Logitech G110

Logitech G110

The un-boxing was fairly sweet, and straight forward. The first thing you’ll notices is how long the keyboard is due to the fact it has to accommodate all the macro keys on the far left. It’s not all that longer than your standard keyboard, but it’s definitely a bit bigger. The wrist rest is pretty much non-existent, but it includes a wrist pad extension for those who feel more comfortable with one . For those of you that like to have your keyboard sitting up at angle you’re out of luck. When I extended the feet on the back, it barely raises the keyboard up. I thought I was going to have to place some pads of sticky-notes under the keyboard to get that “30 degree” angle I’ve been used to with other keyboards, but after typing for awhile with the extended wrist pad it wasn’t much of an issue for me. The keys them self seem a bit smaller than what I’m used to. The function keys them self are unusually thin so those of you out there that have hands larger than the average geek might have a bit of trouble. The material for the keys are softer and while pressing down on the keys they’re relatively quiet and aren’t “clicky” like the IBM keyboards of yore. The G110 still has the channels underneath the keyboard to route all your cords under it to keep down on desktop clutter. But how does the the G110 compare to its father, the G11?

I’ll be honest, I don’t own the G11. But I did some research on the G11 to compare to the G110 and here’s what I found :

The initial improvement to this model, over the G11 is that Logitech included a headset jack on the keyboard near the function keys. Once you plug in headphones into the keyboard, a new sound device is installed. So any of your programs that have had you playing back music or recording might need to be re-configured to accommodate your new set up. It’s interesting to note there was 2 USB 1.0 ports on the G11. The G110 USB port (that’s right, Logitcech decided to shave off one port) has been upgraded to USB 2.0. You can’t plug-in any devices such as MP3 players, or hard drives to it since it doesn’t provide enough juice to power such devices. So you’re limited to just mice and flash drives for the most part.

From what I can tell, the G11 and the G110 don’t seem to be all that different in terms of features. The biggest change is key lighting. The G11 only had a blue LED, while the G110 allows you to change the color. As long as the color is any shade of red, blue or purple. The volume and media controls are still there as well, and I didn’t have to do any configuration to get the media and volume controls to work with my favorite media player. The one glaring drawback to the G110 over the G11 is that it along with shaving off the aforementioned USB port, 6 macro keys have been shaved off as well. The G11 had 18 macro keys, but the G110 has been reduced for 12. You can have 36 macro keys per profile by simply pressing the M1-M3 keys above the “G” keys. The G11 had the same feature, but you’re limited to 36 macros from 54. A net loss of 18 macros. I suppose Logitech found 54 macros per profile a bit excessive but I run under the mindset that I’d rather have too much than too little. Speaking of the G keys, before I got used to the keyboard, I found myself pressing the “G7” key thinking it was the escape key. After a day or so, that habit stopped and I got used to the key positioning.

The profiler software is great. It’s light weight and barely requires any resources to run. The profiler can detect games automatically and will create a default profile for you. Unfortunately, the profiler software didn’t find most of my games and I had to go in and create profiles manually. While creating Macro keys in the profiler, you’re given the option to record the delays between keystrokes. Recording delays between keystrokes is imperative when it comes to chaining together spells, attacks and other abilities in MMO’s when timing is crucial. Since I don’t play a lot of MMOs, I found the macro keys most helpful in keeping a list of console commands I can execute on the fly in FPS games. I play on a server with a custom laser sight mod in L4D, so opposed to hitting the “~” key and typing in the command, I can just hit “G1” and viola, there’s my laser sight.

Obviously this keyboard is marketed to gamers, but those who aren’t avid gamers can get great use from this keyboard. You can macro just about anything. You can assign the G keys to open up web browsers, email clients and a wide variety of applications. Once inside applications, I can see the macro keys being used to store common formulas you might have to execute in excel spread sheets or any wide variety of commands in any application. On top of having macros, you can also program your own scripts in Lua.