Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Another Cool Gaming Keyboard – RK918 Review”.
Ever since I featured this keyboard in a few, my videos, I got bombarded with the same questions constantly. What keyboard is that, and where can i buy one? It’S obvious a lot of you guys were interested in it. So naturally I decided to do a review, but before you go out and buy it, I want you guys to watch this full review. So this is the arcane 918 from the brand Royal kludge. You guys probably are familiar with them, since I reviewed two of their keyboards before on the channel, the RK 61 and the RK 71, which I’ll link below in case you missed it.
But this is a full-sized mechanical gaming keyboard with automo switches and they do come in either brown or red, with blue switches available end of January 2020 autumn, oh and Cherry MX switches are very similar to each other, with the exception of their actuation force, our amo Reds are slightly heavier to actuate compared to cherry Reds. However, both brown switches have the same weight. There’S no denying the main feature of this keyboard is the RGB lighting that surrounds the entire keyboard frame, but Before we jump into the lighting, let’s talk about the build quality, so this entire keyboard is made out of two main components: the bottom plate is this: translucent Plastic piece, while the top plate is made of this very thin aluminum, and because of that there is noticeable flex everywhere on the keyboard. In fact, I might try and break this keyboard in half at the end of this video to really test this durability against ragers. It definitely doesn’t have a premium feel or touch the keyboard feels very hollow, and I just don’t feel any type of satisfaction while typing or gaming on it. On the upside, the keys are double shot injection, which means that the legends on them won’t fade over time.
However, they are using ABS plastic instead of PBT, which means that once the top layer of the keycaps rubs off you’re gon na be left with this shiny plastic surface, the key caps itself are pretty sturdy. There isn’t a huge amount of wobble and it definitely doesn’t affect my typing or gaming experience, but one thing that really bothers me is how squeaky the keyboard is. I do like the design of the keyboard. However, it’s very minimalistic with the borderless frame and since the cable is slightly recessed in cable management, will be a lot cleaner, since you can route it straight down and through the desk. If you happen to drill a hole, I’m happy to see multimedia buttons near the top, with the addition of a few extra shortcuts like launching your mail web browser and calculator, which I find very useful.
Now then, let’s talk about the RGB lighting and you can clearly see how it’s done by looking at the back. There is the RGB strip that wraps around the keyboard and since the bottom frame is translucent, the line shines through pretty straightforward. You can also clearly see all the hotspots when you set it to a static color, but if it’s left on the rainbow effect, then it’s not as prominent the bottom translucent plastic base is the main reason why this keyboard feels so light and cheaply made you have To go with a thin enough plastic so that the light can illuminate through as far as the effects go, you can set it with the keyboard using a function. Key, the arrow keys will give you option to control the speed and brightness of the lighting, while the navigation keys up top controls, the actual effects you get the standard static, colors to choose from along with a variety of animations. However, you can customize each individual key to whatever color you want by holding down the function and pressing the backspace button. This allows you to tap whichever key you want and set a specific color. This is very tedious, as you have to cycle through each color individually. Until you find the one you want, the keyboard can save up to five different custom profiles and you can switch between them by holding down the function and pressing the end key. Now.
The easiest way to customize lighting on the keyboard is by using their software, which I’ll link below, because it is pretty difficult to find over here. You can set macros shortcuts and cost each individual key to any color. You want from the color wheel.
The only thing you can do on here is customize the side glow that you have to do on the actual keyboard. If you want to change the lighting on the side of the keyboard, you have to hold on function and press the pause key, which cycles between all the static colors. Now, if you want animation effects, you have to press the page down key instead and you can cycle through two different rainbow effects or two different breathing modes, one of them cycles through each color and the other breathing mode stays the same color controlling the speed and Brightness of the side, glow is done with the keys from the numpad and the easiest way to find out what each key does is by simply looking at the diagram from their manual.
So this keyboard is currently going for 60 bucks on Amazon and I’m gon na. Be honest with you guys, it doesn’t feel like a $ 60 keyboard. The build quality is a bit disappointing, it uses cheap plastic and you can really tell not to mention the obvious hotspots on the RGB glow. You know when you compare these to one of their previous keyboards, like the RK 61, it’s night and day when it comes to overall build quality.
So I’m actually surprised that the same company made these keyboards and cheaped out on a lot of the parts. I hope they watched this video and lower the price, because for $ 60 you can get a much better keyboard like their RK, 61 or RK 71. For that matter. Personally, I wouldn’t pay anything more than 40 bucks for these keyboards, but I’ll drop a link below. If you guys want to check it out as always, thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed this video feel free to toss it like it.
If you didn’t, you know what to do. I love your beautiful faces and I’ll see you guys in the next one all right. Let’S see how durables keyboard really is: okay, one more ah, oh, my goodness so yeah no visible cracks! Oh my god! It’S all red! It might be made out of plastic but goddamn out of some tough plastic Jesus. .