Review – Rosewill RK-800G Keyboard

Many of us out there, myself included, happen to like spending a little bit more money on their hardware. From gaming mice, to mechanical keyboards, to big fancy cases, we don’t mind spending an extra fifty to a hundred bucks on a good piece of hardware. However, what about the people who don’t have a ton of money to spend on keyboards and mice? Are there any keyboards out there that combine a cheap price with good gaming performance?

The RK-800G is Rosewill’s attempt at giving a positive answer for that question. And, I’ll admit, when I first got this keyboard, I didn’t have high hopes for it. However, it has surprised me a little bit. For starters, it feels like it has some pretty good action, where you don’t need to press too hard to get a key to register, and returns to its regular position in a timely manner. The keyboard also came with a key-cap remover and silver WASD keys, so that you can easily switch out the regular black WASD keys with the silver ones. The key-cap remover also makes it easy to get most of the other keys off of the board, in case you need to clean out the keyboard in case you spill pop or food stuffs on it. And despite the fact that most rubber-dome keyboards usually only support 6-key rollover, this one does up the ante a little bit by the fact that 11 certain keys (Q, W, E, A, S, D, Space bar, and the arrow keys) can all be pressed at once and the keyboard will register all of the presses. However, with that being said, how often did you use the WASD keys AND the arrow keys at the same time?

It’s definitely not perfect. The plastic construction feels a bit cheap, in my mind, and as far as button placement is concerned, I find the fact that it uses a large reversed “L” shape Enter-key and a short Backspace-key pretty annoying. Also, in an age that seems to find many old ports of yesteryear being replaced with USB ports, it’s a bit archaic to see that this keyboard only comes with a PS/2 port. And if Rosewill was trying to impress us with its packaging, it failed. With sentences like “It is equipped with a rarely used integral rubber dome as an internal part. Whereas the ordinary keyboard is designed with an independent rubber done for each utton” it looks like whoever created the packaging for the keyboard just used Google Translate to do the translation. With this being in mind, I feel like in the end the RK-800G keyboard is a lazy attempt by Rosewill to cash in on the gamer market. However, if you’re just looking for an ok keyboard for under 20 bucks, this one will work, as long as you have a PS/2 connector.