Should YOU Buy a Gaming Keyboard or Enthusiast Keyboard? How to Make the Right Choice for YOU!

from the legendary model m to the duckie one-to-many or even the razor Huntsman keyboards a keyboard right I mean there really isn't much of a fundamental change in the design of what makes a keyboard what it is so what advantages can today's gamers expect to find out of buying an actual branded gaming keyboard hey what's going on guys it's Brandon here again and today we're going to be exploring what makes a gaming keyboard what it is and what advantages if any can today's modern gamer expect to find if they do go with a gaming branded keyboard [Music] gaming keyboards have been around for at least the last 20 years or so and while doing my research for this video I wasn't able to definitively find proof of what the first-ever gaming keyboard was but I do distinctly remember buying sort of backlit style game area stetic keyboards back in the early 2000s I was able to find that the first-ever gaming branded mechanical keyboard was the original razer blackwidow in 2010 and this keyboard really helped to sort of Usher in a new wave of popularity among mechanical keyboards and really introduced these keyboards to a more younger audience and because keyboards have seen such a dramatic shift in sort of what the norm is over the last 20 years or so that's ultimately why I decided to tackle this video now like I mentioned at the beginning of the video I want to look at what makes a gaming keyboard what it is and ultimately what benefits we can expect to see from using these keyboards the gaming keyboards of yesteryear definitely took a different approach to the design of the keyboard and I think there's a couple of different reasons for that maybe the biggest reason being that because all these older keyboards were membrane keyboards they couldn't necessarily get better performance out of one keyboard to the other just based on the technology and so they had to rely on using flashy backlighting big sprawling footprints of sort of gamer II aesthetic architecture on the way the keyboard was designed and then having a plethora of macro keys all over the board again adopting that more buttons is better aesthetic to just sort of make it look like gamers take you know advantage of all these extra keys because they're so hardcore I do think a big part of having all those different buttons certainly lends itself to the popularity of games like EverQuest in World of Warcraft at the time frame but we also saw games like Diablo and counter-strike and Unreal Tournament 2004 being big and so you know maybe that's not necessarily gonna be that big of a benefit during those times but I do think mmo's played a big influence and why we saw so many macro Keys on older keyboards now I personally look back very fondly at my old 2005 Scitex cyborg keyboard this thing had a ton of macro keys all over it the footprint was massive and it actually had a bunch of different independent lighting zones which at the time was a pretty unique and cool feature although they weren't RGB and it was really just the Aero cluster the alphanumeric keys and then a couple of other areas where you could change the colors but I thought it was super cool and it certainly did look like a very gay Murray type keyboard and like I mentioned in 2010 razer introduced the first mechanical keyboard that was designed specifically for gaming it looked very similar to the look of today's Black Widows with a row of dedicated macro keys on the left side of the board but with a more toned-down overall aesthetic compared to the sprawling over designed boards that came before it now I'm not saying there weren't other boards that were doing similar things are shifting this way I'm just using this as an example because it's one of the more documented releases at the time one thing for certain is that because of its relatively low price point at the time for a mechanical keyboard with blue switches and the marketing potential of a gamer e keyboard being available in stores like Best Buy its responsible for introducing mechanical keyboards to a new younger and more casual audience to the mechanical keyboard scene which at the time was a fraction of what it is today in 2014 Corsair shaped the future of gaming peripherals even further by introducing the first mechanical keyboard to feature Cherry MX RGB switches which as you guys know quickly became the standard for any gaming keyboard from there things quickly snowballed pivoting from large keyboards with tons of buttons to slim down more aesthetically pleasing minimalist boards with flashy RGB lighting and tweaked mechanical switch performance we started seeing gaming companies create their own switches to try and tweak actuation numbers and shave off millimeters to improve overall performance some early examples of this are Logitech introducing their Romer G switches and razer with their green and orange switches which have gone through quite a few manufacturer changes and revisions since and that sort of brings us to what you can expect to get out of today's gaming keyboards with many of these proprietary switch types having gone through many revisions it's a good place to start looking at what modern gaming keyboards bring to the table seeing that the original cherry switched design was developed in 1985 and remains largely unchanged today you can see how the needs of today's gaming wouldn't have really been a consideration during their development now while they have good quality and make for great typing switches and not to mislead they are just fine for gaming gaming companies took it upon themselves to design switches that are more performance oriented to meet the needs of today's fast-paced games like paddle Royales MOBAs and just about anything else you can think of essentially the most common differences I see in gaming keyboard switches are shorter actuation distances or how far the key actually has to be pressed in order to register in the computer shorter overall travel so that you don't have to push the key as far to bottom it out and overall actuation force which makes the keys a little bit lighter and easier to press you may also see using raisers switches as an example here that the reset point for how far the switch has to come back up before it can register another stroke in the computer has much smaller on these switches than on traditional cherry switches this is the part in the video where I always say as a keyboard enthusiast that there really is no wrong switch choice and to spin that around there is no perfect switch choice either and ultimately it all boils down to your personal preference and what feels best for you because if you like the tactility the feel the weight any of these things on a certain switch I guarantee you'll perform better than if you are using the industry's fastest and best switch and we're gonna talk more about why that is here in just a second with that said will you get better bleeding edge performance out of a fast oriented gaming switch yeah perhaps if you're playing at the top level and you have very fast superhuman speeds will it make much difference to the average user no not much the shorter actuation distances and travels in my opinion have a higher impact on the overall feel and typing and gaming experience then an overall enhancement to your actual gaming performance I think at this time the best gaming oriented switches are the SteelSeries Omni point switches with their dynamic actuation point or erasers op do mechanical switches okay so let's say you're a super enthusiast who lose your own switches and builds your own keyboards well you notice a performance difference in your looped holy pandas versus say a razer optima Kanaka switch the short answer here is yes and no on paper the shorter actuation of the optomechanical switch and better debounce delay with shorter travel will make for a faster switch but it won't make you a faster human and this is why I stressed choosing your switches moreover feel than raw numbers now if you had a top esports pro with both of these keyboards would you notice a difference yeah potentially given each switches reset point and ability to recover from one input to the next the second most common feature among today's gaming keyboards are the companion softwares and just about every notable gaming brand out there has a respective companion software that's meant to tie all of their different peripherals together into a cohesive ecosystem a couple of examples of this are Corsairs IQ Razer synapse or Logitech G hub just to name a few these software's all allow you to do very similar functions such as create and store custom profiles remap your key binds create macros and sync your lighting effects across all of your peripherals as some of these software's also feature reactive lighting elements to help immerse you more in the game for example logitech's jihad allows you to set an area of your screen to capture and mimic the colors you see on your screen back on your peripherals or Razer synapse which has a massive library of games with supported integrated effects with delights that will change on your peripherals while you game now for an immersive gaming experience this is one of the better features of today's gaming keyboards in my opinion of course with just about any mechanical keyboard on the market these days you can get some degree of lighting customization and macro recording these companion software's just create a much more user-friendly experience with their own intuitive interfaces and ease of use designed to cater to both the novice and experienced users now of course gaming keyboards of today do certainly have other features that vary on a case by case basis typically little things like integrated cable channels for headsets or USB and audio pass-through just kind of help to consolidate things on your desk a little bit but again those are gonna be things that you'll want to purchase based on your specific need now over the last five years or so we've certainly seen a huge uptick in popularity around mechanical keyboards and this led to a couple of different things happening out there in the world you have people that are much more informed about the type of keyboards that they want and the features that they expect then you also have the gaming industry sort of lagging behind to keep up with that level of informed consumerism and also just you you know bring the features that people want which led a lot of this community to turn to brands like ducky for example to get the features that they wanted or even build their own keyboards now thankfully around the last year or so the gaming community and the gaming companies have really started to pick up on what today's consumer really wants to see in terms of level of quality and features and this led to much better proprietary switch designs stock PBT key caps better stabilizers stock even in some cases hot swappable switches and so seeing the community have this sort of influence on the gaming brands and sort of how they develop their keyboards is a really good thing so what are the advantages of buying a gaming keyboard today I mean what reason if any should you go with the SteelSeries keyboard over a drop keyboard for example and I think here is where knowing what you want to get out of your keyboard is extremely important do you want a typist friendly keyboard that can supplement some gaming here and there or is the only thing you care about playing games and enhancing that experience as much as possible budget and availability are also a major factor gaming keyboards tend to be overall more available to pick up in store over the more popular non gaming branded keyboards like ducky or drop for example although with this state of rapid shipping out there in the world and being able to buy something and have it on your doorstep in a few days this has rapidly become less of an issue I also think it's really important guys to just take a step back and realize that there's a lot of people out there that aren't looking to make keyboards a hobby and they simply just want a keyboard that's gonna give them a great gaming experience and I think today's gaming keyboards especially with the influence from the sort of enthusiast community it really is going to give them the best experience that really could be had up until this point with sort of an added benefit which is these keyboards of today from gaming companies sort of borrowing from that enthusiast community gives the casual user a sort of toe dip into the rabbit hole of the enthusiast community which ultimately might spark some interest and sort of you know create another person who's gonna find a passion with keyboards whether you're like me and you just really like mechanical keyboards or you're researching your next keyboard purchase if you want to go down the keyboard rabbit hole even more i've got two more really great videos for you i'll link down in the description first one is whether to build or buy your next keyboard and also five very simple upgrades you can do to augment just about any mechanical keyboard out there but anyways guys with that I hope you found this video helpful I certainly enjoyed researching this and actually learned quite a bit more about this industry than I previously knew and kind of looked at it from a different light let me know down in the comments below what you think about the gaming keyboards of today and sort of what's your approach to that whole world of peripherals is you can give this video like if you enjoy didn't show your support and if you're new here on the channel I'd love to see you subscribes I've got a lot more videos like this coming for you in the near future but as always guys thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next one [Music] [Music]

Channel: Brainbean

Views: 17,462

Rating: 4.9011407 out of 5

Keywords: gaming keyboard vs regular keyboard, gaming keyboard vs normal keyboard, Razer, best gaming keyboard, top 5 keyboards, mechanical keyboard, what keyboard should i buy, gaming switches, gaming keyboard razer, is a gaming keyboard worth it, gaming keyboard, does keyboard matter for gaming, how to choose a mechanical keyboard, gaming keyboard guide, keyboard comparison, gaming keyboard 2020, mechanical keyboard switch comparison, budget, keyboard fortnite, enthusiast keyboard, ducky

Id: eCM-XXPsLhI

Length: 12min 50sec (770 seconds)

Published: Sun May 03 2020