| Excellent Gamer Keyboard, Slighty less Handy for day to day |
| There seems to be some reviews by users who do not actually own the G15.
I do.
As a gamer, I only need about 6 macro buttons, and they work just fine for that. The orange glow may not be quite as bright as I would like, but looks nice and does help gaming in the dark when you get the fingers on the wrong keys. The LCD is handy just in telling me the time if I'm playing some game that doesn't support the G15 (no more playing till 1AM accidentally) and in the games it does support, it's actually very handy - especially so in Lord Of The Rings Online or WoW, laying out stats in an easy to see way.
The downside to this kind of keyboard is you do miss some things. No volume knob, though you do get buttons. Been using a knob/wheel for years, so I'm really missing it. No calculator button, though I suppose I could make a macro for it. None of your usual Home or Web or buttons of that nature, though you do have a nice big satisfying mute button, and another to kill the Windows Button. Typing is fairly smooth, though since Logitech kept the New G15 the same size as a standard keyboard, certain buttons are smaller, like Tab, and it does take a second to get used to it. But it's not clicky at all, and is in fact one the quietest keyboards I've ever typed on.
Overall, I am very pleased with this keyboard after about a month of use. I could wish for a volume knob or calculator key. It took me a week before I realized when I was turning down the volume, it was actually showing on the little LCD display. It's a little quirky. But it's very handy for the gamer, without taking up the space of the older model.
| | Had an older G15, not impressed |
| Well, what can I say. I had an older g15 for a couple of years before the keys started to give out. I figured this would be a good replacment because I loved my old one and this new version was supposed to be put together better. IMO the construction is better and the keys have a better feel to them. However, and this is a big however, they took away 2/3 of the macro keys. Yes, I knew this before I bought it and thought I would be okay with it. But I'm not. I loved all of my 18 macro keys on my old g15. Getting reduced to 6 is just not cutting it.
Yes, it's a good board. But it's selling points are the macro keys. If you take that away (or reduce by 2/3) then it's just another keyboard. And there are so many good options out there for keyboards. The g15 really shot itself in the foot by removing them. Now it doesn't really distinguish itself from the competition.
| | Physical quality of the keyboard is fine. But the main keys stop working at random intervals requiring a reboot. Alternately keys will stick, making you run out of control in games. It isn't just my keyboard either, there are plenty of complaints at the Logitech forums. Something is screwed up either in the software or the chips. I recommend waiting until the problems are sorted out.
| | I am disappointed in Logitech after using this keyboard. I have the older G15. While the keyboard itself has great functionality (if a little overkill for most gamers), beware - while Logitech offers a 3-5 year warranty on ALL of its other keyboards, it only gives a one-year warranty to its two most expensive offerings, the G11 and G15. I found this out the hard way after my keys started acting funny. Out of the blue one day a couple of keys started randomly typing out incorrect or extra characters (for instance, when I hit the X key I get X: on my screen, I have to delete the colon), and my left shift key somehow got mapped to F9 so that any time I would try to run in a FPS it would reload a savegame. This is pretty much a deal-breaker for any gamer.
I take very good care of my hardware so I was quite surprised, tried the keyboard on another computer without any Logitech software installed and it did the same thing, indicating a hardware problem with the board. A search of Logitech's forums found that several people have had this problem, and it seems there is no fix but to send in for warranty replacement - if you're still in the warranty period. Although ultimately I only have myself to blame for not paying close enough attention to the warranty terms, after paying $85 for a keyboard I expect better than a one-year warranty, especially when their $20 keyboards go for 3-5 years. The fact that Logitech chose to offer a shorter warranty on this product is, to me, an indication that they were aware of quality issues and opted to act in their own interest by offering a shorter warranty instead of taking care of their most lucrative customers. That's just bad business. While almost all of my PC hardware is Logitech and I am happy with the quality of most of their products, I am extremely disappointed in them after this experience. I now have an $85 paperweight because I can't even use it to type accurately. The long-term life of these keyboards seems suspect, and I have a feeling that's why they suddenly introduced a newer model.
| | Received next day as promised with rush delivery thanks to Amazon Prime, packaged well and as expected. Great backlit keyboard, and fairly bright but not too bright orange backlit keys. I actually can't stand having the orange glow turned off while typing now even in the day time because I'm so used to it. I bought and use it for general use as well as gaming (World of Warcraft). I don't use the function keys as much as I hoped. They're out of my comfort zone for reaching, but it's still a nice board.
The issues people have had with the gamepanel display software are true, hence not 5 stars. It has trouble detecting keysets, my "game mode" toggle switch to disable windows buttons while in games does absolutely nothing, and I have once or twice had the entire board (and mouse as it's plugged into the USB hub) lock up on me for no reason and had to reconnect it to fix. Not a huge deal to me, but it isn't perfect.
Also, the USB hub seems to freeze up and reset the board and connected devices for about 30 seconds whenever I connect a new device to it (flash drives particularly), but this could be something with my USB controller I guess. I don't use USB 2.0 on this system.
The negative said, I think it's still a nice keyboard. Comfortable to use, easy to see, no problems with lettering wearing after a month of heavy use. Oh, and the gamepanel (when it decides to work with it) is very sweet to have in Wow...it tells me when people whisper me and what my main stats and % are in current combat form and gear. (The supposed ventrilo feature of seeing who's talking has never worked for me yet.)
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