gaming seriously, and you’re good at reddit mechanical keyboards giving you an advantage, or is it holding you back? Make no mistake about it, competitive gamers risk being under-equipped using something that shipped with your desktop, and even casual gamers have a chance to massively upgrade their overall gaming experience by choosing the proper keyboard.
So whether you are using it as a weapon, a tool, or as a smacktalker, if you want to take full advantage of today’s gaming world you need to find the best keyboard for your style. We’ve listed our top picks below, but before we get to that please please please get familiar with the current crop of features available to today’s gamers. Once you see what current tech is offering it’ll make your decision informed and much, much easier:
All of our top-rated keyboards are going to have mechanical key switches. Why? Superior responsiveness, top notch reliability, and even more importantly they feel better. There’s a good reason that most people never look back after switching to a mechanical keyboard, and it’s usually because of the keyswitches.
In contrast, manufacturers looking to save money use rubber dome switches that require greater effort in each keystroke and even worse, they deteriorate over time and slowly get harder to actuate. So no keyboards like this in our gaming recommendations. And yes, we know there are a couple popular options out there that use rubber blubber, but these keyboards have become popular because, uhmm, they cost less to buy.
Many of today’s games require quick combos of keystrokes. Top gamers use macros to execute these combos. Instead of pressing individual keys to crouch, then jump, then throw, you can program a macro key to do it all at once. Top keyboards have dedicated macro keys built into the keyboard casing. And don’t forget that macros can be used to speed up everyday comp use too.
Try opening a Word or text document and pressing ten keys all at once. Did they all register? Or did your comp say no bleeping way? Now try pressing 20 keys, or all of them. Companies that target gamers are producing keyboards with infinity key rollover to accommodate ever increasing needs for complex key combos. This basically means that no matter how many keys you press at once, they are all going to register. Much easier to accomplish this using mechanical key switches and a PS/2 connection. Today’s USB connections will probably limit you to 6-key rollover.
Backlighting. It ain’t just so you can play games in the dark anymore. Companies have evolved and many now offer the option of key-by-key backlighing. Yup, you tell the comp which keys you want to backlight and bink! there they are. Many also offer the option of saving these lighting layouts to manageable profiles.
Textured, swappable keycaps. Wait, what?! Some of the top manufacturers are including textured keycaps on the most used gaming keys, I.e. w-a-s-d, numbers, arrow keys. This will accelerate muscle memory and keep your eyes off the keyboard. But don’t worry, swapping out keycaps isn’t hard if you want normal ones.
Ghosting isn’t a major problem when using mechanical keyswitches, but we mention it because so many companies are blaring about it. Imagine pressing a bunch of keys on a cheap keyboard that uses a single rubber membrane beneath the keys: sometimes a ‘ghost’ key will register when all the circuits surrounding it are activated simultaneously. Annoying if typing an email, deadly if gaming. Not to worry though, our recommendations are all mechanical by nature, making it kinda redundant to mention anti-ghosting.
And quickly, USB pass-through can be super handy if you want to plug in a mouse or external hard drive to the keyboard, and separate media controls are becoming the norm on these keyboards so that you don’t have to leave the gaming environment to adjust volume or music selections.
