Manufacturer: Pictek Direct

Release Date: 3/24/2016

MSRP: $109.99

Well, this is a strange thing. I usually choose high-end, well-known brands over generic or start-up brands, but I needed something more simple as I’m not a macro type of person. Sure, I have a few fancy keyboards like the Roccat ISKU FX, Cyborg Strike 5, and even an Alienware keyboard, but I realized that the price hike is just for more keys than I don’t use. With Cyborg going out of business and their entire keyboard and mouse catalog havingn’t been updated in years, I decided to downsize and just go for something simple. I picked my favorite features for keyboards, and those were backlighting and great key feedback. After sorting through various keyboards on Amazon, I came across Pictek. They are a small German gaming company that is just starting up, but everyone is raving about their products, and I can see why.

When I got the box, I was a little worried. It’s just a generic blank cardboard box with two pieces of poorly fitted foam and a small fold-out piece of paper. I had to tell myself this isn’t Razer or Mad Catz, who can spend big budgets even on packaging. After picking up the keyboard, my worries went away, as it was very heavy and made of solid aluminum. The only plastic on this thing is the keys, which are awesome. The design itself is super sleek and doesn’t look low-budget. The palm rest is textured and raised off the keyboard, while there are various LEDs around the keyboard. The most important part is the keys, and they feel amazing. You would expect this type of quality from a $150 Razer or Corsair keyboard, but it isn’t any of those.

The lighting effects are awesome and better than any other keyboard I have owned. Yes, they are pre-set, but you get nine of them, and they all do awesome things. One preset will light up the whole keyboard every time you press a key, and another will make the keyboard dark, and each key you press stays lit up for just a few seconds and goes dark again. There are presets that light up keys for Call of Duty, League of Legends, and various game genres, which are just amazing. These are awesome ideas that the bigger companies haven’t thought of yet, and it’s a real shame. There is no proprietary software that can be good or bad, depending on how you see it. There is a way to set some macros, but you need the fold-out paper to figure it out. The keyboard settings are not intuitive at all, which is the only downside to this amazing product. But all of the things you would normally think have been done. Brightness settings for the backlight as well as speed, multimedia keys, and everything else are spaced nicely.

With that said, I have to give serious kudos to Pictek for being more than just another gimmicky generic keyboard company. The thing is even water-resistant, which is something you would expect from a $150 keyboard. They actually pushed out a quality keyboard with amazing lighting effects and functionality. Just don’t expect fancy packaging, software, or anything else out-of-the-ordinary that other bigger companies might do.