GK GAMAKAY TK75 HE Rapid Trigger Mechanical Keyboard - Hall Effect Magnetic Switches, Hot-Swappable, 81-Key PBT Keycaps, Bluetooth/2.4GHz/Wired 75% RGB Gaming Keyboard (White, Phoenix Switch) - Perfect for Esports, Competitive Gaming & Fast-Paced Typing

tl;dr - an excellent piece of hardware with average software attached to it, HE switches and rapid trigger seem great to someone who has never used it before, typing experience is a bit lackluster on the silent switches, build quality is fantastic, customer support is very goodUPDATE 3: Customer service was able to speak with the engineering team, get the quirks worked out, and get me a working version of the firmware that has all the features the manual stated it did, plus two new features (MT and TGL to go with DKS key inputs) that weren't there before. Even if the software is a bit quirky, the customer support is so strong that I'm willing to give back the intial start I docked. I would absolutely buy from this company again.UPDATE: Gamakay customer support has confirmed for me that my keyboard shipped with the wrong firmware and an misprinted manual. This was apparently a mistake in the first shipment, but seems to have been corrected at least on the website. After a few emails, we were able to get me the correct keyboard firmware and pdf version of the manual. However, as of a week later, I still do not have the ability to use a fn-key combo to switch the stroke setting on the keys, despite the "correct" manual listing fn-key combos to do this. The digital manual they sent me also has two conflicting sets of fn-key combos to switch the magnetic key stroke settings. None of them work, or even exist according to the software you use to program fn-key combos. I didn't really buy this board for that feature and it's not hard to use the software to switch the stroke setting manually so I'm not upset, but consider that the software/firmware seems to be what makes this a budget-friendly board. Customer service responds quickly enough to email and is very helpful, so if you wind up with a weird software/firmware issue then reach out to them.UPDATE 2: The keyboard doesn't charge in wireless mode, and won't switch to wired mode unless the power switch is off and is set to "wired mode" by pressing fn+5 on the keyboard while plugged in. If you plug it in with the power switch on, it is set to wireless mode even if the cable is plugged in and the battery is totally dead. More of that weird firmware quirkiness.Full Review:I purchased this keyboard with the silent switches. I am admittedly not any kind of keyboard enthusiast, and got this board because it seems to be a middle-of-the-road product that matched all of my needs the best. That said, it sounds very nice to me-it's very quiet, and most of the keys make a very light "thok" like sound, except for the a key that is a bit higher in pitch. Typing feeling is a bit lacking in feedback (I'm used to lightly tactile switches), but they are absolutely silent. They are quite smooth, with little resistance. The keycaps feel good and the construction is solid. Apparently they had a non-Cherry profile at one point, but they are definitely Cherry profile now. The RBG system is nice, with lots of options I'll never use that look neat. I only set my lights to white color and dim, which this board mostly does. The lights themselves seem to have some kind of reddish hue to them, even when set to white using various options in the software. The 4 different brightness settings go from reasonably bright down to nicely dim.As for the HE switches, I can't compare them to other boards but they do seem to be a "budget" option. They switches themselves also seem more shallow than others, bottoming out at 3.5mm of total travel. Other boards claim as low as 0.1mm responsiveness with 4mm+ of travel, while this one features as low as 0.2mm. That said, it increments by steps of 0.1mm, the same as every other board I've seen. I can't speak to the accuracy of that because I don't own a caliper for testing, but I can judge off of comparing it to my old keyboard (a G710+ with Cherry MX Brown switches) that it's very, very little input needed to cause an actuation.While playing with the rapid trigger setting on and set to "non-stop" (what they call continuous rapid trigger), there is a very noticeable improvement in the response time compared to non-magnetic switches. I normally type about 95 WPM with >95% accuracy. With the "comfort" setting turned on (2mm actuation and deactivation time), I was able to gain about 4 WPM simply by trying to type lighter than I normally do. And that happened quickly, as well. It was an immediately gain. I don't really play the games that rapid trigger is supposed to be good for, and I honestly didn't buy this board for that purpose, but it's definitely noticeable immediately.The behavior of the switches feels very fast to me. It is noticeably faster than the Cherry MX brown non-HE switches in my old keyboard. Doing a basic test of trying to do the meme shuffle run in Helldivers 2, I couldn't manage the run because the on/off activation is so fast. It's very easy to achieve with my old keyboard, and literally impossible with these HE switches. The input stops seemingly the instant I release the key, and that's on 2.4ghz wireless connection. If there is some board out there that has a faster rapid switch technology, I'm not sure I could even make use of it.The only odd thing I noticed was that setting the HE/rapid trigger to the most sensitive (0.2mm on/off) came with a warning that the RGB might need to be disabled due to interference with the magnetic sensor. I have noticed a few dropped inputs, mostly while typing, while the game setting was turned on. Nothing dropped on the WASD side of the board, but one or two inputs near the ENTER button were dropped. Easy enough to fix by using the fn combo to turn off the RGB while gaming, not like I'm staring at the keyboard while I play games anway.I haven't tested the DKS yet, but the option is there. I probably won't bother using this until I figure out how to switch stroke profiles on the fly (more on that below).The only hardware issue I have is the USB dongle it comes with. It seems to only connect by 2.4ghz. I don't really mind, since I don't like BT for connectivity anyway, but someone else might.The only real issue I have is the software. It isn't very intuitive and does take a bit to figure out exactly how to use it. There are zero official guides or manuals I can find regarding the software. There are several function key combinations listed in the physical manual that came in the package that do not exist in the software. There are fn key combos in the downloadable manual that don't exist in the software. Neither the physical version nor the digital version of the manual have the same fn combos set up. The software tells you what most of the keys do, except for the ones that have to do with the keyboard firmware itself. Once I was able to figure out how to remap certain fn combos, I realized the board does 95% of what the software and various manuals claim it can. The only thing it doesn't seem to be able to do is switch between the hall-effect/rapid trigger presets using an fn combo. I've contacted Gamakay about this via email, and I'll update my review if/when I get a response about this.Besides the issue with the software and the small hardware hiccups, the board is honestly pretty nice for what I paid for it (USD90 after a $10 off coupon). I don't play the kind of games that rapid trigger is supposedly good for, and I don't have a multi-thousand FPS camera to test its absolute latency, but it's a massive improvement over my old keyboard. If you were looking for a "budget" HE rapid trigger board, it's between this one and the Redragon 60% board. For me, the choice was obvious.