I've unboxed a lot of keyboards on ShortCircuit over the years, but none have
been as bad, at least in terms of performance, as Red Magic's mechanical
keyboard, the GK001J.
Not only is it wired, but it's wireless.
[laughter] >> Really? Let's get it out of the box and take a
look so I can tell you just why I don't necessarily think that you should
purchase this keyboard.
It's got a plastic cover with a nice red Magic logo stamped onto it. You know, I
like these plastic [music] covers. I mean, it kind of sucks that they use a
bunch of plastic, I guess, but uh makes it look protected. Here's the keyboard.
It's a mixture of plastic and aluminum. Mostly plastic though, so it's going to
be a little flexy cuz yeah, it's definitely not the most rigid thing. But
you get a knob and you get a screen. And I think it's hot swap. Let's see if they
included like a keycap puller or a switch puller or a combination like this
guy. What else we got? Cable.
Coiled cable. Okay, that's nice. It's
not enough to convince me to tell you that this keyboard is worth buying, but
it is nice that it comes with a nicely coiled cable. USBC to A for any of you
wondering. Before I dive deeper into the keyboard itself, let me just take a
quick look and make sure if these are hot swap. I don't know if they are.
>> It's hot swappable. >> It is. This one's stubborn. Why are you
so stubborn? There we go. Okay, whatever. It is hot
swappable. And this one has linear switches for gaming.
Oh my god, look at the flex on this. Cuz
why? Cuz the feet are on the sides. Yeah, I guess the feet are raised so
much. Oh, and it's got adjustable feet. Okay, that's always nice. And a little
holder for your 2.4 GHz dongle. God, I
love the word dongle. Whoever invented the word dongle, you deserve a raise.
You're probably dead by now, I guess, actually. So, maybe you deserve to be
raised from the dead. Now that we're looking at the back, I actually do like the kind of like smoked gray plastic
that's a little transparent. And I like the like 01 generation win more games. I
like how gaming oriented it is. Like if you wanted a gaming keyboard, this is
definitely screaming gamer keyboard at me. Name Red Magic 3 mode mechanic.
Mechanics keyboard. This is for mechanics only. Uh, you guys please, if
you're not a mechanic, I'm sorry. You're not licensed to use this keyboard. It's
so flexible that you can actually like see the whole board bend in the middle
when I press. Honestly, not even that hard. The typing experience is perfectly
fine. I don't think I like these key caps,
but you know, that's personal preference. Like a lot of modern mechanical boards, it is wireless. And
you've got a little try mode switch back here. cable off or wireless. Um, and
then here's our USBC cable where it says 5volt. What's that? 5 volt 1.5 amp. You
know, I don't know how often it's labeled the actual amperage and everything on the USBC cable uh port.
So, it's kind of nice to see. I don't know how necessary it is, but you know,
as for the rest of the design, like I said, it's super gamery. I actually kind of like the cool like break in plastic
here. I think it's kind of neat. And then they've got this like interesting
triangular kind of neat shape here. Uh
you can't see it too well on the camera, but it's got the brushed aluminum look
that some people like and some people don't like. But I want to turn this thing on. I want to take a look at the
screen. I want to see if the knob will actually work. I want to see what the
RGB looks like cuz you better believe that there's going to be RGB in this bad
boy. So let's flip these feet up. Plug
it in. While the laptop boots up, I started
looking at the screen because it started doing things because it's got power now.
And look, one, two, three, four,
and then five. Excellent. [music] There's five images that cycles through.
Most of them are just red magic or something like their logo. And then you
get this cool anime waifu girl. She got pink hair. My heart goes out to her, but
I can't denounce [music] my first love.
[ __ ] What was her name? Yuthi. I can't denounce my first love. Yuthi, I can't.
[snorts] So, yeah, you get your own wall art, your own poster for Newi. If you
really want to simp over uh Newer, come on. You got to This is what you got to
put on the wall. >> We'll get to how to actually turn this into a volume knob and control, you
know, the software and everything in a bit cuz I want to just, you know, talk to you about this uh nice RGB. I really
like this nice RGB kind of a strip of like little squares at the top here. And
I also really like the kind of pudding style key caps that it comes with. Um,
they're not exactly shine through. In the dark, you might still be unable to
make out what character you're pressing if you know you're still kind of hunting
around for something, but um, otherwise it emits a pretty nice glow. Actually
wish it was brighter. I'll try to turn it up in the software in a second here.
I know that on camera it actually looks really bright. It's not that bright in
person. This is actually remarkably dim unless I'm like, [music] "Oh, that's
why." as soon as you're looking at it like straight on and that's why it looks so right for you guys. Um then yeah,
it's really clearly green. But from this angle, it's like really not like
>> facing south facing. Like >> it does look like they're north facing. >> And is that why it's hard to see cuz
like you don't you don't really see the tops of each key. Typically
>> typically people want north facing. >> Really? >> Yeah. Cuz it's better for uh shine
through cuz the letters are I mean these are pretty centered but a lot of the time letters are closer to the top. So,
I don't know about you guys, but like when I'm typing, I'm not typically kind
of hovering over it like this. Uh maybe this is the one of those times where I
actually want south facing. They're not really shine through key caps anyway.
So, it would look a lot better to me. I mean, it looks great for you guys on
camera, but just a little disappointed. It does have custom software. Does this
turn up? It's not turning up volume yet on my computer. So, we'll install their
custom software and see if I can fix that. It's cool. I can see the pulse of
the LEDs on the top down. That's funny.
All right, day two, computer 2, and
we're still getting an error when we try to run the software. It's a different
error, but an error nonetheless. And so, I can't check out Red Magic's amazing
software where they're going to let me change the uh usage of the knob as well
as these images here. And RGB, actually, I just realized I don't think I can
change the RGB. There's probably some hot commands.
Okay. Well, now is it just flashing red? Ooh. Okay.
So, yeah, there's hot commands to at least change the RGB. Now, let's do a quick typing test, but not before a word
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side, monkey type should just work. Okay, and away we go.
118 99%. Well, if I was playing Final Sentence, I wouldn't be dead right now.
That's good. I'd only have one mistake. But, uh, it's not bad. The reality is
the problem in this keyboard lies not in how it sounds
or how it feels. Um, it lies in how it
operates. You see, when the Labs tested this thing, they found that the average
latency was about 50 milliseconds. And
that's over a wired connection. When it went wireless, it got even worse. Not by
a lot, but like yeah, that we shouldn't be seeing that on a wired connection.
Even a wireless connection shouldn't be as bad as 58 milliseconds on average.
Our max was jeez 75.
It seems awful, [music] and I know that that's a lot of latency, but can I
really feel it? Let's play some Counterstrike. Honestly, I can't really
jiggle peek anymore. It was a a skill that well, muscle memory works pretty
well, but kind of goes away.
You know, it's incredibly minor,
but it's there.
Oh, yeah. It stops like just a little
bit after I want it to stop. And it
takes just like that what half a second to get going. Uh yeah, 50 milliseconds
on its own. I mean, it's not great. Uh now add in the extra 5 to 10 that you're
going to get from your system processing as well as your display latency. Um and
it really adds up and it starts to make the whole experience. It just it starts
and stops just a little bit slower than I'd like it to. Is it going to make you lose?
Probably not. Um but you're definitely losing out on just a bit of an edge that
everyone else is probably going to have as long as they're using modern
peripherals anyway. But there are other games than just shooters that actually
really care about your keyboard inputs. I can't hear anything. Oh, this is going
to suck. Okay. Well, realistically, I shouldn't need sound to do this.
The practice mode is easy enough, but I'm also doing this by inputting earlier
than I should have to. Um, not a lot.
you know, 50 millisecond isn't like a 110 ping kind of situation or anything,
but it's you can feel it. It's noticeable. And [sighs] I don't know,
you guys, I think if you really want this thing for whatever reason, you like
the way it looks or you just like really like Red Magic, it's okay. It's a
keyboard. Uh I probably wouldn't pay the price for it. I think it's like $160 or
$170, which I mean, you get a screen
that's cool, but I don't know. I don't think I'm personally willing to pay for
that. And then my last complaint is the whole like win more games branding. I
mean, sure, it's gamer and like that's fine if that's what you're into. I'm not
going to be against that. But
it's a 1,000 hertz polling rate
keyboard. Gaming keyboards are up to like 8 kHz now. And even at 1,000 hertz,
let me tell you, 50 millisecond is not great when it comes to games. So, can I
recommend the GK001J mechanical keyboard from Red Magic? No,
I can't recommend it to you. Especially at the MSRP of $200. It's sure it's down
to like 160 now, but even at that price, I just I think you're so much better off
buying just about anything else.
Thanks for watching. This is a keyboard.
I'm PLO. This is ShortCircuit. That's Belle. You can't see him. He's behind
the cameras. Glenn's there, too. You can't see him either. But, uh, see you
in the next one.