G.Skill is a relative newbie to the world of gaming peripheral making, despite its pedigree with internal components aimed at that crowd. Its first round did rather well, with reviewers praising the high-quality of its mouse and keyboards. Now it’s looking to expand the range, by offering cheaper, more streamlined variants of its solid KM780.
The original board came with RGB backlighting, additional key caps, a cable tidy, key changer and a little carry case for the extra caps. The KM 780R RGB will strip out a number of those extras, leaving you with ‘just’ the keyboard itself, and its fancy multi-colored back-lighting.
That shaves $10 off of the original price, making the KM 780R RGB a little more affordable at $160. It’s still an expensive keyboard, but if you are one of those gamers that doesn’t feel the need to change out your WASD key caps regularly (and we suspect most gamers don’t), you can save yourself a few bucks this way.
Perhaps more attractive still, for those looking to get a high-quality mechanical keyboard on a budget, the $120 KM780R MX, offers the same high-quality switches, keyboard layout, macro keys, back-end software and wrist rest, but without the RGB backlighting. Instead buyers get just one color — red.
Although that won’t allow for the same fancy color changes and reactive lighting that you can get with the full RGB and standard 780 models, it does make the board much more affordable. It will still have full N-key rollover and a choice of red, blue or brown Cherry MX mechanical switches, which to many are the most important factors.
What is your gaming keyboard of choice? We have used (though did not review) the original KM780 and put it up there with some of our other favorites. Especially if it is sporting brown switches.
