MSI has yet to even add keyboards to their "Where to buy" page, which made it hard for me to figure out not only the price for the Vigor GK60 keyboard, but where it is available. Given it came out very recently, it is only available for purchase in the retail market, at least in the USA—from Newegg, Amazon, and BHPhotoVideo, for example. MSI tells me the keyboard has an MSRP of $109.99, but is selling at $99.99 via a $10 discount given to retailers and passed on to buyers. This helps it break into the sub-$100 market at the time of review, but we go by MSRP when street prices are based on limited-time promo sales. As such, the $110 price point makes this a hard sell. This is a price point at which we were getting similar keyboards with similar feature sets a few years ago, and companies such as Tesoro have come out with equally new, backlit keyboards using Cherry MX switches and a better build quality at a lower price point. If we go with non-Cherry switch keyboards, we can suddenly get RGB-backlit keyboards at even lower prices.

This is not to say the Vigor GK60 does not bring anything to the table, however. It brings with it the weight of the MSI brand, which counts for something compared to many other brands, including Tesoro, as well as other smaller brands using non-Cherry mechanical switches at a lower price point. This enables a larger retail channel as well, which alone can be the only point of consideration if alternatives are not even available for purchase. It has good software support for lighting with not one, but two different drivers. Arguably, Mystic Light 3 is to only be used for a more cohesive lighting theme across a plethora of MSI-branded DIY components and peripherals, but both allow for a pleasant, bug-free user experience for lighting control. There are also onboard controls for lighting, as well as other functional pre-programmed items. I will also give a shout out to the embedded steel plates and extra rubber pads that add, ever so slightly but still, to the typing experience on the Vigor GK60 keyboard.

In many ways thus, especially given the relatively simple lighting options here compared to a per-key RGB backlit keyboard, the software drivers are redundant. Would their absence have helped reduce the price point, which ultimately would have swayed my decision in a more positive manner? It is a discussion not worth having because we are still dealing with a $100–$110 price depending on when you see this review, but a price cut sometime down the line would definitely help.