Gigabyte Force K7 review

The Gigabyte Force K7 is advertised as a gaming keyboard, but at first glance the only concession to gaming seems to be the weird angular shape of its corners and sides. There are no programmable macro keys, for instance, or WASD keys picked out in a different colour for first-person shooter games.

The Force K7 does at least have backlit keys. Not only that, but you can cycle between different colours by pressing one of two wheels at the top of the keyboard, and control the brightness by scrolling that wheel. The other wheel controls your PC’s volume.

The other gaming-oriented feature of the Force K7 is that its keys are supposed to have minimal travel before a key press is registered, cutting down on the amount of time between your thinking and the result of the keypress appearing onscreen. Despite this, we found there was still too much travel for our liking, at least in the context of a gaming keyboard. We had no problem with the amount of key travel when simply typing, but that’s because the key travel felt similar to other, cheaper keyboards that don’t stake a claim to gaming prowess.

We’d also like the WASD, space and Shift keys to have some kind tactile marking, perhaps raised bumps. What we want is some way of distinguishing them from other keys by feel, which would be extremely handy when playing games. We also found the keys had a hard action, which may be fine for gaming, but not for work. We tired of typing on the Force K7 after a couple of days of use.

The Force K7 isn’t a bad keyboard, but it’s too expensive for what it is and it isn’t as gaming-oriented as we’d like. As it is, the Force K7 is neither a good work keyboard nor a good gaming keyboard. We think you should either spend more and get a proper gaming keyboard or spend less and get a good, regular desktop model.