Three years is a record. Three years without spilling on, trashing or utterly destroying yet another keyboard; All to be ruined by one morning cup off coffee. But I digress, the Gods laugh and Keiya gets an excuse to purchase yet another toy.
The Logitech G110 is exactly the same as the Logitech G19 minus the color LCD. The keyboard that I ruined was the old school G15 (the older one with more buttons and adjustable screen). I used to use the LCD to monitor system stats while I gamed. But since switching over the Windows 7, I prefer to use the desktop widgets docked on my secondary monitor, which are a lot better anyways particularly since there are widgets specifically for Riva Tuner, NVIDIA, etc. The only real use that I have for the LCD nowadays is to see who is speaking on Ventrilo, which isn’t worth an extra $100.
This keyboard also feels almost exactly the same as my old G15 and presumably the same as the G19. It is a bit narrower though, by about an inch or so at the expensive of an extra column of G keys. For better or for worse, it is of the same construction quality too: Which is to say, very very nice but not quite as solid feeling as something Razer pops out (Logitech makes cheap ass wrists rests). The keys are tactile but soft; Soft and quiet enough to sneak in a late night of WoW without waking your spouse (I dislike noisy keyboards).
Oh here’s something new: The G10 has it’s own onboard USB soundcard with inputs for an analogue microphone and headphones. Above the inputs (which are located at the top) are two buttons: Mute microphone and mute headphones. I really like this feature because is eliminates the awkwardly long and hazardous wire running from my case to my head (it’s also easier to access and stash the cord to the side).
FYI: Plugging a mic into the keyboard input will automatically mute your speakers, even if you do not have headphones plugged in. Which is kind of annoying because I have both Vent and the game sounds routed through my speakers most of the time. This is easy enough to fix in the Windows control panel.
Instead of having an ipod-ish volume dial, the G110 has volume scroll wheel similar to a mouse wheel. The G110’s multimedia buttons feel a lot better than the old school G15’s in both quality and location in my opinion. My other keyboard’s volume dial and play buttons were half pressed in and slightly loose feeling. I also like having them located on the right side near my mouse. I don’t have to reach over as far. Also for what it is worth, the drivers for the multimedia keys work out of the box with the most recent version of iTunes (on Windows 7 at least).
You can customize the keyboard glow to your heart’s content. Any color of the rainbow is at your fingertips, literally! The macro programming also works exactly the same as the G15 which is to say, very well. The software is self explanatory: Pick a button on the configuration screen and macro it. There’s no hassle and I haven’t encountered any software problems.
Oh one other thing: The high speed USB port isn’t too useful. There are very few thumb drives and devices that will run on it without getting a power warning. It’s nice that the hub is finally USB 2.0 but still…If you are strapped for cash, you might want to look somewhere else. $75 is still pretty steep for well, a keyboard. But if you can mentally justify the cost and/or want a nice gaming keyboard, it’s a great peripheral.