Performance
Hooking up the Poseidon Z brings the internal LED lighting to life. The blue hue of the switches reflects downwards and illuminates that already bright blue backplate, giving it a gorgeous under-glow effect that looks stunning in both bright and darker environments.
This is a high-end mechanical keyboard, as such, it performs exceptionally well. The Kailh Blue switches are very similar to Cherry MX Blue switches, so they have that audible and tactile “click” when pressed, giving you fantastic feedback whenever you hit a key. The switches are a little noisy, so they may annoy the person sitting next to you, but when it comes to typing, you’ll find you want to write out even longer emails than ever before, as it’s very satisfying to type on.
As for gaming, the switches are fast and responsive, maybe not as fast as red switches, but the extra tactile feedback certainly helps improve keystroke accuracy. Firing through a wide range of games, I really can’t fault it and it’s every bit as good as you would expect when compared to the best-of-the-best in the mechanical gaming world.
Extra bonuses are plentiful on this keyboard, such as the ten mechanical macro switches. When it comes to gaming, macro keys are awesome, as they can be used to deploy complex commands for MMO gaming with relative ease. I personally also find them a great tool for photo and video editing, as you can set scripts to the keys to speed up your workflow. I personally don’t need Macro keys on the right side of the keyboard, but it certainly never hurts to have them. The addition of Advanced Instant Shift System or I.S.S. for short, is also nice, as it means you can use Shift, Ctrl, or Alt keys to quickly switch between macros, giving you swift access to over 100 macro keys in total.
The built-in DAC for your headset is also a seriously cool feature to have, just remember to set your audio output device to the keyboard in Windows Sound Manager. It means that you can set your desktop to use your speakers and the keyboard for your headset, so no more having to unplug your headset at the end of a gaming session!
No screenshots or even mention of the software? I want to know how versatile the control over the macro keys is. Can I make them open programs? Websites?