Gadgetory

last week I posted a video where I unboxed a bunch of Coolermaster stuff and everyone was like what's that mysterious product that you had to redact and remove from that video now bit of explanation that was my fault coolermaster sent me all this stuff and various things had various different embargo dates the embargo for most of this stuff was last week so that's why I posted that video then but the embargo for this that we're talking about today which is cooler masters new flagship MK 850 keyboard is today or about today whenever this video goes up so since this is the new flagship I thought I'd do it a solid and do a bit more in-depth coverage just on this keyboard by itself and also to give you guys some sort of explanation as to what that blurred-out product was it was this the MK 850 featuring aim pad technology with analog keys G skills new Triton C Royal Series ddr4 RGB memory kits are made for high class pcs with each meticulously crafted module featuring a full-length crystalline light bar atop a polished heat spreader with a luxuriant reflective gold or silver finish reminding you to appreciate the finer things in life like the freedom to choose from trade NZ royal RGB kits in 16 gig 228 gig capacities and up to ddr4 40 600 megahertz memory speeds if you're looking to give your high class system built the Royal Treatment clip the sponsor link in the description below so I actually already unbox this when I unbox all the other cooler master stuff last week so I'm an impossibly mix in some of that footage along with this so you can see the christina unboxing experience i reboxed it so I can unbox it again so it goes inside the box though we have a bit of a instruction guide for how to use this keyboard it never use the keyboard before we have the keyboard itself which has some plastic protective covering on it this does have a new design all new unique design compared to the Mk 750 if you're looking at the previous flagship keyboard from Coolermaster although it does have a completely metal top with brushed aluminum and then some sort of texture along the edge which i think is a nice look beneath that we have a plastic for the base you've got a routing channel in the bottom so you can take your USB type-c cable plug it in right there and you can route it straight back or off to the side left or right depending on your preference you do have some feedback here so you can lift up the keyboard and give yourself some decline as you're typing which is more comfortable lots of people and includes a magnetic wrist rest as well and then a feature that stood out to me immediately which isn't going to be included on all the keyboards Coolermaster did this for me cuz I'm special is we have a Paul's hardware key cap with my pulse hardware at thumb screw logo on it which i think is very special normally you would get a coolermaster logo key cap right there which they have still included in the box for me but wanted to point that out and say thanks blur master for customizing my little sample here here's the standard cool and master key cap then beyond that we have a complete new set of keys well not completely a set of keys but new keys for the cue wer and asdf keys here which are the analog enabled impact technology keys all the rest of the keys use Cherry MX switches there's a key cap puller in there as well and then we also have some purple key caps that you can put on your left right up and down keys here as well as the five macro keys which are over here on the left side other notable stats about this keyboard is the use of Cherry MX switches of course key switches they're chained MX Reds for this one the manual seems to indicate that there might be other Cherry MX which is available but I think at lunch they're just going with red construction materials are plastic aluminum and PU leather which is a faux leather that's used in the wrist rest the color is gunmetal black these are RGB key caps so 16.7 million colors the keyboard has a pulling rate of one thousand Hertz and a response rate of one millisecond or 1000 Hertz there's an onboard 32-bit ARM Cortex m3 processor as well as 512 kilobytes of built-in memory so that you can take your multimedia keys or your color keys or whatever program the board with your settings and then take it with you and not necessarily need to have these software installed I am going to be testing out the software which is currently being called portal version one point five point four is what's available and that'll hopefully give you guys a better idea of how to control this keyboard and some of the other various functions it has for example at the top we have a set of media control keys here for play pause forward back mutes and controlling brightness we also have two volume rollers right up here at the top one I've already confirmed works just for volume by default the other you can program to do whatever you want it to do for instance you can use it to cycle through RGB controls you can use it to control the volume on just your headset versus one controlling the system sound for example or you can just set it up to replace your Mouse's scroll wheel function and I imagine there's other stuff you can do with it as well there's a only a single USB type-c plug to plug this in but there is a built-in USB 3.0 hub so you get two USB 3.0 pass through ports right there I can't vouch for the speed that you get through those since it is working through a hub but nice that they are 3.0 finally you have three keys up here on the top right and that is for the aim pad technology you can turn the aim pad on or off or you can adjust the level where it actually starts to detect you pressing down the aim pad keys so if you want to adjust that so that the text you're typing a bit on the same level at the Cherry MX which is you can do that and with dedicated buttons right there so here's the glue Master portal software looks like a pretty easy to understand layout it starts with aimed pad on the left and here's where you can actually control your aim pad functions there are three aim pad profiles M 2 M 3 and M 4 so you can switch between them and then that will change the function of your aim pad keys so for example and the default profile we have the ASD and W keys that are matching up with the left analog stick and a joypad so they're going to imitate the left analog joypad sticks functions if we go down to M 4 they have also assigned the Q and E keys here to the left trigger and right trigger on there and then you can see there's available keys that you can also program in if you wanted to set up something for the RF for example to be like one of the other analog keys on the joypad here you can also adjust the sensitivity of those aim pad analog switches and that pretty much is all for that moving on to lighting we can that actually see a bunch of different lighting presets since the preset that it has right now is snowing which I kind of like actually they have a bunch that are pretty easy to use here rain for example shows some nice rain falling down there I jumped back to profile and one here so that the aim pad keys are no longer lit up so here and lighting we can see rainfall so there's rain we also have of course your default rainbow wave that lots of people have used before crosshair allows you to type and that will sort of do a crosshair vertically and horizontally with whatever key that you type on the keyboard reactive fade fades out each key as you type it so it's got a blue background and then when I type its the foreground in white as you can see listed and foreground there then it fades off as you type of course you have a custom mode here where you can individually select any keys that you wants in chain their color we have a star field which is just you know nice shiny starry field color cycle will cycle between colors breathing will will do breathing also can do multiple colors or custom colors if you want ripple will do a ripple from wherever you type out to the edge and again you can speed that up and slow it down if you want to so fun to go slow we have a slower ripple with this one you can actually play snake on the keyboard Coolermaster actually has a bunch of these built into their keyboards so move your snake up or down eat the green apple and then your snake will become longer and then you can eat the other Apple it's it's kind of interesting and if you're really bored and all you have is a keyboard it's a functional mobile game to play no Apple again I thought fire ball is kind of fun wherever you type it doesn't shoot sapphire ball across the keyboard so if you type on the left side of the keyboard it should set off that way you type on the right side it should spire ball off that way it's a good question Joe's wondering if we can if the fireballs will explode in the middle now they crowd they cross over each other they're not affected you can do dual fireballs though water ripple will ripple out from wherever you punch a key so that'll make it very dancey reactive punch just does a big block of keys that light up wherever you type I already showed snowing at the beginning which is similar to rain but it kind of flutters the snowflakes down over the keyboard there's a heartbeat function which heartbeat oh oh I see it does like an EKG kind of peaks and drops back then circle spectrum is another RGB vomit option which is just gonna do a sort of a gradient this way reactive tornado sounds exciting what's what it's doing it's a tornado of RGB that's reacting as I type and then down here we have multi layer and multi zone options so you can actually pile up multiple effects on top of each other that's gonna get pretty crazy pretty quickly so I'll just show that that's available and then of course you can turn off the LEDs that's convenient other functions in the software are key mapping of course so you can you know tell any key to be a different key or disable that key if you want to that is how you will actually adjust your real your scroll wheels that are up there at the top because you do have a deep function with the scroll wheel which is volume so the one on the right here just gonna do volume by default so if you wanted to reassign the left scroll wheel here to do something else you could do it here it looks like currently have access to macros letters and numbers navigation keys modifier or spacing keys such as inter backspace space left control right control numpad keys media keys punctuation keys and miscellaneous keys and of course you could reassign any of these keys to do anything if you wanted to really confuse somebody who's trying to use your keyboard and wants to type something next up is the macro function you can create a macro over here I just created a macro to automatically input the Konami code as you can see it records delays and how long you've pressed each button and you can have quite a bit of functions with each macro of course loop functions are available too and then you can quickly assign the macros to different keys over here by pressing the different key to assign macro to that's which I'm not going to do right now lastly we have profiles big buttons here to reset rename import/export or open each one individually so this will change the entire keyboards profile layouts you can support up to four of them that will allow you to also change all of your macro settings and your aim pad functions and your gamepad profiles over there on the left hand side as well so fast-forwarding a bit I decided to spend a couple days with this keyboard just testing it out and sort of taking it through the motions seeing how it works first off as a keyboard it is a perfectly functional and good keyboard uses genuine Cherry MX keys so if you like cherry MX Reds and you like a full size layout keyboard with a number-pad down here you're not gonna have too much to complain about we have easily accessible media keys across the top here we have the full layout which is easy for typing the wrist rest does come off a little bit easily if you're moving around a keyboard a lot but for the most part it stays stuck on there and it's comfy as well then we've got some nice macro keys across the side and the software's been pretty functional for me as well it's done everything I've asked it to do the only thing I haven't spent too much time on is the macro keys but I have been testing out superhot because if you're gonna spend 200 bucks on this keyboard and that is the MSRP one $99.99 from coolermaster you might be considering to yourself what more is this offering me and of course the analogue keys are going to be the big difference maker compared to other keyboards in the same realm I should point out that coolermaster isn't the first company to integrate analog keys into a full keyboard like this routing has the winning one and winning two that have similar technology but difference here is that these analog keys have four millimeters of travel and it senses the analog depression or how far you've pressed the key down across that entire range whereas the wounding keyboards only do to two millimeters so that's gonna be a matter of preference for you as for actually using the keys and playing a game with them I have two demos that I'm gonna run through one is super hot that I've been playing a little bit of right now and actually haven't played this game too much but it is a great example for this particular keyboard because in superhot as you play the time only moves forward as you move so if you want to move time just a little bit and give yourself a strategic advantage you can push the key down just a little and move just little and it will only advance time just a little and that is pretty useful so I'm gonna go up here and punch that guy and punch him again and then punch him again and I don't know there's a guy behind me with bats and now I've been beaten dead alright so haven't tried this level before so that's been some part of the reason maybe I should go for the guy with the bat first haha I did it so the whole point there is that it's very helpful to be able to make small movements in the game for strategy purposes and so you can beat people up and shoot them but the controls in this game are also very simple you're on foot you're just using WASD to move and you have a couple other function keys I also tried the keyboard as Grand Theft Auto and that was a slightly different experience so the top right here you have the aim pad button that will enable or disable aim pad mode for your analog controllable buttons over here and you might notice when I push that button that the screen actually goes off and it says there's no keyboard connected and that's actually disconnecting and reconnecting the keyboard every time I do that more on that just a second but with aim pad on mode it lights up the keys that have analog control there and then over here an imp ad I can actually go between different profiles M 2 and M 3 and M 4 our by defaults the aim pad profiles and it has different keys assigned to each one and when you're turning pad mode on what it's actually doing as far as Windows is concern is emulating a controller that's plugged in so it's saying your left analog stick up down left and right is assigned to the W a s and D keys right there for up down left and right if I switch to M 2 mode it switches so that right trigger and left trigger the analog triggers at the top of an Xbox 360 remote are now assigned to forward and back and that's going to be key for a game like grand theft auto the third preset here does w a s and D for the up-down left-right on the analog stick here as well as left trigger and right trigger for the Q and the e button so you can actually have access to all of those functions at the same time but in order to get this to work properly and play nice with Windows and easily be accessed by the games that you're playing it again is emulating and pretending that is a controller so when you plug in this keyboard it thinks it is controller 1 of an Xbox controller that you've plugged in to your computer for example I just plugged my xbox 360 controller in here and it is now assigned to player 2 because it thinks that player 1 Xbox 360 controller is the keyboard that's plugged in now a situation that can occur here and that I actually encountered when I first tried to play GTA 5 is that if you press this button to switch analog control mode on or off it's going to rear Ekka guys the keyboard and it occasionally Ari recognizes the keyboard as player 2 or player 3 and if the game that you're playing can immediately recognize different controllers plugged into the same system then you're not gonna have access to the controls on the keyboard so case in point here I plugged in the controller it assigned it to controller two I turn the keyboard off and then back on and I unplugged and replug the controller and now the controller is now player one once again so I've loaded up GTA 5 and here's what happens if I turn on the analog amp ed mode with the controller already plugged in nothing and for my understanding the reason that's happening is because the since I've reconnected at the computer it's recognizing the keyboard as controller to a controller 3 and GTA 5 by default can't access those controllers at least not with any of the means I've tried out so just trying to fix this and work around it I unplugged the controller reconnected the keyboard hoping that I would get controller 1 again but it doesn't seem to have worked I can't still move around a non analog mode so I unplugged and replug the keyboard in order to try to switch it back and get the analog controls working because I just want to show that because I was able to get them working and now it's got like I'm walking forward without anything happening I think I'm gonna need to restart the game here so I restarted GTA 5 unfortunately my analog keys are now working once again in GTA 5 if you're running around or on foots there is no analog control it's just your going or your knots it's in the car that you actually would want to have that control and of course it started me up on top of some train tracks here with Trevor so I have no cars readily available let me find one so I'm actually kind of glad I chose GTA 5 because it is my best example of a game where I feel like I would actually make use of analog controls but it's also a game that when I usually play it I have a controller plugged in that I use so if I'm on foot and I need to run around and aiming at things I use the keyboard a mouse so I can aim more accurately and then when I'm in a car I grab the controller so I can have the analog controls for steering because that's what I'm much more used to and comfortable with now here since I've jumped into the car I try to afford him back and actually can't because forward and back are still just forward and back and the controller controls are forward and back would use the triggers up here there's two ways to deal with that in the game one is to go into the games control functions and actually reassign them so that forward and back would still be the W and s keys or you can just use the macros over here since m2 and m3 switch between those and now I can do forward and back with analog control there since it's reassign that I was playing this for a little while yesterday and I was actually training myself to hit m2 or m3 to switch back and forth between those modes when I was jumping into a car out of it but I think if I was playing this long term I would just go into the game and reassign those buttons so I didn't have to switch between my two presets what's wrong wrong with this person I missed his system I'm shooting so see I got out of the car and immediately started shooting by pressing W because it switched it to the trigger button what's wrong with this person yeah just no one's no one's helping this person it's up to Trevor where my car go that's right hey tali Ana Martinez I helped her out and now she can be a driver in my missions all right I'm getting distracted by playing the actual game I think the analog controls are helpful there and it's definitely a lot easier to steer and move around so while playing GTA 5 and I can definitely say it would allow me to get rid of the controller if that's what I was looking for the best example I can show you if it actually in action is just the wheels as they turn I slowly press down the a to turn left and you can see the wheel turn a little bit or turn more that's really all there is to it I can get a little bit of action in between there as well so to kind of sum things up here I think the analog keys on this keyboard are functional and useful when you can get them working properly in the right environment my plan was to play it with the GTA v and just because that's one of the games that I play most often that I feel like I would actually use this in but it does take away the experience if you are planning to do something like switch between a controller and the keyboard itself you're really going to want to go with one or the other and that's just because of some of the conflicts that are introduced by the windows automatic recognition of something like an Xbox 360 controller automatically assigning it to a position and then the software syncing up with that so it will actually function and the game that you play and functions seamlessly but I think with a game like GTA 5 would just take a little bit more setup work to get all the keys assigned properly so I could completely rely on the keyboard and take the controller out of the situation completely of course there's a bunch of other games that would take advantage of this technology as well so you know pick your poison but keep in mind that if it's a game that you typically use a controller in or if you want to have that flexibility of having a controller and the keyboard you might be dealing with some restarts or some unplugging and re-plugging stuff in to get it to work right I'm hoping that coolermaster can maybe update the software to allow you to manually assign what is recognized as troller one a controller - when it comes to the analog controllers you have plugged in ultimately though I think if you wanted the analog keys the aim pad technology but not to have the confusion of whether or not the keyboard is being recognized as a controller maybe just hold out for the actual aim pad that coolermaster is also developing which will be separate and has an entire keypad full of analog controllable and assignable keys but guys that's gonna wrap it up for this video I hope you've enjoyed it and let me know what you think of the cooler master master keys 850 down in the comment section below do you think this keyboards worth 200 bucks let me know and I'll put a link to it when available in the description - thanks again for watching hit the thumbs up button on your way up and we'll see you guys next time