Performance

The Aukey KM-G4 supports N-key rollover USB, which tested successfully using Aqua's test. Switch Hitter confirmed no chatter with these keys in the five weeks of testing I did before this review.









Given the KM-G3 had onboard control for lighting effects, Aukey did well to keep that in the KM-G4 as well. So you do not even need to use the driver to get some lighting control going. When first plugged in, an RGB Wave mode from left to right begins, and you can use Fn + Print Screen-Page Down cluster of nine keys to toggle through the options. Some of these nine keys have multiple options themselves so press each combination at least twice to see what they do. There is also Fn + R/G/B keys to control the respective R/G/B color, and this applies as static lighting for all the keys together. The videos above are a look at some of the lighting effects in practice - be it via onboard control or the driver.


There is also a very cool onboard lighting effect you can toggle on by the way Fn + Backspace, which activates a sound sensor and turns the keyboard into an equalizer. As seen in the video above, I had my phone play some classical music, and the keyboard kept up well. Again, this is a dumb sensor, and there is no data being recorded or passed on over the Internet.


In order to see how the backlighting itself is, I set everything to a constant white at 100%. There is a blue hue here, and the LEDs are not the brightest I have seen, which is one way Aukey has kept costs low. That said, they are bright enough for the legends to be adequately legible in a very dark room, although the pad-printed secondary legends are opaque and thus harder to make out. This is where the light bleed from the floating keycaps helps.

On to the switches now. This was my first experience with Outemu Brown switches, and I came out quite impressed. For those interested, here is some more information courtesy of the wonderful Input Club, and we can see that the force-travel diagram is such that the actuation is a little past 2 mm, meaning you need ~50 cN to register the keystroke as opposed to the 45 cN for Cherry MX Brown switches, but aside from that, they were very smooth and had a tangible tactile bump to where first impressions make them feel superior to the Cherry offering even. These switches were also extremely consistent in actuation force and travel, with a tension gauge used to measure an average actuation force of 49.85 cN at 2.07 mm, averaged across twenty switches.


As always, the sound of a keyboard is based on more than just the switch type. So when comparing sound clips, consider the keyboard as a whole. In this case, I have provided above an example sound clip of me typing on the KM-G4 sample at ~90 WPM. For context, you can find sound clips from other keyboards here, including those with tactile switches. I did bottom out here, although it is definitely possible not to do so if you practice.