-per-second (DPS), percent change for a critical strike, and so forth, it makes it far easier to see precisely what changing one's gear affects. For this feature alone, the LCD is very useful in WoW.
Further, the game switch replaces what I used to do with a batch file, namely, disable the Windows and Context Menu keys that Microsoft muscled onto keyboards some years ago. No more batch file: I simply move the game switch from the computer icon to the joystick icon, and I know I won't be dropped out to the desktop by accident. I can't tell you how many times I've launched a game, only to discover I forgot to run my batch file. With the G15, I don't have to drop back to the desktop at all; I simply throw a switch.
Also, while we're on the subject of nifty gaming features, the backlighting comes in three flavors: off, dim, and normal. Enabling either of the backlighting settings make those late night gaming sessions, which are pretty much the only kind I get anymore, far more enjoyable and far easier on the eyes. The only negative comment I can offer is that the way the channels are cut into the keys sometimes causes their faces to look a little funny when viewed from certain angles. But still, it's a quantum leap ahead of my old keyboard at night.
Finally, the additional keys are fabulous! They're about as well positioned as extra keys can be, at least and maintain any sort of conventional keyboard layout, but far more important they are individually programmed and have three modes of operation. The net result is that the G15 effectively adds a whopping fifty-four extra functions to your keyboard, each of which is available at the press of a single key. And if you hate popping out of a game to edit some gadget's profile, you'll absolutely love the quick-record macro feature, which allows you to assign a macro key's function right from the keyboard while staying in-game.
Because the keyboard profile manager utility simply loads up profiles on the basis of what applications it sees launched, the G15's extra keys aren't limited to gaming at all. In fact, to date I've been using the macro features more in my day to day work than in my gaming. I'm a software/web developer by trade these days, so being able to record a quick little macro and run it a bunch of times is terribly handy, to say nothing of being able to assign the more obscure keyboard shortcuts—sorry, folks, but I am never going to remember Ctrl+Alt+Shift+left-square-bracket for one of the more important functions in a tool I commonly use.
And yes, for those who are interested, the key definitions are reasonably flexible. You can assign pre-defined functions (editing the WoW profile, for example, has a bunch of common tasks already defined for ease of mapping), develop your own macros complete with timing information (which is crucial in WoW for making buffs cast with proper delays), or have it launch common programs (e.g., calculator) or even your own shortcuts. The only thing I haven't found any way to do thus far is to have a key macro reprogram the keyboard itself. But whereas that bugged me with my Nostromo n52, it hasn't bothered me at all with the G15 yet.
While I'm on the subject of applications, the stuff that comes with your G15 isn't at all the end of the line. No, Logitech has an entire page devoted to additional apps for the LCD and patches for games not supported out of the box. I've also found a handy forums page and a mods page, which includes the SDK and some wrappers for popular languages (most notably C#). I fully intend to screw around with some display applications, and it seems there is no shortage of third party mods. How neat is that?
The third aspect of the keyboard that I seem to be using most is the multimedia manager. The keyboard has pre-defined buttons for toggling mute status (on the system volume), stopping, playing/pausing, and previous/next track, as well as a nice, round wheel to adjust the system volume. From what I've seen, such features are pretty common on keyboards these days. But what I love about the G15 is that they work on the local computer, even when I'm connected remotely to another!
On the rare occasion that I've had access to a multimedia keyboard, I have always found those keystrokes going where I don't want them to go as soon as I connect to a remote system. But here at home this week, I've been connecting to my other desktops using VNC and enjoying how the multimedia keys affect the player on my local system, not the remotes. It's equally handy in game, insofar as I can queue up a nice, fat play list full of music in Winamp, fire up WoW, and control the player without leaving the game.
Yes, I realize that just about everything has a plug-in to control Winamp, or it seems that way sometimes, but I've had bad luck with such things. The G15 keyboard seems to work under all circumstances without issue, including a nice display of the current artist and track, as well as a status bar indicating how far along Winamp is in playing it. The only complaint I have against the multimedia aspect thus far is that it's not customizable. Apparently, Logitech decided to use the "standard" multimedia hotkey values, and not every player supports them. So while Winamp works like a champ, Windows Media Player (WMP) and Rhapsody do not.
I couldn't give a rat's rump about WMP, but Rhapsody gets me through the day. Thankfully, a bit of experimentation has shown me how I can get by. To wit, simply download all the Rhapsody tracks you want to your local hard drive, which you're probably doing anyway for performance reasons, then use Winamp to play them. Winamp is smart enough to interface with whatever DRM system Rhapsody uses (Helix?), so the only down side is that you can't use the multimedia keys when operating in streamed mode. But that's not a big deal to me.
So here we come to the bottom line: the G15 is overall the best and most capable keyboard I've ever had the pleasure of using. Its LCD display puts it in a class by itself right from the outset, to say nothing of its flexible keyboard profile manager, customizability, extra keys, and the other features I've mentioned. And if the features don't convince you, believe me when I say the G15 is very easy on the typing fingers. Even after hours and hours of coding, it still feels comfortable to the touch, and that's worth a lot to me; the same is true of the only "marathon" gaming session I've enjoyed since having it—I stayed up way too late playing WoW.
The suggested retail price is still $99, but I found it for roughly two thirds of that, so I expect to see other discounts going forward. Had I known then what I know now, I would have happily paid full price for this keyboard. It's worth it in my estimation. Check it out and see if you don't get hooked too. Oh, and no, I have no business relationship with Logitech, nor do I make any money from such a recommendation in any way; I'm gushing simply because I've been loving the keyboard now for a week.
Going forward, I'm going to have to buy some new monitors if I can't find a KVM that works properly with USB peripherals. I have to use two machines during my working day, and while VNC is getting me through at the moment, what I really want is to use Multiplicity. That way, I can avoid all the clipboard headaches of remote control software, to say nothing of the typing delay. And, of course, I wouldn't be at all disappointed to have a game running on one monitor with my chat and web browser tools available on another. I guess the era of my monstrous, 22" CRT is coming to a close, but that's another story for a different day.
11/21/2006