Sitting along with one it’s buddies on the bottom of shelf at Best buy it screamed buy me Steve buy me I’m a hundred dollars, but I’m worth every penny. Well I do have a weak spot for this sort of stuff I suppose, but don’t call me an impulse shopper. I did however have a genuine excuse and it’s the old version was very large put a fin on the bottom and it’s a surf board.
First impressions
The packaging is standard fare Logitech with a feature list, glitzy product images, and a place to open it good enough for myself. I will however make note that while the box was a great deal smaller than the previous version its weight seemed to be about the same which to me is good don’t want that sucker sliding around.
It’s Halloween!!
While most won’t agree with Logitech going with orange i find it very pleasing to the eye. The effect isn’t in your eyes it’s subtle. When I first turned my machine on with the keyboard plugged in the first thing that caught my eye was the blood red indicators for the caps lock, num lock, and scroll look it’s eye catching to say least. Blue is nice, but it’s overdone these days it’s very refreshing that a different color was chosen for the keyboard.
The obvious thing most people will notice is the board is much smaller about 1 1/2 smaller from my guestimations. The width decrease comes at a cost though the “g keys” take a serious hit down to just six physical keys. I guess the reasoning is that with some tricky key combinations you can make it seems as though their are still fifteen of them still there.
Round is out and angular is in the G15 Keyboard features larger buttons for the mute, back light, and windows key disabler. The buttons themselves now seem to walk slightly in their sockets, but it doesn’t do anything to detract from the usage of them they work just fine. While on the subject of buttons the key themselves remain largely untouched the only difference visually is the use of the round Windows flag. The touch of the keys remains the same for touch typists or other users a laptop style key would probably be better than this. The key travel and feel still feel good a bit mushy at times, but it suits my typing style.
I was in the pool!!!
Good or bad the LCD is smaller than before, but with its shrinkage it also to me looks more crisper the text is easier to read it’s either the module itself or the backlight color choice. Surrounding the LCD are the multimedia buttons play/pause, volume up and down, stop, and track forward & back these controls are all backlit as well. The controls for the LCD aren’t much different you get a button to switch applets, and four buttons to control the applet.
The good the bad the slightly ugly
The thing some love to hate is the quality of Logitech’s software and I’d have to agree somewhat. Although with version two they are at the very least working on fixing some of the concerns most had with version 1.00 through 1.04.
Some issues that I have run into already is something that I had before with my previous keyboard was the tendency for iTunes to crash the Logitech media display plugin. The software does make recovering from crashes easier than unplugging or rebooting the Game Panel control panel applet allows you to start a plugin that either hasn’t started or just crashed.
The problem I had in spades with my version one board was the blanking LCD I can happily say I have yet to experience it with my version two board.
The keyboard ships with version 2.00 of the Game panel software this appears to be version 2.00 not the previously released 2.01 beta by the Wingman team. The software itself looks exactly the same as 2.01 with the exception of the profiler showing image of a version two G15.
The software has come a long way, but it still needs to cook longer.
Some things to point out
- The two usb ports on the front are still USB 1.1 and complain if a device is sucking too much juice.
- The list of support games out of the box is still minute the G11 is still an attractive alternative because of this.
- Needs slightly more grippy feet it often slides in heated battles.
- Software still buggy, but is improving.
- Smaller in width
- Smaller, but easier to read LCD
- Cost right now it’s 99.99 though I’m sure it will reach 79.99 or lower in a matter of months.
