Gigabyte Force K7 Stealth gaming keyboard unveiled

Gigabyte has announced a new keyboard for the budget gaming market, the Force K7 Stealth. It features customisable backlighting, anti-ghosting features and may end up being the replacement for the original Avivia K8100 that started the whole cheap-keyboard-with-backlighting craze.

The Force K7 has three adjustable colours – green, blue and cyan. These can be switched on the fly and there’s a slider to control the brightness intensity on the top of the keyboard. Next to that is a volume slider which controls the global volume level. The Force K7 is a regular keyboard and doesn’t feature any macros, has no built-in USB hub, and apart from the backlighting, has no frills whatsoever.

The keys themselves are flat and have the letters and icons printed directly onto them. The Force K7 uses a membrane like all the other keyboards in its price range, but uses scissor levers to help the keys achieve their low profile. Scissor levers are predominantly used in laptops, have a very short travel and low resistance.

: Gigabyte Force K7 Stealth

: Gigabyte Force K7 Stealth right side

: Gigabyte Force K7 Stealth backlighting all keys

: Gigabyte Force K7 Stealth backlighting

The anti-ghosting feature is centred around the keys mostly used for gaming, covering Q, W, A, S, D, left shift and the space bar. You can press all those keys at the same time and they’ll be registered, so those of you who button-mash when you’re cornered in a fast-paced shooter and entering a flat panic will still have some control.

The Force K7 is said to be quiet and Gigabyte says that the scissor design offers gamers better feedback and more stable key presses. There are some other minor features as well, such as a key to lock the Windows keys during gaming as well as a hotkey function in the drivers which will allow you to map application launchers to the function keys.

Gigabyte has made no mention of pricing or availability, but sources have assured MyGaming that it is coming to South Africa.