I used to have a nice backlit keyboard. A4Tech I think. It was one colour, blue, and was likely lit with a very basic single light as it was made just a bit before LEDs got really cheap and ubiquitous. That keyboard started to fail after ten years of decent use from me, so I wanted to find a new one. That one was long discontinued, so I ranged out for something else.
Searching around I figured one of the fancy gaming keyboards that are rainbow coloured might be cool, so I found a decently priced one that got good reviews and tried it out. It was a Vantar AX from Cougar. It was quite beautiful, did all that it promised, had a sturdy aluminium construction, a slimline appearance, quiet scissor-switch keys, I loved it!
Except for one thing.
The rainbow keys were really annoying. They were too bright, the transparency of the keys made it impossible for me to read the characters on them, and the multi-colour flickering effects were really irritating. I kept it on a solid plain colour, so all the other fancy nonsense was wasted on me. Bu not being able to see the keys really was a dealbreaker.
So I found the inverted version of the same model of keyboard. Now the keys were black, not frosted, and the light only shone through the letters themselves. This was the way my original LED keyboard did it, and I thought I would prefer it, not be blinded, and it would work out better. But these keys are way hard to read too, because the text is thin and small. The little symbols above the numbers in particular are just dots. I cannot tell if it’s a % or an $ or an @. (I should know where each of them are without looking. But I don’t). So this keyboard is similarly a bust.
I need a better backlit keyboard, a solid colour, with larger visibility on the letters and symbols, readable in all lighting conditions, and preferably a way to reduce the light intensity or turn it off if it gets too bright or when the PC sleeps.
I have looked at large print keyboards on Amazon, but the reviews suggest they are loud, chunky, and wear off. All cheap knockoffs, and they break within months. So I don’t want those.
Can anyone recommend one that’s a reliable brand, a decent price (under $100), with medium-to-large sized print, good visibility with the light on or off, and available here in Australia would be good. I search local PC stores, Amazon, or eBay, but I just get the same things coming up over and over, with crap reviews, or a focus on gaming which I’m not really after.
