** WARNING Drunkenmaster post WARNING **
I saw an offer for a refurbished K70 over the weekend and thought it was a enough to move away from membrane keyboards and back to mechanical.
From the initial play last night I have to say I'm disappointed. I thought the lights would be quite clear and distinct, but I find the leakage from under the keys makes it a mess unless you're sat on top of the keyboard. At a glance it can be quite difficult to see which key is which, though I generally touch type anyway. I could tilt the keyboard up, which ought to help, but then it's unlikely to be as comfortable for long periods of use.
The software is a mess, at least on the surface. When I get a chance to play with it for longer I might be more impressed, but at the moment it's as it was in the reviews I watched - needlessly complicated for basic configuration and about as unintuitive as you can design software. It's probably one of those very rare pieces of software which would benefit from a simple wizard option or something to get the basics going too.
I'm unimpressed that there aren't any basic profiles included for more popular software, such as a stock CS:GO profile, or Photoshop or something. I realise the whole idea is to give choice to the user and they want profiles to be swapped in the community, but it would have been nice to have some basic profiles included to give you an idea out of the box (rather than just the gimmicky effects they have included).
As for the transition back to a mechanical keyboard, it's OK but I'm struggling a little to adapt. I've used a Logitech Illuminated keyboard for what must be five years now, which has almost laptop-style membrane low keys (though good ones, not the crap found in cheap laptops), and I use the same keyboard at work, and they've been great. The light illuminates the key rather than the area around it and I've had no RSI, and that's the worry I'd have with tilting the K70 up at the back.
I've used plenty of mechanical keyboards in the past, but from the quick gameplay I had last night I'm finding I'm resting on keys a bit too much, meaning I'm not releasing the key very occasionally. I'm using browns and I guess blue or black would have stopped me doing that, but the threat of noise meant I was never going there. I'll learn if I give it time and it's not the fault of the keyboard in any way, it's just from my recent use of low-profile membrane keyboards.
Still, I've contemplated returning it. I really thought with all the hype it would be better than this, and videos and photos can't give an accurate representation of what the keyboard looks like. To me it's not the practical keyboard I thought it would be, it's too much of a gimmick, almost designed as the computing version of an old chavved up car with lights underneath or one of those garish gaming laptops from 4 or 5 years back. I was hoping that the lights could be practical but I find they're hard to distinguish unless you stare at them a bit longer which defies the point, so from my initial experience the lights are useless in that regard unless neighbouring keys are turned off, which isn't always ideal. It would have been better if you could dim individual keys (perhaps you can?).
Like I say I only installed it yesterday, but from my limited use I'm far from impressed for £100. I could have bought a standard refurbished K70 or more likely stuck with my Logitech Illuminated. I've got some o-rings coming as the brown isn't quite as quiet as I'd hoped, and with any luck they will block out some of the light leakage too which would go a long way to making the keyboard more what I had in mind.
Let's end on a positive though - the volume wheel is simplicity at it's best - it's awesome.