Logitech is known for some of the highest quality products on the market and their G gaming division is no different. For years, the company has brought some of the most different and best functioning products available on the market, a great example is Logitech’s trackball mouse.
Used by millions of users and by some of the best professional gamers, Logitech G products are all around us and we tend to find that for the price, they last a lifetime.
Their newest expansion to the G lineup brings along a new keyboard, one that is out of this word and different than others on the market. Optimized to be a gaming focused keyboard, but have the potential to be an everyday product, Logitech created something that may change your thoughts on your current keyboard.
Powered by a dual actuated mechanical switch and guided by 100 million colors, is the Logitech G910 Orion Spark a keyboard engineered to compete? Let us find out.
Welcome to my review of the Logitech G910 Orion Spark keyboard. Throughout this review, I will discuss the following topics: the design, features, functionality and my final thoughts. A special thank you to Logitech for providing this product.
The Design
The G910 is a spaced-aged, gaming style keyboard that stands out against the other keyboards offered in the market. Just from a quick glance, you can see the aggressive tailoring and deep colors that makes it look like a piece of technology from out of this world.
Beginning with the layout of the keys, the G910 maintains a standard QWERTY keyboard with the additional 10-digit number pad. Around the standard keys, you will find your escape and 12 function keys that rest below the nine programmable Logitech G keys and four internal-memory changer buttons. Moreover, on the right hand-side are the multimedia keys for play/pause, stop, fast forward, rewind and a volume scroll wheel. Lastly, there is the gaming key to disable your Windows button and a “Lights off” key that turns off 99% of all lights on the keyboard (The memory lights cannot be turned off) should you wish to do so.
With such gaming orientation, the key caps on the G910 are cut in such a way that it’s something I’ve never seen on a keyboard before. Traditional key caps are typically concaved, allowing your fingers to be pushed into the center of the key. On the G910, Logitech has opted to offer two different styles of key caps on the same keyboard. On the left hand side, the keys are shaped to have three harsh slopes that push your finger into the center of the key. Shift to the right side of the keyboard and you find that there are only two slopes, slopes that are on the left and right side, instead of the left, right, and top of the key cap. Then to make things even more confusing, keys like enter, shift, or control only have one slope, while the Windows button is different from all of them. More on how this affected typing below.
More on the key caps show that Logitech offers some unique designs to each key. The letters themselves use a dominant font with WASD, arrow keys and Logitech G keys having lines on them to focus on the gaming keys. There is also small design touches like the “G” key symbolizing the G in Logitech G gaming.
Building materials consist of an all plastic construction, however, the keyboard maintains a strong and sturdy body that resists flexing and hard smashes, if you happen to be angry after losing a match. Included in your packaging are two palm rests, a small and large size, and I quickly went to the larger of the two as the small is quite small in size. I would even go as far as saying the large is more of a medium, but your feelings and results may vary. One thing that will not vary is the fact that the palm rest connects with two clips on the outer sides and does not have a clip in the center; this means there is an annoying tapping noise each time you rest your palm on the rest, certainly not the end of the world, but worth knowing about.
Features
By now, it should be clear by these two photos that the G910 is a fully programmable RGB individually backlit keyboard. By utilizing the cleverness of a LED shining light through a light pipe, the Logitech gaming engineers have developed some of the best looking RGB lit keys on a keyboard.
Open the Logitech Gaming Software and you gain full control of each key’s RGB potential. Selecting a color is easy as there are the primary colors that rest below a color wheel that can take inputs of hex color code. If your artistic design isn’t as virtuous, you can choose to use some of Logitech custom designs which include: breathing, color cycle, key press (when the key is pressed it will light up then fade away), star effect and color wave. Nearly every key can be colorized with the exception of the four memory keys and multimedia keys, which remain orange and blue.
Also possible with this software is to program your Logitech G keys on the keyboard. These keys can be told to launch an application, paste a phrase, enter a command, control a macro and much more. My favorite is to dedicate a key to say GG after a game has finished. For those with massive Steam game libraries, Logitech allows you to setup not one, but four custom profiles for your G keys; allowing you to have keys for a RTS, MOBA, FPS, MMO or any other type of game.
It doesn’t stop there with the software. With the program constantly running in the background, minimized in the task bar, you have the ability to download a Logitech gaming application to your smartphone. From here, your keyboard can take commands from your phone (via a local internet connection) and do a few computer commands. My favorite menu is the system specification tab that displays CPU, GPU and RAM statistics. That said, you can also move to the other menus that contain My Games, a menu to change the memory profile of your G keys, adjust mouse DPI and lastly control media controls.
Where do you put your phone when the application is running? The G910 supports a small dock located at the top of the keyboard that can hold your phone while you play. The only downside is that it doesn’t work well when a larger phone case is used; I used a Galaxy S5 with a GoBallisticCase case.
Saving the best feature for last is the type of key switches used in the G910. Nearly all gaming keyboards use the popular CherryMX branded key switches, but Logitech took a different route and partnered with Omron, a Japanese manufacturer, to develop the Romer-G switch.
Having a 5ms actuation time on a mechanical switch, Logitech’s Romer-G switches are quite pleasing to use. They use a low-forced and shortened actuation that puts ease on your fingers while in long gaming sessions. Plus, backed by a 70-million keystroke test, they are meant to last for the lifetime of the keyboard. To top it all off, the Romer-G switches feature a dual actuator that acts as a failsafe to ensure that the keyboard receives your command, making sure that you never miss a spell cast.
When gaming, the best comparison of these key switches are CherryMX Brown switches, however, Logitech’s Romer-G switches are quieter and lighter. You won’t find anything else out there on the market like these keys as they are unique to Logitech.
For a very close-up look of these Romer-G key switches, Reddit user, Ripster, took apart a G910 and explored the internals here.
Functionality
This keyboard has been in use for over a month now on my new computer. I’ve used it for typing daily word documents, internet browsing and, of course, some awesome gaming.
When using the G910, I noticed that there is a slight learning curve to typing on the keyboard. I mentioned earlier that there were different styles on some of the keys. At first, this gives a strange typing experience, but after three long days of usage, it became nearly indistinguishable from a normal keyboard.
I found myself having no troubles typing at high speeds and made very little mistakes. That said, I also found that gaming was easy with the keys slopes helping me find my way and WASD keys having distinguish lines to differentiate them from other keys.
The colors on the keyboard are extremely vibrant and colorful to the eye and certainly assist with gaming at night. When going through each color, each one was what I expected with reds being reddish and blues being blueish, whites on the other hand had a teal hue, which was a little disappointing.
Gaming with the G910 was pleasant with a large assortment of games being played with it. The G keys are a little far for my hands with only G3 and G4 being able to be reached with my pinky finger, the other G keys required a quick lift off of WASD. As I said about the key switches, they are quiet and do not annoy others sitting in the same room even when pounding away on them for gaming.
Finally, I paired this keyboard along with a Logitech G502 gaming mouse and while it’s not a requirement to use the keyboard, it certainly brings the entire desk together for an outstanding look and gaming experience.
My Final Thoughts
Backed by professional gaming groups like Cloud9 and Team SoloMid, the Logitech G910 Orion Spark is an astonishing gaming keyboard that really is space-aged technology. It clearly shows the long hours or engineering and thought that went into this keyboard and it wipes away the competition for this price of $179.99.
Buy it Now:
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