The BEST Keyboards Under $75!

so you've blown up and you're ready to game on something other than a crusty del hand-me-down but you don't want to spend a fortune on unnecessary bells and whistles so what do you buy to find out we checked the pricing history of the most popular mid-range gaming keyboards on Amazon and we bought these nine contenders for the middleweight crown to be included each of our boards had to be available for between fifty and seventy-five dollars at least three times in the last few months so that's the set up now let's see how they fall into place today's video is brought to you by glass wire what's going in and out of your PC when you're connected to the Internet find out with glass wire and see if there are any suspicious apps that are behaving badly use offer code Linus to get 25 percent off at the link below [Music] at $75 the Razr or nada crow max is one of the most expensive boards here but not without reason it wins the award for best unboxing experience and the product itself feels quality - there's well-thought-out slots for routing the braided cable on the underside and the absolutely plush wrist rest stands out as clearly the Best in Show it features full RGB lighting under what razer calls mecha mechanical key switches which unfortunately is where things start to fall apart a little bit for the or nada crow Max Marketing aside these are essentially rubber dome key switches with the large stem of the keys being used to stabilize its keystrokes that means that there is a squishy bottom out for each keystroke with a rather heavy actuation force so unless RGB is your top priority it's hard to recommend because for this price I would have hoped to see actual mechanical switches which as it turns out isn't just me being unreasonable because next up is the Corsair k63 a backlit 10 keyless board with cherry MX red switches that regularly hits just 40 US dollars now don't expect any extra firls here the backlighting is only one color but at least thanks to Corsairs feature-rich IQ software the keys are individually addressable and they're remappable it has flip-down legs at the back if you prefer a slight inclination to your board with that said if you want a wrist rest you're gonna have to shell out another $10 to get the first party one from Corsair that clips on the Cherry MX red key switches perform exactly as you'd expect with a smooth linear field and excellent stabilization and I was really happy to see that even at this price they're still dedicated media lighting and volume control keys on the board now the casing is plastic which gave me pause but thanks to the K 63s short blank deck flex was a non-issue for it at the end of the day if you don't need a number pad or RGB this is an excellent choice next up is a company I had actually never heard of before the game note have it RGB KB 3 7 al looks great on paper the cherry MX blue equivalent switches are made by O temu a respected enough clone manufacturer there's a full array of media keys including a volume roller the macro Keys can be programmed on-the-fly and the included adjustable wrist rest is a nice touch even if it is a bit of a grease magnet they also get bonus points for the braided cable and the integrated 2 port USB hub that's a really nice touch even if it can't be used for high powered devices unfortunately though the switches lack stabilization with the shift key in particular turning to jello if you so much as bump your desk it's also the loudest keyboard in our roundup clicky Blues are already a bit of a strange choice for gaming and definitely not recommended for streamers and the metallic reverb on the return stroke reminds us more of the build quality we came to expect from entrants in our previous cheap mechanical keyboards round up than this one but it's affordable it looks cool and it features full perky RGB backlighting so I guess that explains its popularity even if it's not the greatest typing experience the red dragon derived error does say that 10 times fast lands in the lower end of our price range and also has perky RGB backlighting with hotkeys to change between 18 different effects and six levels of brightness including off its aluminum construction is very stiff this monster is just a hair over a kilogram and under the hood we find red dragon branded brown switches with a kale style stem that resulted in decent key stabilization also in the Box are both key cap and key switch pullers to go with this little pack of four pairs of different switches now I can imagine a use for this maybe you want a later actuation force on your Crouch button or something but I'm still not sure exactly what their rationale for this particular loadout of switches was as far as typing comfort goes the lack of a wrist rest is disappointing but for all I'd say the experience is solidly average finally one build quality critique the tolerances on our USB plug caused it to be very very tight almost to the point where we felt like it could damage the port it was inserted into but your mileage may vary overall we liked the diverges but its lack of media control and macro keys and it's similar price to game notes offering did put it at a slight disadvantage next up is Corsair again this time with the k55 RGB at 50 bucks it won't break the bank and you get RGB lighting but there's a big catch this is 2013 grade RGB with only three lighting zones and no way to highlight specific keys this also isn't a mechanical keyboard with that said though the membrane switches here have better-than-average stabilization even if they lack the tactility of a mechanical switch what this board lacks and switches though it makes up for with a full suite of media controls along with six dedicated macro keys that are programmable through Corsairs IQ software the included wrist rest has a nice soft touch textured feel that doesn't gather fingerprints or smudges and there is a little bit of deck flex if you're heavy-handed on the keys but the average person would be hard-pressed get it to notice anything overall we really liked it for all-around use and if you're a video editor those macro keys can really improve your process actually we have a video coming up soon on building a budget 4k editing setup so make sure you get subscribe so you don't miss that the italic athletic gaming keyboard is targeted squarely at gamers and features an anodized aluminum chassis with quano blue mechanical switches it's an affordable route to mechanical switches and full individual key RGB backlighting however while there are a handful of hotkey combos for enabling canned effects customizing the lighting is next to impossible because the config app is really bad like really really bad incomprehensible translation unscalable tiny window bad D - for effort moving on the double Schottky caps allow the RGB nice to shine through the back of the rather large legends but unfortunately the key caps were poorly enough stabilized particularly the larger ones to earn this board a solid net in our roundup changing gears completely the logitech k8 40 mechanical stands out right out of the gate with its be blasted aluminum top plate and sharp professional-looking gray aesthetic inside it packs romaji switches which due to their large box profile have very good stabilization but they're not for everyone if you've never felt one they could probably be best described as a mushy ER MX Brown the key caps themselves are abs with pad printed legends but other than cheeping out there the build quality is what you'd expect from logitech and we didn't have any complaints until we noticed that at the same price as the other keyboards we featured today it has no backlighting whatsoever and you can hate on RGB all you want but when you're in the dark it can be pretty useful to be able to see what you're doing and it also has no num lock and no scroll lock indicators for some reason also the leading edge of the deck rather than tapering down towards the desk has a really sharp design to it that wasn't super comfortable without a wrist rest so we'd recommend adding one of those for optimal comfort unfortunately that pushes the total cost of this solution to the high end of our lineup but what this board lacks in frills it makes up for with top-quality software and a clean aesthetic mostly the lack of any media controls is a serious bummer again from Corsair these guys have a lot of keyboards now we've got the k68 RGB it's equipped with cherry MX Reds has a full selection of media keys over the numpad and includes a wrist rest to boot what's not to love well there are a couple of things starting with the dust and water resistance that's built into the board it consists of a silicone membrane around each switch and you might think heck yeah a keyboard that's finally cheeto dust proof but while that maybe the silicone takes the normally silky smooth linear feel of an MX red and adds a bit of a cushion at the end of each stroke while that might not be the end of the world to you and in fact gamers who want the absolute best responsiveness out of their keyboard avoid bottoming them out the silicon also diffuses light under the keys so if you say selected a different color for your WASD Keys it will bleed out into the surrounding ones with that said of course there's build quality doesn't disappoint here we observe very little deck flex even if you're a key Smasher the wrist rest has a nice soft touch stippled finish that doesn't smudge with hand oils and silicon key booties aside it actually types pretty well as it should considering that it only hits our $75 target when it's deeply discounted finally the Logitech g6 tenor Ryan is a sturdy no-nonsense board this time with backlighting and your choice of Cherry MX reds or browns and a 2 year warranty with logitech's outstanding customer service it has a nice rigid chassis with a braided cable and three angle options for the integrated kick stands it weighs in at over 1,200 grams so if you're looking for portability this might not be the best choice but that weight is used effectively as there is minimal deck flex allowing its cherry switches to perform as intended where the G 610 really shines though is in the extra controls with a nice big volume roller and dedicated media keys even if there's no RGB the lighting controls can be changed with the dedicated lighting button plus the number of four effects while this key cycles through five steps of brightness including off typing on this board was quite enjoyable in our testing with excellent key stabilization but the ABS key caps were a little bit sharp on the edges and prone to gathering finger oils so if you want the Logitech experience but you don't like romaji switches this is your go-to now to crown a champion if we had to pick just one the Corsair k63 stands out for its combination of gaming performance key field build quality software quality and price when discounted to around 40 bucks which happens with reasonable regularity it is just really hard to beat if you must have individual arts to be backlighting on the cheap the game note have it and the red dragon davara dava rows are our cope the key stabilization on the game note did give us pause but this is a truly feature-rich board at a price that even four or five years ago I would have said was impossible for a full RGB mechanical keyboard the reason that we're including the red dragon is that what it lacks in extra features like media keys and macro keys it makes up for in noticeably better build quality and to my eye a cleaner sharper aesthetic finally if you're not trying to win a spot on your local eSports team and you care equally about the typing experience we've got to give the nod to the g6 10 Orion it's a straightforward well performing board with a clean design and Cherry MX switches it's got all the right features like media keys backlighting and angle adjustment while still coming in as low as 65 bucks on promo speaking of promo here's an offer for you check out pulse way the real-time remote monitoring and management software that helps you fix problems on the go by sending commands from any mobile device it's compatible with Windows Mac Linux and pulsed way single app gives you remote desktop functionality - so you can do all kinds of things you can get access to real-time system status you can see system resource utilization you can check logged in users and network performance manage Windows updates and more and you can even create and deploy custom scripts to automate your IT tasks so try it out for free today at pulse wave comm or through the link in the video description so thanks for watching guys bye if you enjoyed this video maybe you'd also like our cheap high refresh rate monitor roundup to go with your you know affordable mechanical keyboard for the middleweight crown [Music] Hey [Music] Oh Oh [Music] this video was brought to you by kicking your ass [Music] [Laughter] [Music]

Channel: Linus Tech Tips

Views: 4,803,629

Rating: 4.9331388 out of 5

Keywords: gaming, keyboard, guide, shootout, pc, rgb, mechanical, switches, keycaps, testing, typing, amazon, lighting, media, writing, typography, touchtype

Id: 9S-U5f140-U

Length: 14min 55sec (895 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 31 2019