Logitech G19 Programmable Gaming Keyboard with Color Display

This keyboard really is awesome. I am a firm believer in Logitech products, and this keyboard is no exception. The keys aren't to mushy and spring back nicely to allow for quick and smooth typing. The game toggle is really nice for when you are in game to keep you from annoyingly hitting the windows key and exiting you out of the game. I love that the media keys work even when iTunes (for example) is not on the main screen. There is the option to set a different color for each of the three macro group buttons. It is also really awesome to be able to set macros on the fly. I had to reformat my hard drive recently and when I moved my music back from the external iTunes decided it needed to make duplicates of everything (my fault but oh well). With this keyboard it was no problem, because I just made a macro to go through and delete all the duplicates right on my keyboard, pretty nifty. The best part is that you can set three sets of twelve macros for pretty much every program! meaning you can have 36 macros for your default profile, 36 macros for Open Office, 36 macros for each game, etc. Everything mentioned before is great even without mentioning that it has a color lcd to view system information on. The lcd is great. I don't feel like you need to be superman to push the buttons. They feel reminiscent of the buttons that were on my old Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback Pro (I think..). I guess what may bother some is that they don't have that modern clicky feel they feel more like buttons than keys. On to my few gripes about the keyboard. Most of which could be fixed easily with a firmware update I am sure. The lcd is compatible with Windows slideshow. This HAD great potential. The operative word being had, because Microsoft has killed slideshow. You can hardly find any slideshow apps anywhere. This is a problem, because as far as other apps for the g19 go there aren't really many of those out there either. The keyboard has been out for over two years and there haven't really been any new apps released by Logitech or the community of g19 users. The best one I found was LCD Host, because it let me kind of build my own app. The worst part with the Logitech apps is that you can't even change the color of the background on any of them to be something other than Logitech green. I just feel like Logitech in two years would have done something awesome with the screen on this keyboard. I also really think that with usb 3.0 out Logitech would have put that into this keyboard by now.All that said, the keyboard is fantastic! I strongly recommend it if you have this much money to spend on a keyboard. It has a really quick response time and a lot of great functions. If you do get this keyboard then you may be disappointed by the apps available, but definitely not by anything else!

First let me confess to being a bit of a Logitech fan. Their products have, for the most part, treated me very well over the years and so has their customer service.Let me get down to the reason I have two of this keyboard. On one fateful day I decided to remove all of the keys on the keyboard and one by one clean them out and give the keyboard a thorough cleaning using a few qtips and a bowl of water. The reason for the thorough cleaning was because I accidentally spilled a can of soda in the keyboard. The spilling incident itself did not damage the keyboard as the very little that managed to get under the plastic of the keyboard ended up on the rubber padding. Nay, what did it was the water that was left in the keys and managed to seep down to the circuitry below because I didn't wait long enough for them to thoroughly dry. A funny story, but tragic indeed.So I waited, the keyboard went on sale, and I snagged another one. What do I love about this keyboard? Well, the keys feel very nice, for the most part. They have a bit of a squish to them, but not too much. This is nice because it makes the keyboard very quiet. I prefer my keyboards to be quiet rather than loud and clicky like that of a mechanical keyboard. The illuminated portion of it is absolutely awesome. There are so many colors to choose from that I have never actually seen on an illuminated keyboard. Dark purples, oranges, and light greens, even pink! Also the fact that it sports two powered USB 2.0 ports is very convenient. I actually use them for my Tablet and Mouse. The volume dial is really cool, feels nice and it's not overly sensitive making it easy to slightly lower or heighten the volume.There is a ton of customization and profiles you can set up if you are a hardcore gamer, I haven't taken too much advantage of this, I should, but I haven't. The only major downside to this keyboard is the screen.The screen is cool, and it looks nice, but it is so very limited in what it can do. The youtube function if it is pretty much worthless seeing as I can't search for videos I might actually want to watch. However, for games that fully support it, it's really cool.The most notable game I can give that supports it is League of Legends and the support seems to be fairly new as one day it just started popping up on the screen. It even, while loading, shows the League of Legends logo and changes the keyboards color to blue! Pretty cool right? I thought it was. The nice thing about it is that it gives me all of the information on my champion. So I can quickly glance down and see certain bits of important information without having to pull up anything on the main game screen. The advantages are small, but sometimes that's all it takes is a small advantage, right?For most other games I honestly can't think of why the screen would be necessary, League of Legends is probably the only one I know of that does it right. However, there are some programs that work with it as well.One of them is EVGA Precision, a graphics card tweaking and monitoring program. I used these features to show my fan speeds, temperatures, and clock speeds while overclocking to ensure I can safely overclock without hitting a certain temperature threshold. That, too, works quite well as I can have this appearing on that screen rather than on one of my monitors.I would like to see more features like that, seeing as I can quickly slip through them on the keyboard navigation rather than doing anything on screen, so if I do happen to be playing a game I can flip between background programs using the keyboard.All I can say is that this keyboard is really good, it just needs more support for the incredible potential it has, and has had since the G15 made its debut.On a side note, to some people, like me, the keyboard may look like it's massive. It's not, it's a good bit smaller than the original G15 (G11) keyboard and might be about the same size as the current G15, I'm not certain.