It is very rare to see mechanical keyboards at prices below 50 euros, especially with RGB technology. The G-Lab company with its Keyz Carbon took this rather interesting bet, but is this keyboard worth it and keeps certain promises?
Presentation
As expected with the price of the hardware, the packaging of the product is rudimentary while going to the essentials. In the box, we simply find the keyboard with some protection to avoid shocks during transport. Since the keyboard is said to be plug-and-play, there are no instructions or drivers to install on your computer for it to work.
Plugged in, the keyboard lights up thanks to backlighting technology but, where competitors offer pre-established features to customize the appearance of its keyboard, the Keyz Carbon only has a brightness adjustment feature between the off, the slightly on and its maximum. It is therefore not possible to configure your keyboard with certain colored keys or even to change to a solid color for example, you will be confined to a predefined backlight for each of the lines (Orange/Blue/Red/Indigo/Green/Violetw
The backlight isn't perfect like that though. In addition to having a fairly low brightness even in its maximum configuration, it also suffers from a rather bizarre homogeneity in terms of colorimetry. I don't know if it's due to the engraving of the letters or to the product used for the lighting, but some keys stand out really badly. These two points are quite unfortunate when you know that many users/players really like to add color to their setup.
The keyboard adopts an increasingly popular style, namely the "frameless" which consists of no longer having plastic around the keys to give this impression of floating keys while bringing out the colors of each of them. For my part, I really like this kind of design because it makes it easy to clean or disassemble the keyboard, the keys being easily accessible with any flat tool.
As I explained previously, the keyboard does not include any additional technology for the comfort of the user. For a keyboard with a positioning in the middle of gaming, not having specific keys for managing multimedia, disabling Windows features or adding macros is really a very bad point. For my part, I use many key combinations on my Logitech whether professionally or personally (game macro, opening software, etc.) and the loss of these features has caused me some frustration! I don't currently think it's so complicated to embed small configuration software to install for this kind of functionality.
Let's talk a bit about its typing: it embeds "blue" type switches which are one of the most common types for this type of keyboard because it offers many advantages whether on the responsiveness of the key or on its feedback . However, the other side of the coin remains its noise which, because of the click inherent in the mechanical activation of the key, is not pleasant at all when the keys are struck. Some like it, others don't, it's up to everyone. But it is true that, having had several mechanical keyboards in my hands, the latter is still in my top as far as noise is concerned (I think the combination of design and blue switch has something to do with it).
Conclusion
I would say that the G-Lab Keyz Carbon is a good entry-level mechanical keyboard that still offers more than adequate typing when noise is not a constraint in use. The publisher offers a finished product with a colorful backlight that many users/players have adopted over the years. Nevertheless, it is necessary to underline certain defects such as a rather weak backlight in terms of luminosity or the absence of a software suite to add multimedia and/or macro type functionalities.
However, if you are looking for a small, compact keyboard and, above all, at an attractive price, you can buy it or its little brother of the same name (similar but with less RGB functionality) around 30 to 50 euros depending on the chosen version.
Amazon - 38,99€
