deskthority

So, my local Amazon Showroom^W^WBest Buy had some G910s in stock, and I decided to swing by and see if they had a display model. They didn't, and the G910 box is sealed... so I bought one. tl;dr I'll be taking advantage of Best Buy's return policy.

Industrial design

Well, here it is: Eugh. But you already knew that, really.

If that isn't gaudy enough for you, here it is with the big palm rest (it ships with the small one installed): And here's the back: The Romer-G switches
The best way to describe the feel is... an MX brown with more friction (and possibly a bit stiffer spring), and gentler (and maybe a bit more) tactility. Felt a bit shorter travel, too, although I'm not sure about actuation (I don't have an MX brown board). I can get the Romer-G to false-register pretty easily when I'm trying, although I didn't notice it during normal use. Basically, if you love MX brown, you'll probably like Romer-G. If you don't like MX brown, you won't like Romer-G. I don't like MX brown, and I find Romer-G too frictiony even compared to MX brown.

That said, it is worth noting that Romer-G is incredibly quiet - I've typed on louder rubber domes, and I don't mean ones built by Topre. I'm not sure how it compares to Matias Quiet, but it might actually be quieter.

The real ace up Romer-G's sleeve, however, is that it's a switch and keycap mount optimized specifically for backlighting. Here's an example of the backlight evenness and complete lack of backlight spill, which I haven't seen anything else mechanical come close to (this shows the worst of it, and Cherry numeric keys are that bad close to the center, even on the MX RGB): Speaking of the keycap mount...

Keycaps
The keycaps are coated and lasered, and you can FEEL where the coating's lasered away. These are gonna look like crap, and real quickly.

Really easy to pull that cap by hand, for what it's worth - about as easy as removing the upper part of a 2-piece buckling spring cap. I didn't pull anything stabilized, as I'm returning this keyboard, and didn't feel like trying to put it back together.

Now, for the profile... Logitech used two profiles. Both profiles have the left and right side of the keycap chamfered identically... but the left hand profile (ideally used for gaming, obviously, with your right hand on the mouse) also has the top chamfered. The left hand profile feels like poor man's sphericals, and is about as deep-feeling to my fingers as the sphericals found on IBM Selectrics and beam springs. The right hand profile feels like a cylindrical profile, although not quite, due to the use of chamfers instead. Really, I find that disappointing, I'd have liked the left hand profile across the whole board.

Features

So, obviously, the first feature is that this is key-addressable RGB backlit, and you can do plenty of fancy backlighting schemes - custom per-key and per-game backlighting, lit zones, and various special effects (color sweeps, a starfield effect, color cycling, and lighting recently used keys) - but there's a drawback... this only works if you're using Logitech's gaming software (for Windows only, of course). Otherwise, you get a light blue backlight, or you can turn off the backlight with a dedicated key (no Fn keys on this keyboard). Also, the keyboard goes through a color sweep sequence when starting it up, zo relaxen und watschen der blinkenlichten (ignore the sound at the beginning): Speaking of Logitech's gaming software, to use the G keys for macros... yep, it has to be installed. There's three banks of macros as well, selectable on the fly... but without the Logitech software, the G keys are mapped to their corresponding F keys, and macros aren't saved onto the keyboard.

Now, the rest of the functionality doesn't need the Logitech software... so let's take a look at it.

The top buttons (macro bank select, macro record, Windows key lockout, backlight on/off, media control, and mute) appear to be rubber dome. There's also a volume roller, which is crazy sensitive on OS X, but that's because OS X has few steps for a keyboard's volume controls to go up and down through. On Windows, it's fine.

And then, for maximum gimmick value, Logitech put the "ARX Dock" on. Essentially, because this is the new flagship of the Logitech keyboard line, it had to do what the G15 and G19 could do, and have a display... but Logitech didn't want to add that to their bill of materials. So, they made a dock for you to put your smartphone in. Now, I tried first with my Nexus 5, and noticed that it didn't want to balance in there, and it didn't really seem to clamp it. The Nexus 5 does have a rounded bottom, though, so I decided to give it the best chance, with my work Lumia 920: Yeah, that's a fail right there.

Finally, no USB hub, and the USB cable is permanently attached.

Build quality and durability

So, I've already mentioned the issue with the keycaps - as they're lasered coated caps, the coating's going to wear off eventually, and when this happens, they're going to look terrible.

The palmrests, especially the small one, are made of rather thin plastic, and don't anchor all that securely.

Doing flex tests, the plastics didn't creak despite having a fair amount of flex (the switches are plate mount, but the plate looks like it's plastic).

Do I recommend it?

Logitech wants $179 for this thing, so I can't recommend it for that price, and especially not if you don't like MX browns. The backlighting is the best hardware implementation I've seen, and the keycap profile on the left side is interesting, but really, that's all it's got to offer. For $10 more, you can get a Corsair K95 RGB, which has better industrial design in my opinion, uses Cherry switches (which, despite my long-stated dislike for them, are better than the Romer-G in my opinion, except for noise and backlight distribution), can be programmed once and then run independently of its software, and has some keycap upgrade possibilities (yes, I'm aware of the bottom row issues).

Nice writeup. How is the switch for off-centre hits? Any sign of binding?

Some binding when pressed on the top edge, especially the top corners.

Also, I decided to pull the spacebar, and it looks like Cherry-style stabilization, with the wire underneath the plate. Easiest spacebar to pull and reinstall that I've ever done, too.

Weird that they use different profiles for the left and right hand. If you, like some on this forum, like symmetry, then I guess that's the worst symmetry break. Even though it is not that obvious in the pictures - I hadn't noticed before I read your review (not very into this keyboard, but anyway).

Nice piece on a weird board!