Driver

There is no software driver support for the iKBC F108 RGB keyboard, with all functionality being hardware based. As such, I have chosen to combine the driver and performance pages into one.

Performance

There is full N-key rollover USB here, as Aqua's test confirms. Similarly, no key chatter was detected using Switch Hitter, which was to be expected.


When first plugged into a USB port, the keyboard lights up in a static pink on all its LEDs. I did a quick change to white based on the manual's instructions by toggling Fn + F1/F2/F3 accordingly to adjust the R/G/B channels. As with any RGB LED, white is not a true white and has a light pink hue to it this time around. The backlighting on the other hand is near-perfect with everything that could be illuminated done so uniformly. The individual color channels, coupled with the Fn + Up/Down arrows for brightness control and Fn + O to toggle the LEDs on/off, help control the static lighting for the entire keyboard.












Fn + other function keys help toggle and control the lighting modes/effects, which can be single or multicolored depending on the per-channel setting and individual effect settings. Fn + Left/Right arrows control how fast these effects are. There are a total of nine LED lighting effects, including static lighting of all keys, and there is decent control over brightness with eight steps per channel for a total of 512 colors. The remaining 16.8 M colors come from sub-steps in the brightness levels not available for manual control and only visible in the animations. The problem is that the animations fade in and out pretty badly, with a harsh change from one to the other even at the slowest speed settings. As such, even if there are indeed 16.8 M colors available, it is impossible to tell, and some keyboards with less PWM steps of brightness control look smoother and better. Given the lack of a firmware update to resolve this issue so far, it is likely not to change for the duration of the product's life cycle, so be aware of this.

There is also per-key lighting and dual zone lighting, wherein you first select the keys to be lit up separately to then adjust the R/G/B channels as before by using Fn + F1/F2/F3 keys. If you mess up or want to reset settings, holding Fn + R for five seconds will take care of it and put you back to square one and that pink backlighting. The keyboard does have onboard storage as we saw on the previous page and will retain the lighting-effect setup. No drivers means you can do this at anytime by just plugging it into a computer with an OS that recognizes and powers a USB keyboard.


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 iKBC F108 RGB sample at ~100 WPM. For context, you can find sound clips from other keyboards here, including those with tactile and clicky switches. I did bottom out here, although it is definitely possible not to do so if you practice enough. In terms of actuation and bottoming out, there is not much to say here except that the usual high Cherry QC carries over with an average actuation force of 49.88 cN for the MX Blue switches averaged across twenty keys on the sample provided. Bottoming out seemed regular if you are prone to doing so, and nothing jumped out at me that was any different from the rest.