be quiet! Light Mount and Dark Mount Keyboard Review

Conclusion

Conclusion

Branching out into new areas is always a risky business. Are you diversifying your portfolio, or are you spreading yourselves too thin? When your company is as famous and well respected as be quiet! the risks are even higher. You wouldn’t want to sully your good name by releasing a product that isn’t on a par with your others. After all, their Dark Power PSUs and Silent Wings fans are about as good as any on the market, and that’s without considering cases and coolers.

Clearly be quiet! have approached their peripheral launch with this in mind. Both keyboards are built like tanks. Very sturdy and robust. This is aided by the multi-layer design within. One of the big problems with mechanical keyboards, even those with linear switches, are echoes and the noise of spring returns. By providing us with foam and silicone layers be quiet! have dampened those noises tremendously. They’re a match for any quiet keyboard around. You also get two switch types. The be quiet! Orange switches remind us of the Cherry MX Red. The best selling switch on Earth. 45g actuation force and a totally linear feel make for buttery smooth typing. If you like a bump then the be quiet! Black switches are firmer, 55g, and have that tactile bump. No click like a Cherry MX Blue thankfully. Silence is king.

Light Mount :

The Light Mount is a keyboard that very much is what comes to mind when you imagine one. It’s a full size, RGB keyboard. There are five extra keys for macros, and a volume/mute wheel for your media. All of which can be customised. The typing feel is gorgeous. If you’re going to make your own version of a mechanical switch then you’d do a lot worse to clone anything but the Cherry MX Red, and be quiet! have been sensible. Not just in giving us a pre-lubed, linear typing feel, but using the popular X stalk design so you can use any custom keycaps you like, should you fancy a change.

Special credit needs to go to the lighting. Getting accurate colours in every shade is, judging from our experience with hundreds of keyboards, phenomenally difficult. The Light Mount does it easily. Okay the light bar at the back is a little washed out and whiter than we’d like when compared to the keys themselves, but it’s nothing we couldn’t live with. It also speaks volumes about how good the key lighting is.

Gorgeous to type on, lovely to look at, and with dedicated media and custom keys, the be quiet! Light Mount wins our OC3D Gamers Choice award. Available from today for £169.90.

Dark Mount :

If the Light option is the sane approach, the Dark option is what you get when you leave no stone uncovered. Want custom keys? How about a built-in Stream Deck eight Display Key setup? There definitely needs to be a market agreed term for the keys which are actually a screen but also keys. And not just because it allows us to wash the taste of the vaporware Optimus Maximus from our mouths. Ahem. Wish you could control your lighting and media from a screen? The Dark Mount has you covered there too. Tired of having a number pad on the right? This one fits either side or none at all. You can hotswap both it and the Media Dock in and out whenever you like.

Speaking of which, both the Numpad and Media Dock are attached with Type-C connectors. You can only put the Numpad on the right or left edge, whilst the Media Dock is limited to two positions on the rear. Surely someone with a 3D Printer, some skill, and a male to female Type-C cable will be able to let us have them on our desks wherever we want? It seems like the logical step. Anybody up to the challenge?

Magnificence Personified

Like the other of today’s be quiet! launches the Dark Mount lighting is exceptional. Colours are richly saturated, replicated beautifully and bright. The lit line around the outside looks epic on the desk. If you like customisation it has everything you could hope to find. The Media Dock is easy to use but also fully customisable. The 8 Display Keys are within easy reach and as flexible as any similar setup. If you’ve never used them before you will be shocked at how useful they are. Lastly the effort put into making it a beauty to type upon in feel and silence terms has been well spent. Silky smooth and quieter than a church mouse in slippers.

The downsides are three minor things. As you could see on the previous page custom Display Key images aren’t centred properly. Additionally, when the lighting is as epic as the Dark Mount’s, the searing white of the Media keys and Lock indicators is a real bummer. We’d expect RGB at this end of the market. Lastly, any keyboard with this many screens and buttons is not going to be cheap. We have, however, seen other keyboards close to the £239.90 price of the Dark Mount that don’t come close to it’s functionality, which wins it our OC3D Enthusiast Award.

Discuss the be quiet! keyboards in our OC3D Forums.