Gigabyte GK-K6800 Keyboard Review

Usability and Functionality (Gaming Applications)

While not marketed or designed for gaming, at one point or another many keyboards are going to pressed into service in order to save to world from aliens, demons or zombies. To this end and to get a real feel for how this keyboard would perform outside of its “natural environment” I bravely took one for the team and went on a good old fashioned gaming bender. For 18 hours I played Crysis on Delta setting while eating roasted coffee beans (Tanzanian pea berry coffee beans to be precise), a big bag of Cheetoes, home made beef jerky and copious amounts of Diet Sprite and Mountain Dew. In other words I did my hardest to reenact a good old fashioned LAN party with all the fixin’s.


The results were about as pretty as a WOW addict when left alone in a room for a month….with a stocked fridge, a high speed internet connection, a good computer, and no toilet or shower nearby. Though to be fair, this keyboard is not marketed as a gaming accessory so while it was put through our normal gaming marathon (after all we needed a keyboard to go along with the Gigabyte mouse we recently reviewed.) we will not be holding its failure against it.

The reason we say it failed at our marathon gaming session is due to the plastic keys, which when “greased” will become as slick as a Chicago politician! This means everything from a bit of errant sweat to oil from chips will seriously hamper your playing style. If your keyboard is going to be expected to go through even moderate gaming marathons this is not the keyboard we would recommend you reach for

On the positive side, the keys never became stuck and did provide more than enough positive tactile response that we knew when we had hit the key properly. Honestly, if the keys had been rubberized so that the annoying slipping didn't occur we would have been singing another tune in this section.

As we have said in the past: to qualify as gaming equipment it can never impede, impair or mess with gaming habits. To fair to Gigabyte and this multimedia keyboard, being a good gaming keyboard would have been a nice bonus but it is not its main niche and we will take this into consideration when coming to our conclusion.