Cyborg V7 Keyboard review

Every now and then a product will come along that is neither very good, nor very bad. It functions as it should, but without excelling. There is no compelling reason to buy said product, but then again you can’t really make a good argument for why you should choose a competitor over it. These products are difficult to review as you can’t really say much about anything other than the specifications.

Luckily the Cyborg V7 isn’t like the product described above – instead, it’s capable yet appalling at the same time, and I can’t really recommend it to anyone. If you’d like to know why, you should probably read on.

Features

The V7 features a touch panel that spans across the top of the keyboard, offering the users a variety of controls. From left to right you’ll find the Windows key; activity indicator; the light on/off button; volume and media controls (mute, play/pause, previous, next); cyborg mode button; and lighting controls for various sections of the keyboard.

The touch controls are alright for the most part, but if you have large fingers the response of the touch keys will be poor.

The lighting of the keyboard is one of the most marketable points of the V7. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work that well. Setting each section on the keyboard with various colours and intensity levels is easy enough, but if you set different colours across the keyboard it does start to look like a Christmas tree. Also, setting the WSAD keys a different colour to the rest of the main section on the keyboard is a disaster. There is a fair amount of light bleed that meshes the colours together, which looks slightly tacky – a problem compounded by the reflective chrome coating on the keys.

The hotkey placement on the V7 is a mixed bag. The hotkeys placed on the left hand side of the keyboard are easily accessible without disrupting your gaming too much, but the ones on the right hand side are impossible to use effectively without removing your hand off your mouse, or travelling half way across the world with your right hand. The other issue is that the design of the keys lets you accidentally press the wrong hotkey quite easily – an issue if you have different settings stored on keys close together.

Probably the nicest feature on the V7 is one of the most basic – the optional wrist rest. It is well made, offers brilliant support and makes gaming for extended period a pleasure to do. The only issue with it is the gap in the middle. For typing, your right wrist isn’t supported properly, which is a major design issue. The other issue with the wrist rest is the clips, which feel extremely fragile. Something to bear in mind if you LAN often.

The V7 also features a full speed on-board USB 2.0 port, as well as mic and headphone ports. All these ports are pass-through ports, which means the V7 connects to your PC via two USB ports and two 3.5mm jack connections.

Other features include a chrome space bar and WSAD keys. Whether this is a pro or con is up to you, though something to consider is that it does interfere with the lighting.

What I will say, however, is that your fingers tend to slide off the chrome keys far more than the normal painted keys. Having your fingers slide off of the most important FPS gaming keys is a huge issue. Lastly there is Cyborg mode, where at the press of a touch sensitive button your windows key is disabled, the lights brighten up, and you’re presumably ready to play.

The ST programming software bundled with the keyboard is easy to use, and allows you to create game specific key combinations as well as assign keystrokes to your macro keys.

The build quality appears to be of quite a high standard – the over-all construction of the body is solid, the paint coating on each key is quality and probably won’t peel off even after extended use. The keyboard connections are covered in thick black plastic and are well protected from pulling and sharp objects. The only issue I have with the build quality is they wrist rest clip issue mentioned above.

Usability

Gaming with the V7 is a relatively painless affair. The lights don’t really add much to the experience, and the chrome keys aren’t really suited to long FPS sessions – however, for the most part, keystrokes are easy and always register. As previously mentioned it’s easy to press the incorrect hotkey and I wasn’t really able to make use of them effectively, though others may find them easier to cope with.

Typing is not the best on the V7; the aforementioned wrist rest issue is enough to drive you mad after a few hours of hacking out articles. Also, they keys aren’t as responsive as low profile keys found on laptops and other gaming keys, nor are they as “easy” to live with as mechanical keyboards.

Conclusion

So where do we stand with the V7? In terms of looks, I personally don’t like the V7 (though there are others out there who might). There isn’t much on the market that can compete with the V7 in terms of “bling” factor, so if that’s part of your requirements then look no further. Just note that the “bling” detracts from the overall usability of the board, for both typing and gaming usage.

The features aren’t particularly well thought-out, but there are many of them which balances things out, somewhat.

If you’re looking for a feature-rich, bling keyboard and can live with sub-standard execution, you may want to consider the Cyborg V7. However if lights and chrome aren’t vital to you, look elsewhere.