Viper V730 LED Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Review

A Closer Look

The Viper comes with a standard key layout and while there aren’t any dedicated multimedia or macro controls, it still sneaks in plenty of features. Using the FN-Shift function on the keyboard, you can control lighting, profiles, and multimedia directly from the keyboard. It’s not the best way, but it’s still nice to have extra controls and the multimedia controls work great for playing music while gaming.

Further along, you’ll find even more controls for changing the lighting effects. While it may lack fancy per-key RGB LED lighting, it doesn’t mean you can’t have some fun with the red LED lighting it does have.

The keyboard features a lovely aluminium chassis design. Of course, that’s not the usual quality we see this far down any range of keyboards, even less so at this price range. The keyboard feels pretty robust and it looks stunning even with the lighting off.

The lightly textured finish looks great, and the keycaps look and feel of a good quality too. The weighted chassis design enhances the response of the switches too, as the “click/bump” doesn’t feedback through the rest of the keyboard much at all, keeping it feeling tight.

The wrist rest looks like a detachable one, more in line with their more expensive models of this keyboard. However, it’s built-in, and that’s fine by me, as I can’t use a keyboard without one.

On the underside, the hallmarks of a more affordable design are easy to see. It’s pretty ugly under here, and the base unit design doesn’t look too sturdy. However, it feels more robust than it seems, I think it’s just those glossy plastics that hurt it. However, who the hell cares what the bottom end of a keyboard looks like? I don’t. The good news here, however, are the strong rubber grips, and wide kickstands at the back.

Tucked under those keycaps, you’ll find the very nice Kailh Brown Red LED Mechanical Switches. The switches use a standard + head too, so they’ll support the same custom keycaps as every other major switch brand.