I strongly disagree. You get what you pay for in keyboards. This has no chance against a Kinesis Advantage 2, ErgoDex, Moonlander, & even a Logitech G Pro among many other "advanced" $200+ keyboards you claim are overpriced.
The switches on this alone seems terrible vs Kailh Bronze, Kailh Jade, Glorious Panda, Gaterons, even Cherry's very own MX speeds.
Most of the advanced keyboards you claim are overpriced enable you to switch out the switches for invaluable flexibility & far superior typing experiences.
I heartily disagree again. While I can't speak for this particular keyboard, browsing the keyboards at local stores, it is clear to me that you don't "get what you pay for". Many of the most expensive keyboards offer nought apart from supposed good looks (supposed being the key word, unfortunately), and often come with either the same old tired Cherry MX switches, cheap clones thereof, or frighteningly often even worse things like so-called "memchanical" switches and laser-ablated ABS caps, despite often costing even more than a Unicomp keyboard including trans-continental shipping.
It seems to me that the mechanical keyboard market has gone to utter trash, with literally every available brand seemingly just being in on it to milk hapless kids (or their parents) by adding more and more pointless RGB instead of actual good switches. Contrarily, the latest keyboard I got (after my most recent Unicomp board broke, again, RIP) was a relatively low-price board, and while I'm not impressed in the more grand scheme of things, it's still far superior to many of the keyboards I checked out for twice or thrice the price, so I can assuredly say that you don't get what you pay for.
Kailh and Gaterons are among the worst you can get. They give out so quickly its unbelievable. I will never understand why they are hyped that much. Well, I do, but its shocking what money can buy nowadays.
I actually main this keyboard. I can confirm that it is in fact a pretty decent mechanical keyboard. The things you lose though with this is a detachable cord, and the RGB is baked in and can't be software controlled.
At the very least it's a good beginner's mechanical keyboard for those who want a better experience without paying an arm and a leg.
This is also my primary keyboard, I want to add that you can actually control the RGB through software however, Red Dragon has its own proprietary software for it.
For the price its a very decent keyboard, easy to swap out switches and even the keycaps are fairly easy to replace should you ever want to get rid of the overly glossy keycaps.
That type face is ugly AF, double for their software.
Moreover "budget" products in what are inherently premium market segments never made much sense to me. Spend just a bit more and you get something much nicer.
Considering the fact that the keyboard market it almost as jammed up as the 'gaming chair' market of cookie cutter designs that don't actually offer any benefits over one another, I appreciate hearing respected feedback on the subtle, yet noticeable differences in brands and switches. I'm not a keyboard snob, as I've spilled more gallons of coffee on mine over the years to put the exxon valdeze to shame, I tend to like buying cheaper boards as they will inevitably vall into ruin by my hands at some point.
There's nothing "inherently premium" about mechanical keyboards. They were very common a few decades ago, and as someone who's used to type for a living, even these Outemus are much better for my fingers than the horrible chiclet keys that became the standard for laptops.
FYI, its not decades ago its today. Today if you want a high-end, premium (whatever adjective you want to use) typing experience you get a mechanical keyboard. If you just need a keyboard get whatever is cheap.
I bought an 'Omoton' tenkeyless mechanical for about £24 a couple of months ago. It uses Blue Outemu switches. It's okay, I think the switch sounds a bit 'springy metal'. I suspect a single OEM has made a couple of keyboard designs and these are simple rebrands. The main issue is occasional 'first key response' not occurring, which is odd on a wired keyboard.
My first MX mechanical keyboard was a Redragon. I only used it for a short period of time due to the noise made by the Cherry Blue (CLICKY) switches, I stuck it in a box and sold it earlier this year for the cost of shipping to some teenager that was happy to get it. I also can't abide the Razer gamer aesthetic, but if you can't or won't pay a bit more for a Ducky, GMMK, etc., then it's probably not a bad deal for a 100% starter mech.
I have owned a Redragon VATA keyboard and it works as well as it did when I bought it a bit short of two years ago. My only complaints about it are the software (not hard to use except for macros, and there doesn't seem to be a continuous loop option for the macros). The LED colors are not very true (really only apparent if you try to make them white). The separate macro keys could not be programmed in the software (macros for the regular keys could be programmed just fine).
On the plus side, you could change the keys out for cherry switches if you wanted and it's supposed to be "spill resistant". It was cool that it came with examples of all the different types of switches inside the box so you had spares or could test the clicky-ness of the different types.
I bought a MSRP $180 Logitech Orion. Software was great and the lighting was great...it was absolute garbage hardware. I started getting a lot of chatter after about 8 months. They sent me a replacement. That one was starting to give me chatter after another 6 months before my son spilled something on it. For such an expensive keyboard, it was annoying that they didn't make it spill proof at all.
I'll take a semi decent/reasonably priced keyboard over a much more expensive one that's going to make me angry when it breaks (esp in the timeframe those Logitech keyboards did) due to incredibly stupid design flaws. My next keyboard will likely be Redragon (but maybe not this one because I really like separate macro keys...games that have anti-macro logic seem to be fine with these types of macro keys).
What would be nice in these mech kbd reviews is, first, an included link to the manufacturer's product page, and secondly, some kbd measurements in inches & centimeters (w X h.) I ask because mech kbds tend to be too small for my hands--at least, every one I've tried feels like my fingers are in a straightjacket--not comfortable. This one doesn't appear any larger from the photos. So I tend to stick with non-mech kbds. Seems like a decent price, however, for this kind of kbd.
Dunno, but i don't see why people are so willing to buy standard profile mechanical keyboard. i mean my Logitech K740 or even my office's basic K200 is faster to type than my own standard mechanical keyboard with standard profile height. low profile mechanical keyboard should be the norm rather than this tall as heck keys.
Well considering I am using a wrist wrest and the keyboard feet are out, taller keys are good. If I wasn't using a wrist rest I'd probably want low profile keys. Do remember, for mech keys you should not be bottoming them out, so it's not an issue that they're taller and is more of a preference thing.
I do want to try out a low profile keyboard for a week or two, currently have only ever used blue, brown and red, settling on brown, always full-sized. Want to try out the Logitech G815, but not really wanting to drop ~$200 on it as a test, and don't have any friends with it (me and about 10 friends swap keyboards with each other whenever someone is interested, have gone through the original K556, coolermaster mk750 (my current), the steelseries 64 something (forgot the suffix bit), a corsair K95 (was very tempted by this one), and a G513 in the recent year or two.
I’ve had a Redrafon Varuna mech keyboard for 3 years now. After the 2 year mark, some keys have become occasionally unresponsive. When I pull the keycap, and press the switch directly (Outemu blue), it works. Then I return the keycap and everything is back to normal. It seems that the switches themselves are ok but it might be some dust between the switch and keycap that’s causing the issue.
I bought it for the backlighting, because I use the computer at night with the lights off. So far I’ve been very happy with it. Cost me $36. The Devajaras software works with it (Varuna).
I got a Redragon K555-RGB-UK a little over a year ago. And I'm generally ok with it (the noisy clicks don't bother me, only the other people on a conference call :) ). But I have one big problem - when I make repeated clicks on the SAME key it "eats" some of them. When I click different keys it's fast and accurate, but when I'm clicking same keys seems like some software feature decides that some of my clicks are not necessary and ignores them. So typically if I click backspace 6 times for example because I know I want to delete 6 chars, it might ignore couple of clicks and I end up deleting only 4, and since it's not reliable I'm never sure where my cursor is without looking and patiently correct again. Other than this issue I don't have complaints.
My personal experience with this keyboard: I bought this keyboard a couple years ago. It was a much welcome replacement for my 20+ year old PS/2 one that had keys that were so sloppy that some of them (the 'k' key in particular) actually flipped up vertically if you pressed along the bottom.
This keyboard has been a dream. And yes, I can confirm the longer keys do feel a bit hollow when pressing them, but most of them have gotten better with use. The biggest exception being the backspace key.
As far as macros go, I just use auto hot key which is fine for me since I have a repertoire of scripts I've been maintaining across several computers. So far the only use I got out of the included software was to set my preferred RGB and bump up the polling rate. Any keyboard layout stuff I use a freeware called key tweak.
I and some others on Discord have been working to port the QMK firmware to this and othe Sonix SN32F248/B based keyboards. I have QMK running on mine with OpenRGB control, which when combined with an open source RGB effects engine (Aurora or Artemis) can provide fancy RGB game integrations, music visualizer, and more. With this new firmware the only real downsides of this keyboard are gone. It easily does what some $100+ keyboards do and with better build quality. I plan to post a YouTube tutorial on converting your K556 to run QMK firmware soon, and the process is reversible if you decide you prefer the stock firmware.
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YB1064 - Thursday, February 4, 2021 - link
This is about $15 over-priced, but I'd take this over any "advanced" $200 keyboard.lilkwarrior - Saturday, February 6, 2021 - link
I strongly disagree. You get what you pay for in keyboards. This has no chance against a Kinesis Advantage 2, ErgoDex, Moonlander, & even a Logitech G Pro among many other "advanced" $200+ keyboards you claim are overpriced.The switches on this alone seems terrible vs Kailh Bronze, Kailh Jade, Glorious Panda, Gaterons, even Cherry's very own MX speeds.
Most of the advanced keyboards you claim are overpriced enable you to switch out the switches for invaluable flexibility & far superior typing experiences.
Dolda2000 - Saturday, February 6, 2021 - link
I heartily disagree again. While I can't speak for this particular keyboard, browsing the keyboards at local stores, it is clear to me that you don't "get what you pay for". Many of the most expensive keyboards offer nought apart from supposed good looks (supposed being the key word, unfortunately), and often come with either the same old tired Cherry MX switches, cheap clones thereof, or frighteningly often even worse things like so-called "memchanical" switches and laser-ablated ABS caps, despite often costing even more than a Unicomp keyboard including trans-continental shipping.It seems to me that the mechanical keyboard market has gone to utter trash, with literally every available brand seemingly just being in on it to milk hapless kids (or their parents) by adding more and more pointless RGB instead of actual good switches. Contrarily, the latest keyboard I got (after my most recent Unicomp board broke, again, RIP) was a relatively low-price board, and while I'm not impressed in the more grand scheme of things, it's still far superior to many of the keyboards I checked out for twice or thrice the price, so I can assuredly say that you don't get what you pay for.
Beaver M. - Sunday, February 7, 2021 - link
Kailh and Gaterons are among the worst you can get. They give out so quickly its unbelievable.I will never understand why they are hyped that much. Well, I do, but its shocking what money can buy nowadays.
Ebsolas - Sunday, March 7, 2021 - link
I actually main this keyboard. I can confirm that it is in fact a pretty decent mechanical keyboard. The things you lose though with this is a detachable cord, and the RGB is baked in and can't be software controlled.At the very least it's a good beginner's mechanical keyboard for those who want a better experience without paying an arm and a leg.
tanino - Thursday, December 16, 2021 - link
This is also my primary keyboard, I want to add that you can actually control the RGB through software however, Red Dragon has its own proprietary software for it.For the price its a very decent keyboard, easy to swap out switches and even the keycaps are fairly easy to replace should you ever want to get rid of the overly glossy keycaps.
Tunnah - Thursday, February 4, 2021 - link
RGB looks very muted, against the rave aesthetic of high end Corsair. I dunno, if I buy an RGB keyboard I kinda want a seizure risk involved.Operandi - Thursday, February 4, 2021 - link
That type face is ugly AF, double for their software.Moreover "budget" products in what are inherently premium market segments never made much sense to me. Spend just a bit more and you get something much nicer.
Crazyeyeskillah - Thursday, February 4, 2021 - link
Considering the fact that the keyboard market it almost as jammed up as the 'gaming chair' market of cookie cutter designs that don't actually offer any benefits over one another, I appreciate hearing respected feedback on the subtle, yet noticeable differences in brands and switches. I'm not a keyboard snob, as I've spilled more gallons of coffee on mine over the years to put the exxon valdeze to shame, I tend to like buying cheaper boards as they will inevitably vall into ruin by my hands at some point.Threska - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
Looks like someone needs a keyboard skin.Wereweeb - Thursday, February 4, 2021 - link
There's nothing "inherently premium" about mechanical keyboards. They were very common a few decades ago, and as someone who's used to type for a living, even these Outemus are much better for my fingers than the horrible chiclet keys that became the standard for laptops.Operandi - Friday, February 5, 2021 - link
FYI, its not decades ago its today. Today if you want a high-end, premium (whatever adjective you want to use) typing experience you get a mechanical keyboard. If you just need a keyboard get whatever is cheap.psychobriggsy - Thursday, February 4, 2021 - link
I bought an 'Omoton' tenkeyless mechanical for about £24 a couple of months ago. It uses Blue Outemu switches. It's okay, I think the switch sounds a bit 'springy metal'. I suspect a single OEM has made a couple of keyboard designs and these are simple rebrands. The main issue is occasional 'first key response' not occurring, which is odd on a wired keyboard.https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mechanical-Keyboard-OMOTO...
mrvco - Thursday, February 4, 2021 - link
My first MX mechanical keyboard was a Redragon. I only used it for a short period of time due to the noise made by the Cherry Blue (CLICKY) switches, I stuck it in a box and sold it earlier this year for the cost of shipping to some teenager that was happy to get it. I also can't abide the Razer gamer aesthetic, but if you can't or won't pay a bit more for a Ducky, GMMK, etc., then it's probably not a bad deal for a 100% starter mech.IguanaC64 - Thursday, February 4, 2021 - link
I have owned a Redragon VATA keyboard and it works as well as it did when I bought it a bit short of two years ago. My only complaints about it are the software (not hard to use except for macros, and there doesn't seem to be a continuous loop option for the macros). The LED colors are not very true (really only apparent if you try to make them white). The separate macro keys could not be programmed in the software (macros for the regular keys could be programmed just fine).On the plus side, you could change the keys out for cherry switches if you wanted and it's supposed to be "spill resistant". It was cool that it came with examples of all the different types of switches inside the box so you had spares or could test the clicky-ness of the different types.
I bought a MSRP $180 Logitech Orion. Software was great and the lighting was great...it was absolute garbage hardware. I started getting a lot of chatter after about 8 months. They sent me a replacement. That one was starting to give me chatter after another 6 months before my son spilled something on it. For such an expensive keyboard, it was annoying that they didn't make it spill proof at all.
I'll take a semi decent/reasonably priced keyboard over a much more expensive one that's going to make me angry when it breaks (esp in the timeframe those Logitech keyboards did) due to incredibly stupid design flaws. My next keyboard will likely be Redragon (but maybe not this one because I really like separate macro keys...games that have anti-macro logic seem to be fine with these types of macro keys).
WaltC - Thursday, February 4, 2021 - link
What would be nice in these mech kbd reviews is, first, an included link to the manufacturer's product page, and secondly, some kbd measurements in inches & centimeters (w X h.) I ask because mech kbds tend to be too small for my hands--at least, every one I've tried feels like my fingers are in a straightjacket--not comfortable. This one doesn't appear any larger from the photos. So I tend to stick with non-mech kbds. Seems like a decent price, however, for this kind of kbd.hansip87 - Friday, February 5, 2021 - link
Dunno, but i don't see why people are so willing to buy standard profile mechanical keyboard. i mean my Logitech K740 or even my office's basic K200 is faster to type than my own standard mechanical keyboard with standard profile height. low profile mechanical keyboard should be the norm rather than this tall as heck keys.RSAUser - Sunday, February 7, 2021 - link
Well considering I am using a wrist wrest and the keyboard feet are out, taller keys are good.If I wasn't using a wrist rest I'd probably want low profile keys. Do remember, for mech keys you should not be bottoming them out, so it's not an issue that they're taller and is more of a preference thing.
I do want to try out a low profile keyboard for a week or two, currently have only ever used blue, brown and red, settling on brown, always full-sized. Want to try out the Logitech G815, but not really wanting to drop ~$200 on it as a test, and don't have any friends with it (me and about 10 friends swap keyboards with each other whenever someone is interested, have gone through the original K556, coolermaster mk750 (my current), the steelseries 64 something (forgot the suffix bit), a corsair K95 (was very tempted by this one), and a G513 in the recent year or two.
thuckabay - Friday, February 5, 2021 - link
I could never purchase from a company that worships Satan: see Revelation 12:3, 12:9.m16 - Saturday, February 13, 2021 - link
You shouldn’t be using satan boxes (computers, smart phones and tablets) then, made by atheist, Hindi and Muslim men and women.CalcProgrammer1 - Thursday, March 18, 2021 - link
lmao what a dumb reason to not use a particular keyboardSailor23M - Friday, February 5, 2021 - link
Interesting choice of name (Devarajas - southern indian god king) for a chinese company :-)LMonty - Friday, February 5, 2021 - link
I’ve had a Redrafon Varuna mech keyboard for 3 years now. After the 2 year mark, some keys have become occasionally unresponsive. When I pull the keycap, and press the switch directly (Outemu blue), it works. Then I return the keycap and everything is back to normal. It seems that the switches themselves are ok but it might be some dust between the switch and keycap that’s causing the issue.I bought it for the backlighting, because I use the computer at night with the lights off. So far I’ve been very happy with it. Cost me $36. The Devajaras software works with it (Varuna).
Beaver M. - Sunday, February 7, 2021 - link
No, its the switches giving out. And youre lucky it happened that late. You probably dont use it much.Double presses are another symptom of that.
LMonty - Sunday, February 7, 2021 - link
You're right I don't use it much. But how come the switches work when I remove the keycaps, and everything works again when I return the keycaps?MamiyaOtaru - Saturday, February 6, 2021 - link
looks identical to any z-88 board on amazon (granvela, mechanical eagle, huoji, e-yooso, etc.) down to the chamfered silver edgesdicobalt - Saturday, February 13, 2021 - link
Too bad Chinese brand products always fail to function correctly after extended use.dicobalt - Saturday, February 13, 2021 - link
You can run down to the auto shop and get some bulb grease for the switch contacts. It'll prevent air and moisture from degrading the contacts.akamburov - Thursday, February 25, 2021 - link
I got a Redragon K555-RGB-UK a little over a year ago.And I'm generally ok with it (the noisy clicks don't bother me, only the other people on a conference call :) ).
But I have one big problem - when I make repeated clicks on the SAME key it "eats" some of them.
When I click different keys it's fast and accurate, but when I'm clicking same keys seems like some software feature decides that some of my clicks are not necessary and ignores them.
So typically if I click backspace 6 times for example because I know I want to delete 6 chars, it might ignore couple of clicks and I end up deleting only 4, and since it's not reliable I'm never sure where my cursor is without looking and patiently correct again.
Other than this issue I don't have complaints.
Ebsolas - Sunday, March 7, 2021 - link
My personal experience with this keyboard:I bought this keyboard a couple years ago. It was a much welcome replacement for my 20+ year old PS/2 one that had keys that were so sloppy that some of them (the 'k' key in particular) actually flipped up vertically if you pressed along the bottom.
This keyboard has been a dream. And yes, I can confirm the longer keys do feel a bit hollow when pressing them, but most of them have gotten better with use. The biggest exception being the backspace key.
As far as macros go, I just use auto hot key which is fine for me since I have a repertoire of scripts I've been maintaining across several computers. So far the only use I got out of the included software was to set my preferred RGB and bump up the polling rate. Any keyboard layout stuff I use a freeware called key tweak.
CalcProgrammer1 - Thursday, March 18, 2021 - link
I and some others on Discord have been working to port the QMK firmware to this and othe Sonix SN32F248/B based keyboards. I have QMK running on mine with OpenRGB control, which when combined with an open source RGB effects engine (Aurora or Artemis) can provide fancy RGB game integrations, music visualizer, and more. With this new firmware the only real downsides of this keyboard are gone. It easily does what some $100+ keyboards do and with better build quality. I plan to post a YouTube tutorial on converting your K556 to run QMK firmware soon, and the process is reversible if you decide you prefer the stock firmware.dgdg - Thursday, March 24, 2022 - link
Is the remapping saved in the keyboard or in the software? What happens if I remap the kb and use it in another machine, w/o redragon soft installed?