Gaming keyboards are actually slower...

dt97583 · 22 Oct 2017 at 18:53

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Are-g...ter-than-conventional-keyboards.258470.0.html

The Apple Magic keyboard 2 apparently had the lowest latency of just 15ms while gaming keyboards such as the Razer Ornata Chroma and Easterntimes 1500 (aka Tomoko MMC023) had high latencies of 35ms and 50ms respectively.

Why do we see low latency in the Apple keyboard, which is not even marketed as a low latency keyboard while supposedly gaming keyboards show higher latencies? The answer could be in the key travel. When measured with a camera that captures images at 240 fps (4ms per frame), Luu observed that a complete key press takes about 4-8 frames. Although in mechanical keyboards the key press will start registering even before the key is fully pressed, the key travel time can add up to 10ms delay which will vary depending on the switch mechanism underneath. The Apple keyboard's key travel was so short that it could not be captured by the high speed camera.

I'm not particularly posting to prompt mechanical keyboard enthusiasts to reply saying they prefer the feel or the noise, it just struck me as an interesting exercise in itself to disprove the marketing bumf you often see in the industry.

Begbie · 22 Oct 2017 at 18:54

Yeah but those clickly noises...

Minibiker · 22 Oct 2017 at 18:55

Begbie said:
Yeah but those clickly noises...

Cant beat the noise can you :cool:

Rroff · 22 Oct 2017 at 19:03

Should have tested a wider range - a good few gaming keyboards are advertised (or if you research do have as the technical specs) as 1ms response not including debounce and with 1000Hz polling do more or less achieve it - or at least as close as makes no odds. Obviously going to be some delay for key travel, etc.

It is interesting that some are quite poor however.

jaffveyda · 23 Oct 2017 at 08:32

Rroff said:
Should have tested a wider range - a good few gaming keyboards are advertised (or if you research do have as the technical specs) as 1ms response not including debounce and with 1000Hz polling do more or less achieve it - or at least as close as makes no odds. Obviously going to be some delay for key travel, etc.

It is interesting that some are quite poor however.

Exactly non of the major players are out there. On K70 you can adjust the response from 8ms to 1ms, I would like to see that put to the test.

V F · 25 Oct 2017 at 17:10

Wonder how the Steelseries Apex M800 compares...

w1ze1 · 26 Oct 2017 at 15:45

Claims 25% faster : https://www.logitechg.com/en-gb/articles/romer-g

There was a few review sites had latency figures for the key stroke and new LightSpeed Wireless latency.

V F · 26 Oct 2017 at 16:22

w1ze1 said:
Claims 25% faster : https://www.logitechg.com/en-gb/articles/romer-g

There was a few review sites had latency figures for the key stroke and new LightSpeed Wireless latency.

In 2017 approaching 2018 you’d think this wouldn’t be an issue anymore with gaming keyboards.

Quartz · 26 Oct 2017 at 16:32

I neither care nor know about the latency of my keyboard. I bought it because it's better for my hands.

sadbuttrue · 29 Oct 2017 at 12:23

This is measuring the human response time in relation to different switches and has nothing to do with the electronics or polling rate.

I somewhat agree with the results - most rubberdome and scissorswitch keyboards are far better at dancing on the WASD block than mechanical. The key travel and actuation points on mechanical keyboards do add latency that you can feel when trying to circle strafe etc in game.

mortals · 30 Oct 2017 at 12:46

How many people type 66 characters per second? (15ms)

The main quote references "Razer Ornata Chroma" which is a membrane keyboard (even if it is marketed as hybrid)

The referenced research shows a keyboard with MX switches running over USB @ 8ms (125Hz) performing to 25ms (das 3)

Seems a little bit weird the research shows a MX keyboard with longer travel distance to have lower latency than membrane keyboards running at 1ms (USB FS 1000Hz) :confused:

Appendix: where is the latency coming from?

A major source of latency is key travel time. It’s not a coincidence that the quickest keyboard measured also has the shortest key travel distance by a large margin.

mortals · 30 Oct 2017 at 13:03

sadbuttrue said:
This is measuring the human response time in relation to different switches and has nothing to do with the electronics or polling rate.

The measurement seems to be both the keypress time & the time the packet takes so it does have something to do with the electronics & polling rate.

The latency measurements are the time from when the key starts moving to the time when the USB packet associated with the key makes it out onto the USB bus.

Let’s look at the measured keypress-to-USB latency on some keyboards

EsaT · 30 Oct 2017 at 13:58

mortals said:
Seems a little bit weird the research shows a MX keyboard with longer travel distance to have lower latency than membrane keyboards running at 1ms (USB FS 1000Hz)

There's also contact bouncing in mechanical contact using switches.
It's affected by design and materials of mechanical contact.
https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/digital/chpt-4/contact-bounce/
Membrane/rubber dome switches apparently have challenges in it.
(and in any higher current applications that bouncing and resulting arcing can wear contacts lot)

Because of that there needs to be some kind delay causing filtering before keyboard's processor actually forwards keypress or it would cause single press to be registered as multiple presses.
Polling rate of keyboard to PC is just another piece in that chain of delays.

Capacitive switch lacking mechanical contacs (like Topre) is obviously free of contact bounce.
Same for optical switches:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/what-are-optical-keyboard-switches,32352.html