Logitech G910 Orion Spectrum Review

Conclusion

Most keyboards are fairly multi-purpose, being as good for rattling off your autobiography as they are for leaping around the level of whichever game you’re playing. The G910 Orion Spectrum just about shades the multi-purpose side – after all it has keys and so is capable of forum posts – but it’s really heavily leaning at the gaming end of the, ahem, spectrum. 

There are oodles of features built in. The full RGB lighting is now the standard in high end keyboards but unlike the G213 Prodigy we looked at recently the G910 supports full per key lighting. This naturally has benefits both in the accuracy of the colour reproduction and the customisation you can perform. If you’re just wanting the WASD keys and a few action keys lit up, the G910 can do that. Heck if you have most things bound to a HOTAS and only need two keys on the keyboard then it can do that just as easily as it can light all of them up in your favourite colour. Unfortunately some of the indicators and extra keys remain blue regardless of your settings. A minor disappointment.

Unquestionably the ARX dock will be the thing that grabs most peoples attention. The G keyboards of old used to place a dedicated screen here and we know of many people who lived and died by the abilities of their G15 and G19 keyboards. With all of us, except people who are determined to be contrarian, having a smart device it makes perfect sense to combine that with the keyboard. We saw Roccat do a similar thing but that required pairing the phone with the keyboard via Bluetooth. The ARX solution just requires the keyboard to be plugged into something that is on the same network as your phone, and because of this it’s much simpler to set up and use. Like all technologies which aren’t part of everyones setup there are only a few titles which fully support it, and even though the G910 has been around a brief while there still aren’t loads.

The ARX dock doesn’t slide in and out with any air of quality at all. Anyone who has opened a plastic pencil case or owned a PS3 Super Slim will know the feeling. When you’re paying such a hefty premium for this feature, and the keyboard is already one that feels wobblier and more plastic than similarly priced rivals, it wouldn’t be too much to expect it to be a metal drawer on roller rails with perhaps a rubber cover to keep your phone free from marks. As it is we have a searingly blue plastic tray which both feels and looks like it costs ten pence. When you add this to the extremely poor quality wrist rest, designed in a way you’re forced to use it, and the non-keyboard parts of the design really let the side down. It’s just nowhere near as robust as you would hope a flagship keyboard to be.

However, slight build quality issues aside, the G910 Orion Spectrum is an excellent gaming keyboard with plenty of features and options to satisfy even the most demanding user. Given that Logitech have removed the display from their earlier G keyboards and replaced them with a cheap plastic tray and expect us to provide the display we think the price is a little steep. The indented keycaps might not be to the taste of the hardcore typist, but then this isn’t for those with a novel inside them, it’s for those seeking the edge in their gaming exploits and the combination of plentiful macro keys, excellent lighting options, the ARX dock and easy to use software means that the G910 Orion Spectrum is perfect for those of you who prefer to snipe than type and thus it wins our OC3D Gamers Choice.

  

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