Software

There are software drivers for the Redragon K599, although unfortunately not of the unified variety at all. Indeed, every single Redragon product with software support has its own skinned software, most of which appear to just change the lighting effects. As with every other version, the K599 version should be downloadable here, but as I was putting together this review, I instead only found it on the download tab of the product page. The download is a zip archive folder with the installer just 7.6 MB, and opening it reveals a fairly fancy page which then sadly switches to a cookie-cutter installation process. The installation is also missing some basic options, including the ability to select the install director, any EULA you may inadvertently agree to, and whether or not to have a desktop shortcut and start menu folder. The installed driver takes up 34.5 MB on your storage drive. System utilization is minimal, so there is nothing to worry about on that end if you have a decent processor from either camp.


The layout of the software drivers has a lot in common with others for Redragon keyboards, but I am happy to say that it is generally better to use. This version scales better on a 4K display compared to most from Redragon, so it does seem to be an updated driver, and things are laid out in a manner that at least makes sense and is easy to understand, which really is the lowest of the bars to clear as far as I am concerned.

Well, this is almost exactly as it was with the K596 Vishnu, except of course with even fewer options and overall lower functionality. There are three primary tabs, with the rest of the homepage dedicated to the basic UI and saving configurations, resetting the keyboard, and going to the default configuration in case you messed up. The default tab is Performance, which for whatever reason allows you to change from the default NKRO to 16-key rollover. You can also change the keystroke repeat delay rate and speed, and test the effects of said changes. The second tab is all about lighting, and the virtual keyboard now also lights up for a preview of the set effect, which is a nice touch and better than a lot of contemporary solutions from the region.

A drop-down menu provides more preset options for lighting, again in questionable English due to poor translation, and associated sub-functions, including speed and brightness. There are some preset colors to choose from, as well as a multi-color option, but no way to actually select the specific color out of the 16.8 M on offer. The customize option alongside enables per-key lighting among these few colors, which is more than I could say of some other keyboards. The final menu is key assignment, which was a disappointment since I expected the entire keyboard to be re-mappable. Instead, there are absolutely no keys available for re-mapping. This is where the key-mapping options in the K596 Vishnu software drivers were available. However, the space next to the gaming mode customization is left empty here. It's clearly a copy-and-paste job with the missing functionality removed from the drivers and no further changes made.