Gadgetory

this video is brought to you by NCI XCOM great technology selection and service hello everyone Aidan here with hardware key Knox and today we're looking in a mechanical keyboard from Zelman this is the Z machine K 700 M full sized board with cherry MX red switches and a bunch of built-in options it comes in with an MSRP of one $39.99 putting it in the price range of the Corsair strafe RGB so there are some high expectations here alongside strong competition with already well established brands in the gaming market so what does the K 700m offer while it has a decent feature set all of the functionality is done at the hardware level so the keyboard is completely driverless this means you don't have the proprietary software to deal with but it also means some of the customization isn't as intuitive the keyboard is built of a solid plastic and it weighs in at one point three kilograms there's very little flex and it feels fairly tough the 1.7 meter cable is nicely braided and the board has nice grooves for easy wire management also on the bottom of the two flip-out feet and rubber pads for better grip so the solid build is up to scratch but is the board rich enough in features to justify the price point one of the first things to look at is lighting the K 700 M uses bright white LEDs which look great the lack of RGB is a little disappointing but there is a range of lighting modes it has set print adjustment for the constant backlighting and custom Rhodes with seven stops of adjustment you also have various modes with key touch activation three wave modes individual key lighting mask mode dimmer and breathing there are even six different EQ modes which I'll show briefly now unless you use your keyboard as party lights the EQ might not be that useful and the other thing to consider is there as a microphone in the keyboard for detecting outside volume so that might not be your thing the Zen machine also has five macro keys with three functions the first three keys record up to 140 characters with timings and are programmed by holding the function key along with the desired action key the fourth key will do the same function as the first three but loop it until my nearly stopped you can adjust the speed of the macros with the arrow keys the fifth key supposedly loops without timings however I found that it would only register one key thus making it fairly useless the only other thing I would have liked to see is non timed non looping macros for video editing I would love to see complex shortcuts running instantly and by bines for games like csgo but alas that is missing that aside macros seem pretty simple and easy to use for typing MX Reds personally aren't my favourites which I prefer either MX blues or Browns but the switch choice does make sense for a gaming board the light actuation of MX Reds makes quick keypresses easy and the thousand Hertz polling rate as well as full and key roll over over ps3 and USB means that the board is pretty well set out for gaming not that having a gaming keyboard helps me much but these switches and key caps were good and being able to disable the windows key was handy I don't understand why Salman went with a full sized layout for the board though as the numpad takes valuable mouse space for gaming and having both hands closer together is better for ergonomics if this was a Productivity focused keyboard it would make sense to have a numpad but for a gaming board I would have preferred a 60% layout but aside there I found that typing and gaming was just as good as on any other MX red board the keyboard has a couple of other little knickknacks with the mask mode I alluded to earlier which allows for any key to be turned on off with the backlight indicating keys currently in use something which can be handy if you don't want to mash keys in game you also have windows and control key locks various media shortcuts and a double tap num lock calculator launcher as well as repeat speed control which allows the key repeat to be sped up to a hundred strokes per second the last thing to mention is the igb Zedd logo with the light meter on the side of the board it offers typing speed display volume display LED brightness control and macro running speed settings I haven't found it useful in almost any way though since for typing speed it's not nearly accurate enough to be useful it doesn't properly show volume macro speed doesn't display and LED brightness is pretty self-evident the only useful thing is that it flashes red when programming macros but that could have easily been implemented elsewhere even if it worked perfectly it would still feel gimmicky and it could easily be removed from the board without any loss so it seems this keyboard is a fairly simple exterior with quite a bit of under-the-hood functionality the big question though is it worth the one $39.99 price tag honestly I would have to say probably not it's a great board no doubt but with a really high price point especially when competing with the likes of coarser razor or Logitech did offer their unique driver characteristics or lighting this board does everything pretty well and I'm sure that for some people its unique feature set is appealing but I think for many that price point is just a little too high unless you pick one up on sale and then it should definitely be on your radar so thank you for watching everyone if you enjoyed this review make sure to leave a like and comment if you have any questions or feedback I'm Aiden with Hardware Canucks make sure to subscribe for more videos and we'll see you in the next one