Logitech’s recent keyboards have sported a prominent “gamer” type of style, but with the new RGB Logitech G810 Orion Spectrum, the company has embraced a more minimalistic design approach. It still has some style due to the familiar Logitech font and logo, but they don’t look out of place on the cleaner G810, Logitech’s latest full-sized RGB mechanical keyboard.
The G810 features a matte textured design and braided cable, neither of which are features the G910 and G410 have. Like the G410 and G910 though, the G810 features programmable RGB lighting with 16.8 million colors and default modes like “star mode” and “color wave,” but it also has game-specific lighting modes. The game-specific profiles only illuminate keys used for the particular game, and can produce color patterns for quicker identification. Logitech boasts that their software supports lighting profiles for over 300 games, although smaller and indie games aren’t as widely supported as AAA games. The Romer-G switches used help to ensure this RGB lighting is vivid and even. The Romer-G switches have a durability rating of 70 million actuations, making it rated for more actuations than most keyswitches (especially modern switches like Cherry MX and Kailh). Logitech also continues to emphasize that the 25% shorter actuation point (compared to Cherry MX switches) grants players an advantage; although, whether a couple milliseconds will make the difference is iffy when human reactions times can easily be above 150ms.
Reflecting some other high-end mechanical keyboards, the Logitech G810 has dedicated media controls that allow for easy control of songs, movies, etc. without having to stretch to hit both a function key and an F-key. The board isn’t as clean with these media keys, but that’s a tradeoff made for added ease-of-use.
Through the use of Logitech Gaming Software (LGS), the F keys can be set as macros. Like nearly any other gaming marked keyboard, the G810 has “game-mode” which disables the Windows key, but unlike many other keyboards, keys can be added or removed from “game-mode” through LGS. If you’d like to disable caps-lock, for instance, that could be added to the roster of game mode keys.The Logitech G810 also has 26-key rollover, which is more than most people have fingers and toes, so key-rollover won’t be a problem for gaming and typing.
One of the G810’s unique features compared to the competition is its two levels of tilt via the inclusion of short feet, which elevate the keyboard to a 4-degree tilt, and then longer feet (that the smaller feet socket into) that raise the keyboard to an 8-degree tilt.
Interestingly, a free copy of Tom Clancy’s: The Division is currently included with the purchase of the Logitech G810 Orion Spectrum and other select Logitech keyboards. This helps make it more attractive at the price of $160 (expected availability beginning in February 2016, so... now), and if Logitech treats The G810’s MSRP like the G410 and G910, it will end up selling a fair bit below its MSRP.
- Michael "The Bear" Kerns.