An Affordable Mechanical Keyboard

 

       Tired of computer keyboards that feel mushy, flimsy and imprecise?  Thinking of getting one of those mechanical gaming keyboards, but you're worried about the high price?  There are inexpensive options out there that are still built well and that still have several of the clever gaming hardware functions. The Logitech G413 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard is one of them. 

It comes in either 'Carbon' or 'Silver' models, but both have almost the same physical specifications otherwise. The Silver model has a shinier, lighter colored aircraft aluminum plate on the top of the keyboard body than the Carbon model does and the backlight on the Carbon is red while it is white on the Silver model, so which one you choose is a matter of aesthetics.  I chose the Carbon because I figured that the darker, brushed metal textured plate would show fingerprints less than the glossy, silver one would. I don't mind that the backlight is red, even though the lights in my self-built Antec Nine Hundred ATX computer tower (excellent case by the way - other than the front plate being a pain to take apart and clean, so if you come across one, it's a good one to get) are all blue.  It's too bad that you can't change the color of the backlight on the G413 model. If I could, I would probably change it to blue, though the red is growing on me. It sort of matches the purple trackball in my Perixx Permice 520 mouse which I've reviewed here.  Spoiler alert... it's an excellent mouse.

While the top plate of the keyboard body is aluminum, the rest of the body is black plastic.  It does seem to be a very durable sort of plastic at least.  It is quite rigid and doesn't bend when I place it on my lap for long typing or gaming sessions. I find that putting my keyboard on my lap is the best positon for ergonomics and keeps my wrists from getting sore.

Another reason why the G413 is good for using on your lap is because it is quite long, 17.5 inches to be exact, so it goes clear across your lap.  It's also 5.1 inches wide, giving plenty of room for all of the keys to be plenty big. They are the size of those on a standard typewriter. It has every key that a full keyboard should have, including a number pad that has plenty of space around it so that you don't accidentally hit a neighboring key while doing rapid number entry.

It's also 1.4 inches thick, which isn't as thick as keyboards used to be in the early 90's, but much thicker than some of the newest ones are.  On top of that, it's rather heavy, weighing in at 39 ounces (about twice as heavy as a typical can of green peas). This is a good thing in terms of having the keyboard stay still on your lap (or desk if you prefer) while you type very quickly.  Maybe not a good thing if you are planning on taking this with you in your laptop bag so that you can have a full sized keyboard for long typing sessions.

The keys themselves are the main reason to get a keyboard like the G413, so let's talk a bit more about them.  They are Omron 'Romer-G' mechanical keys, which are generally held in high regard among the gaming community for their durability, quietness and for being easy to replace.  Unlike membrane based keys which have a stem that presses a dome on a rubbery membrane which then touches a contact on a circuit board to complete the circuit that tells your computer that you pressed the key, mechanical keyboards have a spring-loaded stem that pushes two metal contacts within the key's body together as you press down on the key completing the circuit. This is more precise and lasts much longer. 

I can type on this keyboard for a couple of hours straight without my fingers feeling tired. That's partly because the springs in these keys do not require a lot of force to press down, but enough that you don't complete the circuit by just barely touching the key (which is a major problem for touch screen keyboards which use a capacitive technology that's far more sensitive than what is in mechanical keyboards). It's also because the keys only have to be pressed down 1.5 millimeters before they complete the circuit, as opposed to older mechanical keyboards that had actuation distances of over 3mm.  The old mechanical keyboards on manual typewriters had actuation distances that were even further, so far that your fingers would get very tired until you trained the muscles in your hands to hold up to it.

The keys last a long time, but like any mechanical thing, they can wear out. When they do, they can be removed with a little key pulling tool and can be replaced for a couple of dollars per key that you can buy on Ebay.  https://www.ebay.com/itm/174278220524?hash=item2893ca9aec:g:vJUAAOSwx5pfCitz

The key caps, rubber feet and tilt legs can be replaced direct from Logitech as well. https://support.logi.com/hc/en-us/articles/360025903194--Spare-Parts  I don't foresee having to replace parts right away as everything seems fairly durable and I don't treat my keyboards roughly.

There are a couple of other rather cool things about the G413 too. One is that you can plug a USB-A device (or USB-C with an adapter) into a plug on the upper right corner of the keyboard. That could be handy if you wanted to plug your mouse, flash drive, etc. into it. Another is that this keyboard has a 'Gamer Mode' that can be activated by holding the function key (FN), and then hitting the F8 key. By default, this turns off the 'Windows' key between the left control key (CTRL) and left alternate (ALT) keys so that you don't crash your game by accidentally hitting the Windows key,bringing up the Windows Start Menu.

You can also use the Logitech G HUB from their website https://support.logi.com/hc/en-us/articles/360024689354--Downloads-G413-Carbon-Silver-Mechanical-Gaming-Keyboard, to customize the settings of your keyboard to change what keys the Gamer Mode disables. It will also let you customize the backlight settings such as brightness, whether it glows steady, fades in and out, etc., but not the color of it.  You can also adjust the brightness by holding down the FN key and hitting F7 until you get the brightness you want. I prefer it on full brightness, but you can adjust it from that to four levels of before it shuts the light off. In the G HUB, you can also customize the function keys F9 through F12 to do a wide variety of things. By default, they do special things already to control playback of videos.  I played around with this software for a while, but eventually decided that I didn't need it and uninstalled it. The keyboard's default settings are perfectly fine with me.

I really enjoy using the G413 keyboard in almost every way. There are only a couple of things that keep me from giving it full stars.  One is that the number lock on the number pad shuts off every time you turn your computer off. The next time you start your computer, you have to turn the number lock back on in order to use the number pad. This is an issue especially if you are using the PIN number system to log into your computer (which you can do with an update on Windows 8.1 and on Windows 10). The keyboard has indicator lights for Gamer Mode and Caps Lock, but not for Number Lock, so you can't tell at a glance if your Number Lock is turned on or not.

The other issue I have with this keyboard is that while the USB cable for it is nice and long, six feet long to be exact, it is so stiff and thick that it doesn't flex out of your way very well when you move the keyboard around.  This might make the cable more durable, but it's annoying nonetheless.  The USB cable has two USB-A plugs on it. One is for the actual keyboard while the other is for the USB-A port on the keyboard. It isn't clearly marked on the plugs, so if you don't want to plug both USB plugs in, you really have to look closely at these black plugs to see the tiny markings etched into them to tell the two apart. 

The G413 Carbon Mechanical Gaming Keyboard's regular price from some stores and websites is over $100, but I only paid $56 for mine at Walmart a couple of months ago as of this writing.   https://www.walmart.com/ip/Logitech-G413-Backlit-Mechanical-Gaming-Keyboard/583007950

I've also seen it go for that price on Amazon  https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Backlit-Mechanical-Keyboard-Passthrough/dp/B06XR5MWGM/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=Logitech+G413+romer-g+switches&qid=1620948360&sr=8-2

as well as Ebay https://www.ebay.com/itm/373572880666?epid=12015059590&hash=item56faadc91a:g:8PcAAOSwHBNglsV8 though on Ebay, when looking at all the different sales offered for it, you need to check to see if it is new or 'refurbished'.  Maybe the person who did the refurbishing did a good job, maybe they didn't.

While $56 may seem like a lot for a wired computer keyboard, compared to other keyboards marketed for gaming, it's not bad at all.  The brands often considered the 'top of the line' keyboards on the gaming magazine websites such as Corsair, Razer, SteelSeries, and Roccat are all over $100. Some are even over $200. It's not that Logitech's gaming keyboards aren't very good either. They often score in the top ten of such '10 best' articles on gaming websites. This specific model doesn't anymore, but that's because Logitech has released several models since the G413 was released in 2017.  Logitech still supports it with drivers, so it's far from being obsolete.

If you spend a lot of time typing on your desktop or laptop computer and/or spend a lot of time playing computer games, you owe it to yourself to get a good quality keyboard like this one.