As many of you know as readers of reviews on this website and listeners of the RBG Technobabble Podcast (shameless plug), I am a mechanical keyboard fanatic. Specifically mechanical keyboards that are more compact than full size like 90%, 80% and 60% keyboards. Well I have a stack of keyboards to review and I decided to start with this one as its my latest acquisition.
G.Skill is relatively new to the peripheral market and are still mostly known for selling high quality PC memory modules. They announced last year that they were entering the market with a full size mechanical gaming keyboard and a gaming mouse. The keyboard interested me initially but when they confirmed, at the time, that there would be no tenkeyless version my interest disappeared.
This year at CES they announced the upcoming launch of their tenkeyless mechanical keyboards. The KM360 recently released and G.Skill is touting them as the cheapest CherryMX Red equipped keyboards available on the market. At a special price of $49.99 at launch here in Canada (now $69.99) it certainly was and still is respectively.
On top being cheap and equipped with genuine CherryMX Red switches the KM360 is also backlit with white LEDs. They are incredibly bright on full brightness and as such I turned them down a little bit and it’s perfect.
G.Skill also went a step further and have released it in white and black flavours. The white being base and keycaps all white and the black being a silver base and black keycaps. I do prefer the latter.
Now as for quality, you can’t fault the CherryMX Reds. They are fine if you like red style switches. I don’t care for them myself but that doesn’t mean they aren’t good. If you are a Red switch afficianado you will like how this keyboard feels to type on. Personally I prefer a brown switch. Please G.Skill bring out a CherryMX Brown equipped KM360.
As for the rest of the keyboard the base is strong enough but does flex under extreme force but it does not flex when typing normally.
The keyboard does come with a detachable USB-C cable which you only usually see on much more expensive keyboards and I appreciate that. Sadly the cable that came with my KM360 was defective and I had to use a different cable. Thankfully it’s a standard USB-C cable so I just used one from another keyboard that I own.
The KM360 also sports risers so you can angle the keyboard a bit and that’s great to see. This is something that is skipped even on some high end, very expensive keyboards still to this day.
Keyboard functionality is limited to the basics. There are no dual functions for the “F” keys which honestly I appreciate. Some gaming keyboards put the “F” functions to the secondary function of those keys which really can be annoying. G.Skill’s KM360 dumps all that and just has simple function keys along the top.
Overall I really like the KM360. It’s a simple, no-nonsense mechanical keyboard with genuine CherryMX switches for a very reasonable price. I will say though for five dollars more you can get a fully RGB keyboard from Drevo called the Tyrfing but it’s far more complicated to setup. If simple is your game, stick with the KM360.
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