Gaming Keyboards: Which Is The Best For You?

A keyboard is something very different to a gamer than to, say, a business man or a regular student. For the latter two, a keyboard is a tool for entering information, writing a paper, or checking email. For the gamer, a keyboard is a connection, a portal through which he casts his spells, trades for his bone armor, maneuvers his plane, or shoots his foe. Because it is so much of an extension of his mind and, coupled with his mouse, one of the only ways with which to connect with the alternate worlds of the fantasy, history, or future of a game, finding the right keyboard is crucial for gamers. Many gamers are not content to immediately start hitting the WASD of the keyboard bundled with their machine, so Tom's Hardware decided to call some familiar as well as new manufacturers and see what they had as an answer to the question we are oft asked, "What is the best keyboard for gaming?" The companies that responded were Ideazon with their second generation Zboard, BTC with their 9019URF, Saitek with their PC Gamers' Keyboard, Logitech with their Media Keyboard, and Digicor/Maxtron with their KB-0250 Gaming Keyboard.

I have always thought of ergonomics as man's attempt to use science to make something comfortable for everyone. A five minute walk down the sidewalk of any major city will tell you that such a goal will always elude ergonomicists, if that is what they are called. There is such variation in style of play, posture, and even wrist anatomy in each gamer, that much of what would make a keyboard "the best for gaming" is very subjective. Despite a lack of benchmarking tools for what is good design other than our own experience, we decided to push on and use each of the five submitted keyboards for hours of good gaming. The keyboards had vastly different features and strengths, some of which favored some game genres over others, but we put all of them through the same paces with Joint Ops: Typhoon Rising and Soldiers: Heroes of WWII.