Logitech G915 Lightspeed Wireless Mechanical Keyboard Review

even the best bet on keyboards are n’t for everyone. While I enjoy the longer locomotion of mechanical keys and the bold ( not to say bizarre ) stylings of most bet on keyboards, some people would prefer something more suppress, with a typing feel more akin to what they ‘d find on their laptops. Logitech ‘s G915 Lightspeed ( $ 249.99 ) offers the best of both worlds. It ‘s a low-profile mechanical keyboard, so it has a shorter wardrobe, but one that ‘s still more comfortable and satisfying than your laptop ‘s scissor switches. Its slick, luminosity body has a professional look—RGB lighting notwithstanding—that can fit in at an office angstrom well as a game ‘s struggle place. Oh, and did I mention it ‘s wireless ? If you can bear its high price, the G915 offers about everything you could want in a modern gambling keyboard .

Keys and Buttons, and Buttons and Keys

The G915 has a distribute of inputs. It ‘s a life-size dining table with five excess macro buttons ( G1 through G5 ) on the entrust side plus a twelve extra buttons—dedicated media controls, keys for swapping among onboard profiles, a “ game mode ” release to disable the Windows key and early keys of your choice, and controls for adjusting backlight luminosity and switching between Bluetooth and Wi-Fi ( what Logitech calls Lightspeed ) radio connections. It besides has a snazzy-looking aluminum volume roller at top right, near the media keys .
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It ‘s surprising to me how few high-end keyboards have extra macro keys. Function keys are finely, but most apps and games take advantage of them ; having extra keys dedicated to macros or other essential actions always feels like a game-changing bonus to me. To be sure, you have to shift your left hand a bite to get used to the G1 through G5 column, but the adaptation is worth it .

For the G915 ( and its wire cousin, the $ 199.99 G815 Lightsync ), Logitech has created a new set of proprietorship low-profile mechanical switches. The Logitech GL switches come in tactile, clicky, or linear flavors. ( This review is based on a keyboard with analogue switches, but I ‘ve tried all three. )
According to Logitech, all three versions have similar propulsion points and complete travel distance of 1.5mm and 2.7mm respectively. If you have n’t used a low-profile mechanical switch before, it ‘s an challenging middle flat coat between the longer, smoother typing strokes of a standard mechanical keyboard and the relatively quick, hard tap of most laptop keyboards. There ‘s enough yield to make it more comfortable than a notebook keyboard, but it ‘s not as comfortable on the hands as a mechanical keyboard with the usual 4mm locomotion .
Does that translate into quick hands while gaming ? I ‘d say it depends on what you ‘re playing. The lower travel means your fingers naturally rebound a little faster than on a standard mechanical keyboard. For the twitchiest games, such as Call of duty : Modern Warfare, I found I was already thus focused on moving angstrom fast as possible that I was actively lifting my fingers hurriedly. In games such as XCOM 2, where I use the keyboard a batch but at my own pace, I felt I was indeed going faster. In other words, I noticed the deviation most when I was n’t consciously trying to play firm .
Of course, a flying, more competitively minded player might find that a lower propulsion leads to more rapid actions. Maybe it ‘s telling that the biggest dispute I noticed was in my typing, which felt snappier if not actually faster .

Sleek as Well as Swift

At 0.75 by 18.7 by 6 inches, the G915 looks and feels dilute and tight. once again, if you turn off the RGB ignite or set it to whiten, the Lightspeed does not look like a gaming keyboard. Its dark aluminum top plate gives it a polished, smart search. even with the lighting on, it still looks very dapper. In fact, the colored but glazed metallic makes the colorful lights toss off, even in a well-lit room .

The keyboard feels a little heavy ( 2.24 pounds ) than it looks, which you might see as an issue for a radio receiver board since you may want to put it on your lave or merely carry it from station to seat. I found that typing with the G915 on my lap generally felt fine ; its distance and relative heave actually helped it feel balanced. still, I would n’t call it a bang-up keyboard to carry around—it ‘s very hanker, which makes it arduous to secure in a bag, and there ‘s no onboard storage for the Lightspeed dongle, so the possibility of losing it is higher than I ‘d like .
Speaking of moving around, let ‘s talk about the wireless. Like most of Logitech ‘s 2019 radio gaming gear, the G915 features both Bluetooth and the company ‘s dongle-based, 2.4GHz connection, Lightspeed. Both work well, though Lightspeed is preferable. Bluetooth adds a minor measure of stimulation slowdown, but the Wi-Fi connection systematically achieves 1,000Hz poll, which makes imprison imperceptible .

The keyboard besides gets properly battery life. Logitech claims you should get 30 hours of manipulation with the lighting set to max brightness. ( The G915 will automatically dim or douse the backlight after an adjustable period of inaction, which helps stretch out the time between charges. ) In practice, I needed to recharge using the micro-USB port at the top of the dining table after 10 or 11 days. ( pro lean : You can extend that by turning the keyboard off when you ability down your personal computer. ) As mentioned, users who do n’t care about having a cordless keyboard can opt for the $ 50-cheaper ( but placid mighty expensive ) G815 Lightsync, which adds a USB pass-through .

Business at the G Hub

The G915 supports Logitech ‘s gaming peripheral software, G Hub, which has become one of my favorite shape programs. It ‘s clear and clean in invention, and it makes doing everything from recording macros to setting preset and custom-made lighting patterns a breeze. I ‘m peculiarly affectionate of G Hub because its design always puts the concenter on whatever you ‘re doing alternatively of cluttering your view with other options .

The Lightspeed can store three profiles in onboard memory and an infinite number of profiles per device, which you can tie to specific apps so your game-specific profiles are mechanically set when you launch each game .

One hiccup concerning profiles : You need to set and activate the onboard profile using the keyboard settings menu, rather than the profiles menu. That feels counterintuitive, since there ‘s besides a way to switch and view your onboard profiles in the profile configuration menu. As a result, it would be pretty easy to set your profiles, then disconnect the keyboard assuming they ‘re stored .

You Can Have It All…You’ll Just Pay for It

Simply put, the Logitech G915 has reasonably much everything I ‘m looking for in a radio keyboard. Everything from the basal keys to the macro buttons to the media controls looks and feels big. It being cordless without compromising performance is the icing on the cake.

As person who plays a long ton of television games and can crack every last joint in his hands, I can respect that some mechanical-keyboard purists may not love the low-profile find. For people who are looking for a quick press, however, or who merely like shallower type, the Lightspeed is one of the best mechanical options I ‘ve used .
Surprising absolutely no one, the best besides happens to be one of the most expensive. At a whack $ 249.99, the G915 towers above most of the choices on our best-gaming-keyboards list. then again, it ‘s brilliantly engineered, has all the trimmings, looks gorgeous, and types well. Start saving up for it .